For seven thousand turns, the Ta'el have searched the ruins of the human world for the answer to one quesiton: What fel events wiped the humans from the Earth? On this day, Ayasha joins all those Ta'el that have gone before in the task of answering that question. Yet, she finds that achieving the culmination of a lifetime of training, the title of Stone of the Hearth, is not at all as she expected when she is named the Speaker. Attempting to decipher the elusive portents of her new name reveals events in their world unlike any known to her people. With the magic of the Ta'el failing, the secret behind her name may be the only hope there is. Chasing that secret leads Aya deeper into the murky past than any Ta'el has gone before. Unearthing the answers to the eons old question is only a single piece of the puzzle. Dredging free what remains pits her against creatures not of her reality, and maybe something much worse. A left-behind truth that sets their world on the edge of a ruin that will finish what the long-dead humans began.