"You rattle the darkness where you walk, Jax." Enter Shadowbridge, a world of linked spiraling spans of bridges on which all impossibilities can happen. Ghosts parade, inscrutable gods cast riddles, and dangerous magic is unleashed. Monstrous creatures drain the lives of children and for a price, you can sample their fleeting quintessence--provided the creatures don't sample you instead. Traveling these spans is a brilliant, secretive shadow-puppeteer called Jax, who knows all the stories of love, of war, of the gods, and even of Death and his lover. But Jax has more than a few secrets, too--not the least of which is his true identity: that of Leodora, daughter of the greatest storyteller who ever played the spans, and the woman known as the Red Witch.