Frost Rostocky was born with the touch-of-death curse, fating her skin as deadly to any living thing. She's destined to a life imprisoned as a Sorrow in the cruel, unforgiving Otherplace. The dismal Otherplace prison is as inhumane and ruthless as its creators: the mystical Dwimmers of Ergon. The Dwimmers of Ergon are the dictators of the outside world and orchestrators of the poverty within the Otherplace, with stone-cold reputations of being heartless monsters.

For sixteen years, Frost scrapes by with her devoted half-brother, Hail. That is, until one of the infamous dwimmers crosses the Otherplace barrier and negates every truth Frost ever thought she knew. When Hail is mistakenly summoned into Tyra, the foreign outside world, Frost must join forces with Minnie, a mysterious Sorrow-dwimmer, to escape the Otherplace and rescue her brother. Their rescue mission takes a perilous turn when Frost discovers previously dormant powers inside herself. Buried secrets of the Dwimmers of Ergon are unearthed, opposing every Sorrow ideal she's ever learned. As mysteries surrounding Minnie unravel, Frost finds herself in the middle of a century-old clash between Sorrows and dwimmers, where the distinction between monsters and martyrs grows blurrier with every step.