There is an open wound in the heart of the Cosmos. A wound that tears at the flesh of reality, drawing powerful and malign aberrations from an unknowable realm. Salem Ben stopped the first, but more are coming, and now he must solve the riddle of their purpose if he is to prevent an all-out invasion. Only by living the digitally reproduced lives of three individuals will Salem find the solution: Diabolis Evomere, a tortured but enlightened prisoner in ancient Babylon; Clifford Arken-Bright, a twentieth-century physicist who has uncovered a terrible secret in the quantum world, and Silicant 5, a refugee of the Great AI seeking to understand its hatred of humanity.