In a world where the dead become stone tablets called Books — each one a record of a life that anyone touching it can read — those relics are housed in the labyrinthine Bantorra Library and protected by the Armed Librarians, superpowered guardians led by acting director Hamyuts Meseta, herself a hardened killer. The Librarians stand against the Church of Drowning in God's Grace, an order that turns conditioned people into living weapons. The story unfolds in shifting arcs that follow different librarians rather than a single hero.