What if Nazi Germany had built the first atomic bomb? What if the Third Reich had emerged victorious from the ashes of World War II? When the ambitious Colonel Wexel of Hitler's SS starts channeling dark forces, the unspeakable nearly becomes reality. Standing in the way of such a nightmare are a beautiful, young peasant girl named Annabelle and her protector, a middle-aged German army captain named Martin Schumann. But Annabelle is more than just a starving and traumatized Jewish refugee-she is a powerful witch on the verge of becoming.
The battle takes place on the frozen landscape of Russia's deep interior, where the occupying German army has brutalized a tiny village and a centuries-long drama is stuck on repeat. Annabelle and Schumann's nightmarish existence, meanwhile, plays out in a bewitching world of half-truths, surreal visions, and harrowing experiences. With the outcome of the war-and the fate of the world-hanging in the balance, Captain Schumann is forced to face the past that haunts him, and, in the process, he glimpses the face of evil itself.