With the help of this spirit-like creature, she has murdered her way into leading the continent's largest conglomerate. She is the sole inheritor of her family's secret research into the Lake, the world that the Nameless inhabits. As such, she considers herself the only one who can rule the world as holder of the ultimate knowledge.

And she is the only one, until she isn't—Matthew, her company's newest rising recruit, shares not only some of her talents with the Lake, but her thirst for power.

In Matthew's scant know-how of the Nameless resides both a threat and an opportunity: he's the perfect subject for her experiments, and the only one capable of standing against her. Kill him now? Or study him first? Though she vouches for playing it safe, the Nameless seeks for more and more, no matter the risk to itself, to Sylvia, and to those she loves. It is willing to sacrifice anything, including Sylvia's own wife, Helena. If Sylvia stood against the monster who raised her, would it dissect her as they have dissected countless otheres?

As her research progresses and her grip on her memories slips, Sylvia confronts that which she has tried to ignore her entire life: what is the true nature of the Nameless, and what happened the day she first met this monster of hers, when she killed her own mother? If she's wrong about Matthew—about herself—the empire she erected out of blood will crumble.