The story opens in Enkō, the imperial capital. Beautiful, vast, quietly rotting at its foundations.

Kael Toya is nobody important. A junior Knight scribe in the imperial Archive Division trained to fight, employed to write. His job is to travel to border incidents, document them accurately, and return. He is considered unremarkable by everyone who knows him. His Meimoku ability is on his record footnote. Nobody has ever found a use for it.

When Fort Sekka, a border garrison in the far north goes silent and then the regiment sent to investigate also goes silent and the empire dispatches a small team. A senior captain. A scribe. A token presence.

What they find at Fort Sekka will not stay in the north.