Count Georik Zaberisk has built a distinguished career as head Royal Physician to the king of Hardland. Then his frail sister Lillith is accused of witchcraft by the villagers near their country estate — her head is removed and her body burned. Somehow Georik recovers the head and makes an impossible discovery: she is still alive. Consumed by the need to restore her, he learns of the alchemists called homunculi who might know how — and discovers that alchemy, like witchcraft, has been outlawed by the Kingdom of Hardland he has spent his career serving. He enters that forbidden world anyway.