It is three years after the second launch of the aethership "Excelsior"; the Ettercap War has ended and Trowth has returned to a traumatized semblance of normalcy, but is now menaced by an unseen adversary. A terrifying, merciless hand has seized control of the heresies in Trowth, and is using them to bring down the Empire itself. The city's unsung hero--diseased, drug-addicted, Detective Inspector Elijah Beckett--is the only man who can save Trowth from herself, but his own mind and body have begun an inexorable spiral into decay, from which he may never be able to recover.