Another war brews in the Outer Bounds, but this one is unraveling a mystery that threatens to consume the human race. Magali Landborn leads a rebellion to save her brethren from the yoke of the Coalition, while her sister, Anna, seeks to destroy it entirely. As the two of them struggle against their fellow humans, others are busy uncovering an ancient alien secret: a powerful malignance that already destroyed the known universe once, and whose return is inevitable. While Magali reluctantly rallies the colonists against the Coalition in Rath, Anna meets her match in the form of the multidimensional mechanical genius Quad, and Runaway Joel uses the confusion of war to pull the heist of a lifetime. As their struggles irrevocably alter the fate of the dimension, Tatiana Eyre uncovers an ancient threat that, if left unchecked, could spell doom for all of humanity.