Rhed Virids is an Ink Artifex of the Atramenta Guild. His job? To use his powers of ink to bind people to the afterlife in preparation to die. One of his Ink Masters, whose keeping he is overseeing, binds him unexpectedly to an impossible quest: find the famed Adustum Diaries. During this quest, Rhed battles with two big questions:

• If you couldn’t really die without telling the truth first, how would you get around that?
• If you’d found a way to make a relationship last forever, and a secret evil was trying to destroy your power, what would you do?

During a quest for these answers, Rhed learns more about his father’s sudden death, discovers new magical powers, and enters an existence between the worlds of light and dark that will change him forever.