Stranded on an alien world, Lieutenant Commander Alex Porter has lost everything. His best friend, his crew, and his starship are all gone. Everyone is dead, and he's a few heartbeats away from joining them. Run through by his own katana-the only vestige of his former life, now the instrument of his death-its exit wound bubbles red. Enveloped by darkness, his vision fades. Hanging by the last thread of consciousness, Alex hallucinates the jaws of some massive beast closing around him. How sad an ending, to die alone so far from home, he thinks. And then the darkness is complete.

But fate has its own plan for Alex. Foretold one thousand years before by an ancient ancestor through a prophecy passed down. This fate was always inescapable. . .