Joslyn is barely scratching out a life on the streets of Ly Ossia, constantly dodging Imperial soldiers and scrambling to steal enough to eat. When she’s recruited into the Temple of Somna the Creator as an oracular Dreamer, Joslyn thinks she’s scored the greatest treasure of all—comfort and safety for the rest of her life. That pleasant illusion is shattered when a strange man comes to the temple requesting an oracle—a man whose nightsoul, that part of him that is capable of entering dream, is missing. Once Joslyn discovers this terrible fact suddenly everyone in the Temple, including the kindly Dream Master who sought her out in the first place, wants her dead.

Rescued by the man who now calls himself Ghost, they go on the run from the city in a desperate search to for the missing piece of Ghost’s soul, the part that knows what the Temple is planning and how to stop it—before the goddess Somna’s dream that is the world comes to an abrupt and permanent end. With a huge bounty on their heads, the normal run of hired killers is the least of their worries, because the Temple also has access to a very special sort of assassin—one who can strike his victims in their sleep, and do it no matter where they are or how far they've run.