Every dwarven city has its Spark, one that grants life to the great artifices carved into living rock and cruel steel by the god Tek himself. A machine set in motion when the turning of the world began again, Dhuldarim has survived millennia without faltering.

Until now. The Spark, it seems, is going out. Divine help is impossible: the great god Tek is silent, slumbering where none can reach. The ingenuity of dwarves is their only hope of salvation. To return the Spark, a great power is needed-power that can only be found in the Deep. To trespass so into the depths of the earth is suicide even for a dwarf, but the Heartforge has spoken: Tali Khondurahl must go, and go alone.

There are things that live in the Deep, they say, that dream of the red flower wielded by the dwarves. They dream...and they hate.

Aided on her journey by a golem of stone, a siren freed from eternal imprisonment in the Deep, a human mage far from home, a strange deep-dweller, and a scion of her people's most ancient foe, Tali must face an evil so powerful it has survived the millenium since the Revealing without interruption, lording over a dominion of misery and subjugation.

For Lekt, one of the Forsaken who dwell deep beneath the Lands of Tek, hatred and pain are the natural laws of life. But when an opportunity to choose arrives in the form of Tali Khondurahl, he finds there are parts to life beyond the might of claws and the crushing cold darkness that has always been his home. His quest for freedom can only be stopped by his death, and he has no intention of dying.

But to address ancient sins, to save two worlds, to vanquish the darkness, there may yet be Hell to pay.