Diana Tretyakov is a young woman, rejected by society for reasons she does not understand. While walking deep in the forest, she accidentally finds herself in an active temporal zone and is transported to the dangerous proto-world of Amyrade, circulating in the matrix between universes where different natural laws prevail.

There she meets Rajivark, the would-be ruler of an aggressive species of risanorks, who went into exile after committing hecatombs on his own warriors. Living in an enclave in the middle of nowhere, the man now sees his only hope of redemption in Diana, who accidentally shattered his plans.

The woman, however, does not want to cooperate. The cultural and interspecies differences between them, amounting to trillions of light years, lead to constant misunderstandings. When Diana finally begins to trust Risanork more than anyone else, she discovers that she has been drawn into a game that could have devastating consequences for herself and all mankind.