An unsigned telegram, a fog-choked Oxford boathouse, and a crate dragged up from Azorean depths bring Professor Mark Zamansky face to face with an impossible anchor, an iron relic etched with a centuries-old Oxford crest and symbols that should not coexist.

When the anchor is lowered into the Thames, it begins to tug at shadows, bodies, and time itself, binding Mark into the chorus of lost captains and cursed voyages stretching from Price Henry’s secret caravel to Ming admirals and Elizabethan privateers, until he must choose whether to become the anchor’s new proxy or help a team of Portuguese priests break a sea‑giant’s blood‑pact before Oxford, and his own soul, are dragged under.