When a young vampire learns she's an Exemplar, the one denizen of Earth who can usher her world into a new reality, she'll need every skill she can get.

Marianna Rojas is used to doing things the hard way. Sold to a vampire cartel at a young age so her starving family could eat, she was shocked to discover that she's an Exemplar: one of thirty emissaries tasked with acclimating Earth to being part of a new world, Kirios, at the behest of a mysterious, godlike force.

Accompanied by her faithful companion-the prim, pragmatic dragon Saia-Marianna has leveled up and fought every monster in her path. And when she saves the human child Felix from a bear, that path starts to look a little less lonely.

Marianna is relying on her Mask and the skills it contains to help her through the change the Grand Spell is sure to bring. Deep in her soul space, safe in the halls of her own mind, she meets the Tsu-gi hybrid Shadow, last seen a world away on Ish Vimza. Her Mask requires her to pass a mysterious test if she's to earn even a fraction of Shadow's power-and he'll be the judge of whether or not she's passed.

Flush with magic, Marianna is more powerful than she's ever been, either as a human or a vampire. But if she's to survive-and return Felix to his own people-she'll have to master an unfamiliar landscape and earn the skills of her Mask . . .