It is the sixth century of the Common Era. The vampire Saint-Germain, known in this time as Zangi-Ragozh, is peacefully doing business in Asia when, unknown to him - or anyone else in most of the world - Krakatoa explodes in a massive volcanic eruption. The island is nearly completely destroyed; tidal waves swamp harbors hundreds of miles away, ravaging trade ships and their cargoes; tons of ash and dirt are flung into the air.

The world grows colder and darker as the massive cloud of dust and ash spreads across the globe, blocking sunlight. Sea trade is ravaged. Crops fail. Livestock, and then people, begin to starve. Disease spreads. Panic rises.

As always in times of trouble, foreigners - and the vampire is always a foreigner, wherever he goes - become targets. Zangi-Ragozh finds his money and property confiscated and his life at risk. Fleeing toward the West, where he hopes to find safety and sanity, the vampire travels with a nomadic tribe led by Dukkai, a female shaman who acts as Zangi-Ragozh's protector - at least for a time.

With death no longer a distant possibility, Zangi-Ragozh desperately tries to reach sanctuary in the one place he truly belongs - his homeland, the country he first left centuries earlier.

A land we now call Transylvania.