The narrative opens with Arbuthnot’s self-portrait and moves through loss and departure as he, Bastin, and Bickley are driven by fate into a cyclone that casts them upon a mysterious island. There they encounter the strange Orofenans and uncover secrets surrounding an island in a lake and tomb-dwellers preserved in crystal. The awakening of Oro and his daughter Yva after two hundred and fifty thousand years shatters modern assumptions about time and civilization. As Oro recounts the grandeur and fall of his ancient empire while Bastin debates matters of faith, the explorers are led into the under-world where remnants of a forgotten race endure. What began as shipwreck survival becomes a confrontation with humanity’s deep past and the cyclical rise and ruin of worlds.
