For 2,000 years the Ephesus gladiator cemetery has been more than simply a home to the bones of fallen warriors. Unbeknown to Tyra and her group, as they search for Alruna – the slave child and Drusilla's half-sister – merely standing on this hallowed ground beneath the ominous black marble obelisk with its sinister warning, has inadvertently set in motion the forces of destiny once again while the stars and planets in the night sky all point to an earthly event of cosmic proportions. When the next moon rises, the most celebrated gladiatrix and High Priestess to Minerva will throw off the restraining bonds of the afterlife and embark upon a desperate odyssey to find those she once loved in another time.

What does the future hold in store for a woman born twenty centuries ago and who, presumably, knows nothing of the modern world along with its unfamiliar peoples, customs and technology? Will her presence be accepted amid the hoped-for atmosphere of conciliation, fond memories and atonement? Or is it her fate to be spurned, rejected and turned away a second time, as her former lover regards her in the manner of a bizarre anomaly of the spirit world, impossible to exist in the first place and here on a mission of questionable motives?