In the summer of 1918, a seventeen-year-old Lauchlan Huntly has just graduated from his music conservatory and is in the midst of a desperate flight. He flees his home in Warrich to wander the western wastelands, where he meets the feral Bastet. The pair are fast friends and partners in crime, and together they survive the wastelands by picking odd jobs and scavenging.
When out on a scavenging mission, they come across a man half-dead in the sand sea and offer him a ride to safety out of the harsh environment. The man insists on being returned to an ancient abandoned temple. However, Lauchlan learns too late that the temple has a gruesome and brutal history, and Bastet has now become intertwined with the very forces that gave the temple its fearsome name.