On an isolated world a small society has been struggling to survive in the hostile microcosm of a wooded vale for 900 years. Six cities, built outside the perimeter of a mighty temple, itself built thousands of years before by their distant ancestors. To their minds they are the center of the universe. But one among them sees things differently. Raan, not yet a woman, no longer a girl, has just been confirmed as a priestess of the city of Aesho. After making a terrifying journey to the ancient temple Mezopkhan, losing many warriors in combat along the way, she decides that the laws of their elders must surely be a mistake. Driven by this conviction she sets about a covert investigation of the temple archives, discovering her suspicions to be true: the Founders of their society hid a great secret nine hundred years ago. A secret since lost even in legend, known of only by an inner circle of scribes, keepers of the temple records. Uncovering this Raan is catapulted into a scenario far beyond anything she could have imagined, triggering the arrival of another race, themselves long-ago descendants of the same pilgrims that founded her society. Only these humans have advanced, moving at will among the stars. A federation of planets, warships ... a fight for an ideal. A revolution. Raan travels with them to a world called Najolrecht, the center of their crusade. On that world they and a race of aliens are working to discover clues to a planetary-scale tome left behind millions of years ago by the last truly galactic race. A tome that would give them the technology to rule the galaxy... Encroaching on the borders of their heavily defended space, another more powerful republic wants nothing more than to see this search brought to an end. And so one girl, insignificant against this backdrop of interstellar intrigue, touches off a series of events that shape the outcome of the Najolrecht standoff, bring an entire race to war, a powerful republic to ruin and, indeed, when d