The race is on to free Lord Stelan from the grip of a wasting curse, and only his old half-elf mercenary companion Elyana has the wisdom—and swordcraft—to solve the mystery of his tormentor and free her old friend before three days have passed and the illness takes its course. When the villain turns out to be another of their former companions, the half-elf sets out with a team of adventurers across the Revolution-wracked nation of Galt and the treacherous Five Kings Mountains to discover the key to Stelan’s salvation in a lost valley warped by weird magical energies and inhabited by terrible nightmare beasts.