Cado Ezechiar, the Hollow King, once watched as his kingdom burned and his family were butchered. His endless hunt for the Chaos cult responsible – the mysterious Burning Hand – has led him all over Shyish, and now finally brings him to Lethis, capital city of the Realm of Death. But as he closes in on his quarry, and the shadowy metropolis that harbours them, old debts emerge from the gloom.

Pressed back into the service of Neferata, Cado is sent to the kingdom of Calyx, where the queen's thralls are mired in conflict with Mannfred Von Carstein. There, he finds himself caught up in a war of deception, and soon faces a terrible choice: leave Calyx and its people to drown in the crimson tides of war, or defy the Queen of Blood.