The Eleven Domain were forged in blood a thousand years ago. The blood is about to flow again. Bramble is as wild as the animals she follows deep into the forest near her village. Her dark eyes betray her heritage - she's a Traveller, one of the despised original people of the Domains. And for as long as she can remember, she has wanted to take to the Road. But the gods always say no... In Turvite, where ghosts drift along dark cobbled streets, Ash must leave his parents, and the Road, to begin an apprenticeship with the only person who will accept a Traveller - the scheming Doronit. But the gods who linger in the gloomy square have other plans for him... From different ends of the Eleven Domains, death casts Bramble and Ash on journeys across valleys and mountains and into the dark history of their ancestors.