With its gleaming basalt towers, austere cathedrals and reclusive temples, the city-state of Grimpkin is the bold embodiment of civilization. Its history is as hallowed as its statue-ringed Forum and its citizens as sober as the slate-hued sky. An anxious traveler has been drawn into the district. She is an Acaanan, one of a dark-skinned people infamous for their fascination with the occult. But to Grimpkin's robed patricians she is only a shabby, scheming pariah. The Acaanan is convinced that lost within the sprawling district hides an icon of ancient and elemental dimensions. Mystery enshrines the relic but many believe that it is an agent of doom whose shadow haunts Grimpkin's scarred consciousness. The Acaanan has staked her fortune on unearthing the relic and bringing its truth to light. But all her efforts are fruitless until one evening when, at wit's end, she stumbles into a possible path. To find it she must decipher a bizarre code that conceals a lost world of the macabre.