Solving the Secret of the Alchemist led Jake, Helen and her father Gerald to the discovery of the Stone of Sorrow and a spellbinding and shocking climax in the Underground Palace in Istanbul. Now blasted into beyond by those terrifying events, they each find themselves alone in a strange land with no clear memory of what has gone before. As the fabric of reality begins to unravel and amazing events unfold, each must travel a lone path: yet all roads lead, it seems, to the City of Desolation, where the end-game is the cosmic struggle between Good and Evil.