News that Madeleine Heron and her husband Ishkode Mikom have gone missing in Montana sees Eris, his daughter Ursa, Winter, and Ronja on a journey north to find answers. Winter's distraction at learning he's about to become a dad makes things difficult for him when he begins seeing horrifying visions of a dead infant in his dreams, and the more time Eris spends with Ursa, the more evident his feelings for her mother Madeleine become to Ronja. Back in Colorado, a strange and terrifying menace has decided that something in the absent Ursa's bedroom in the home she shares with her parents is worth his nightly attention, and the retired detective Wendell Forte, Winter's friend, is asked by Eris to have a look into the situation while the house is empty. Meanwhile, in trying to solve the mystery of the couple's disappearance, Winter and Ronja stumble across a helicopter crash and attempt to help the survivor, a deaf man whose hands suffer third degree burns. A wild series of circumstances connect those responsible for the crash to one of the missing indigenous women Madeleine and Mikom traveled to Montana to remind legislators about, and a rogue member from a nearby religious colony may hold the answers all of them need.