When a visiting scholar arrives at the domed halls of the Carnelian Library requesting "The Sanguine Mask", a banned treatise on the legendary skin-stealers of Nayaradia, suspicion ripples through the quiet marble atrium.

Cerin Vosmor claims academic ambition; the City Guard suspect something darker. A series of grotesque murders has shaken the streets of Kaldahar, and the rumours all circle the same ancient myth, but books have a way of revealing more than their readers intend.