The World Serpent was deliberately dismembered into nine pieces and sealed under the sea floor. When the first seal fails, an earthquake and a stacked tsunami take Rahven's coast. A practical farmer with a billhook, he strikes one of the risen pieces, and instead of dying it chooses him, fusing willingly to his arm as its bid for freedom.

What starts as survival becomes a brutal road through drowned towns, ledger-ruled coasts, and the machinery behind the old myths. The fight is not simply man against gods. It is a man against becoming the weapon the gods and the world both want him to be, and the Great Lie under every hall of the slain is waiting at the end of the count.