Mark Chaos was a long way from home. He had spent many years fighting in the Beast war, which had begun as an affair of honor but ended in a bloodbath for all the Humans of the House of Stars. Yet Beasts and Humans were exactly alike—except that ten thousand years before the Beasts had originated from zoological gene banks under the deft hands of the construct surgeons. The war was a terrible thing, even more terrible because its leaders never knew they were being tricked and guided by one man—a man who came from a universe which no longer existed. He was Heljanita the Toymaker, who spun a crooked wheel that distorted minds and dimensions. And Heljanita was particularly interested in Mark Chaos.