Fifteen-year-old Hadara loves to go beyond the city limits gathering herbs and throwing off the yoke of her religious schooling, but when a falling star crashes into the marshes beyond Port Sapphire, two powerful high priests arrive from the god Nihil's home city to investigate, insisting it harbors an evil force, and choosing Hadara as a guide into the wilds, setting off a chain of events that will upend everything she has been taught about the sacred and the profane.