Leonhard von Waiblingen, the last remaining son of the House of Waiblingen, which once ruled over the entire Empire of Neuthelor, has lived his entire life on the run. He and his sisters being the illicit product of an affair between a princess of the current Imperial family and the much diminished Count Liudolf von Waiblingen, their very existence is a threat to the House of Falkeburg. While his sisters Katherine and Eva might be content to live simple lives of middling rank in the city of Heidelberg, an impetus gnaws at Leonhard’s insides. He dreams at night of revenging his mother and father, slaughtered by the Emperor Karl V. He sees the world descending into chaos around him as the rebellion in a faraway country spills into the rest of the Empire and feels ill-at-ease sitting by and watching it happen. But he’s just a young man, with hardly a Groschen to his name. That is until the war comes to him and he stumbles upon an ethereal young woman who claims to be capable of offering him power. Leonhard takes the deal and finds himself with the Key of Ishtar, an ancient burden that allows him to achieve all his ambitions. But he doesn’t yet know the cost of signing this contract. Nor the price in human life and broken trust he will have to pay to restore his family name.