Orphen makes his living as a moneylender in the city of Totokanta, no longer practicing the magic he learned at the Tower of Fang, the academy he walked out on years earlier. When a client's marriage-fraud scheme goes wrong, it puts him back on the trail of the monster he has hunted ever since: his older sister Azalie, transformed years ago into a dragon-like creature. Orphen means to find a way to restore her, while the sorcerers who trained them both want her destroyed.