Silver Forest is only a village, but it's large enough for someone like Shory to blend in, even fit in. He's just another young man scraping out a commoner's living, fair-faced but otherwise unremarkable. No one questions him; he has a home, and he has friends. Shory couldn't be more grateful for his simple life.

And then the men that Shory calls friends learn why he works so hard to go unnoticed. Shory has a past, a notorious one. His past is fascinating to them, fascinating enough to make them forget that Shory ever had the rights of another human creature.

As Shory sinks deeper and deeper into the abuse at their hands, as his friends sink deeper into their depravities, this kind of cruelty can't be kept secret for long. Soon Shory learns that even the simple folk of Silver Forest cannot resist the temptations of a man in their midst who is conditioned to please, to obey. And Shory wonders if any one of them could muster a scrap of human decency and help him escape.