The trip was supposed to be simple: a few weeks sailing to deliver family spices to a new buyer, a quick vacation, and back to the plantation. One mysterious, and coveted, box turned Cold Snap's chance to prove himself into a desperate struggle to survive on the wild seas at the mercy of a captain that sailors feared to whisper of, if they even believed he existed.

Others want that box, and the only thing keeping Snap and his friend alive is a ship so unnatural it had to be created by demons. Everything he thought he knew about the world's past is shattered in a game of cat and mouse to see who cracks the box's mystery first.

Unable to back out, and finding himself not eager to do so anyway, Snap throws his lot in with the peculiar Captain Gideon, who harbors more than a few secrets about his ship and himself.