Eleven centuries ago, Prince Crimson Quartz grows up amidst the relics of past glories. The Crystal Empire, once the mightiest Power in North Amareica, now stagnates beside the rising Realm of Equestria to the south. A brilliant young stallion, Prince Crimson wants to avert this fate. Despised by his decadent family and unlikely to ever take the throne, the young scholar-prince searches ancient tomes and forgotten places for the power to restore the Crystal Empire to its ancient greatness.

Will he find his realm's salvation, or instead call up horrors from the darkest depths of spacetime? Can his friend, Princess Luna of Equestria, turn him from a ruinous course, or will she too be tainted by the touch of the Shadows?