“What price would you pay for freedom, I wonder—freedom from this monotony? I doubt gambling is all you’ll ever be content with, boy. Your true nature belies that, I think.” College freshman Christopher Remsen is forced to face the truth behind these words a mysterious figure tells him: the truth of his discontentment with the game. Graduating high school, going to college, getting a career to slave himself for the rest of his life. No matter what he does, he just can't break free from it all. That is, until he finds a black rose on his bed one day. That is, until he unwittingly helps the powerful spirit from an ancient universal war within the flower take over a beautiful woman he encounters. That is when he finally escapes the cycle and tastes the freedom he craves as he discovers a supernatural reality far removed from the one he knew. But freedom takes different forms and restraints, something he must learn as he races across the worlds—and against time— with friends and strangers to find a mythical springwater that will destroy the black rose that sustains the spirit. Otherwise the spirit will fulfill her original purpose: destroying his world.