While returning to Florescia for her coronation as Sezara Vandiamante of the Midnight Court, itinerant monster hunter Gwynarra Caoilfhionn receives a request from the director of the Society for Afterlife and Arcane Research. A series of deadly hauntings by infernal entities and violent ghosts have plagued the citizens of the Atharian Empire, and the Society requests Gwynarra lend her skills in the defense of the innocent.

But Gwynarra Caoilfhionn was not the only hunter the Society hired. The director also requested the aid of Caspar Richter, Grand Master of the Holy Order of St. Arnulf Ironhand, an order of witch, heretic, vampire, and traitor hunters for the Blessed Emperor of the Atharian Empire. Grand Master Richter sent his daughter Karina as a representative of the empire's noble defenders who, twenty-one years earlier, executed Gwynarra's parents for allegedly harboring Marius Bedwyr, leader of the vampire insurgents the Crimson Fangs.

When Gwyn and Karina investigate the violent haunting at St. Hiltegardt the Open-Armed Orphanage, they uncover a mechanomagical device designed to transform suffering and fear into powerful arcane energies. As more of these devices emerge, they begin to suspect they have found themselves in the middle of a war fought in the shadows that may soon explode into the light.