In the heart of the Hollows, a land where all the trees have holes and none of their inhabitants are whole, Tuya tries to understand why her oppressors hate her. Yet, amidst their screams and shoves of contempt, she uncovers a power buried deep within her being—a power to shatter the mental chains that are used to tame the oppressed.

Using her newfound abilities, she dreams of soaring beyond the Hollows' grasp, seeking solace in faraway lands where she hopes to find a place where she belongs. To survive in this place of hatred, Tuya learns to use her gifts to make the pain of others smaller and to try to restore some of the harmony lost to the Hollows.

Yet, when the tyrant who rules over the Hollows lays claim to her, Tuya faces a fateful choice: to embrace the beautiful monster and attempt to mend a fractured society from within its rotten core or to defy the grasp of the most powerful conqueror in the world and seek refuge in the unknown. In a tale about traumatic wither and traumatic growth, of life and death, of joy and suffering, of love and hate, of dreaming and dreading, a girl unlike any other and exactly like every other must find light in the darkness, battling against oppression to carve a path of hope in a realm where there is no word for love and freedom is but a distant dream.

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