THE ENGINEER - defined by logic and ruled by routine, she helps keep the lights on for the teeming millions. She craves nothing but anonymity. But her quietly ordered life is about to fall apart. THE VOICE - highest servant of the Mothers, he incarcerates and executes at will. He revels in the void eating him from the inside out. But his privileged and carefully controlled existence will change forever after an apparently chance meeting. THE DARK RIVER - a troubled wanderer, inside whom impossible forces rage, she has seen the hidden inner life of the Citadel. She knows that another world touches this one, and the barrier grows thin. THE FINDER - with deep insight and startling visions, he is familiar with unusual investigations. A new case will send him on a journey that unlocks a forgotten past, a revelation that will change his world forever. In the black and winding alleyways of the Citadel, industrial metropolis and home to ten million citizens, anomalies stir. Things that should be impossible, show themselves to those few who are vessels of the Great Power. The Mothers, immortal rulers of this vast city-state, are desperate to die. Through stirring the world into chaos, they hope beyond hope that despite the miraculous healing that condemned them to an eternity of misery, they might be granted oblivion at last. "Things are only deities if you let them be..."