Mallory Pywell is all alone in this world, and has been for years. And with a past steeped in religious fervor and prophesized destiny, she feels that isolation in the apocalyptic ritual only she is left to carry out. But if she can do so, all the pain—all the emptiness and fits of doubt she continuously struggles against–will be worth it. All that’s needed is her guests’ cooperation.

Ryan DuPonte will never be taken advantage of again. Having gone through an experience that’s impossible to shake, she hides any fragility behind a tough exterior and detached approach. Yes, it’s actively harming her relationship with her partner Harry and the world at large, but that’s the sacrifice she’ll make to never fall victim to another moment of weakness.

The Vessel is at the epicenter of Mallory’s planned ritual: A reanimated shell that can be manipulated and tasked with cursed deeds that Mallory’s ritual needs done. However, with its inner being resurrected, an actual persona–a real human—begins to develop, and what was once simply a tool is now a creature that can fight against the destiny that’s been forced upon it.

Harry Doyle isn’t the man that his girlfriend Ryan needs. He’s timid, slow to confrontation, and—most importantly—was not there when she may have needed him most. But he wasn’t always like that. There was a time when violence—violence his own country once asked of him—scratched a dark itch in his head. And now, as he’s confronted with Mallory’s dark schemes, it’s come to beckon him once more.

Micah Higston was a victim of that same sense of duty Harry was, and it lingered within him in the form of PTSD. Thus, it had been a long time since he’d felt silence. Stillness. That then changed when Mallory–an old classmate of his and Harry’s— struck up a romantic relationship with him. She’s now brought that needed stillness...along with a plan that will demolish Micah’s PTSD forever.

Josh Martinez endured longer than both Harry and Micah in Iraq. Still enrolled in the military, he’s working towards that sweet pension he’ll receive once he reaches his twenty years of service. And he’ll remind you of this fact—along with everything he’s done for his country—at any opportunity he gets. He’s a man of dramatic bravado, yet maybe the only man that can truly put an end to Mallory’s schemes.

Edgar Garcia knows something nobody else does: This land he’s made camp on—and the territory that isolated Higston ranch sits upon—is magical. His numerous hunts for skinwalkers, chupacabras and sasquatch all ended in failure, but this excavation will be different. He’ll prove to the world that he isn’t a nut job, but a man of true cryptozoology academia. And he’ll do it even if it kills him.