London, 1890. Captain John Hardwick, an embittered army veteran and opium addict, is released from captivity in Burma and returns home, only to be recruited by a mysterious gentlemen’s club to combat a supernatural threat to the British Empire. This is the tale of a secret war between parallel universes, between reality and the supernatural; a war waged relentlessly by an elite group of agents; unsung heroes, whose efforts can never be acknowledged, but by whose sacrifice we are all kept safe.

In an alternate reality, the world is in peril. The sky burns with a supernatural fire, demonic entities run amok in the streets, and in the north of England, sinister beings plot to claim a part of the Empire for their own. Young Apollo Lycea agent Lillian Hardwick, and her Majestic partner Sir Arthur Cecil, are sent to expose this plot. To complete their mission they must overcome foes both mundane and supernatural, uncover a Royal conspiracy, and unlock the secret of the Iscariot Sanction. And yet what they find in the industrial cities and windswept moors of the north is a danger unlike anything they have faced before; a threat that will leave them—and the Empire—changed forever.

London, 1893. The Order of Apollo, investigator of mysterious events for the Crown, has been uncovering artefacts and refugees from another world, smuggled through boundaries that seem to be thinning. A breach would mean disastrous consequences for the entire universe. Meanwhile, rumours abound of an enemy the Order thought long-since dead, alive and gathering followers. Colonel John Hardwick, an embittered veteran of Apollo, is forced to join the fight again, with his former friend Captain Jim Denny and mysterious adventuress Marie Furnival. But facing this new threat brings them to dark secrets that implicate whole nations and threaten the very fabric of reality.