French forces gather across the Channel. In Scotland, the Jacobins plot to place Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne. Beneath London's streets, a subterranean people are preparing to rise up.
And in the realm of the Otherwhere - home to dragons, demons and gods - civil war har erupted, causing a terrifying weapon to be cast out into our world. It is a clock - a watch, to be precise - and yet it is a mechanism of extraordinary power and malign desires - and within it is contained the doom of all that lives.
Daniel Quare, of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, was sent by his masters to find that deadly time-piece. And find the watch he did, only to lose it again - together with his hand - and now it seems that all hope for the world may be lost...