Nera, a plane-cursed thief, lives in Nexus, a city forever cast in twilight, constructed around a great Machine built by immortals to align all the planes together. Nera grew up an orphan on the streets, scorned and mistrusted for her fiendish heritage, and was sentenced to ninety-nine years of slave labor in the great foundry for a petty crime. She would like nothing better than find a way to somehow reduce her onerous sentence or remove altogether the cursed collar clamped around her neck.
Malek is a young apprentice mage with a bizarre and dangerous power that he struggles to control. After his teacher is kidnapped by a strange group of soldiers, he tracks the group to Nexus, seeking to rescue his master.
Their fates will be forever intertwined as they are swept up in events beyond their control. A fragile truce holds in Nexus, maintaining a balance where neither good nor evil can gain the upper hand. Yet all is not well in Nexus, for in the darkness festers the wicked ambitions of those who seek to swing the balance of power forever in their favor.