In the steam-and-iron metropolis of Dernier, humanity survives behind sealed ramparts against the Stéle—ancient mineral horrors whose touch turns living flesh to brittle stone.
On the battlefield, knights pray for the church's gentle saints. They get Cestela Vielle, the "Puppeteer of the Battlefield." Armed with razor-sharp golden mana threads and a total lack of bedside manner, she doesn't soothe pain—she violently stitches severed nerves and forces screaming soldiers to hold the line until victory. Her reward is the terror of the very people she saves.
All Cestela wants is a quiet cup of pu-erh tea and to be left alone with her jazz records.
But when Solyon Garde arrives—a man with peerless swordsmanship and an infuriatingly sincere smile—he looks past her terrifying reputation to see the lonely girl holding Dernier together. The city's most cynical medic and its most foolishly hopeful hero must forge an unyielding line between humanity and the silent wasteland.