Ashlin is a girl from the Shi people. Once she met a man in her world of hills, the young druid Bradan, and fell in love with him, and he with her. But Bradan disappeared, literally taking with him part of Ashlin's soul. Brandon Byrne is the master of ritualism at Dean Eirin University of Magic. He lives four hundred years later than Bradan and looks like him, like an older brother. He also considers shi to be just an old fairy tale, beautiful and scary. A temporary anomaly - and the two meet to solve the mystery of Bradan's disappearance and restore Ashlyn's soul. But what will be stronger: the abyss between the two peoples or the feeling carried through the centuries?