Welcome to the fantasy, postapocalyptic world of untamed forests, mountains, and deserts, where symbiotic groups of humans and predator animals exist for survival.

Cat Hunters tribe, human-kind bonded with cat-kind, is made up of people who have psychic connections with the house and Hunter cats who live within their family. The small, domestic house cats help with tasks around the huts and in gardens, while the specially bred larger cats, Hunters, help their people hunt for food and serve to protect their families. The mightiest, most powerful, and most dangerous of all the cats – the tigers, lions, and other large cats – are still wild. Although they have agreed to be the powerfully protective and fiercest fighting force of the tribe, the Sentinels, they will only work with one especially gifted individual. This unique person, the Spirit, not only can link and communicate telepathically with the Sentinels and all the cats but is also endowed with mystical powers.

The Cat Hunters inhabit the large and lone landmass Ritigabid along with four other known tribes: Dog Hunters, Eagle Hunters, Bear Hunters, and Snake Hunters, all of whom have their Spirits and Sentinels. For centuries, each tribe has struggled to survive within their territories with limited resources. They usually lived in peace as was structured by rules and guidelines when the system of the Hunter tribes was established after the fall of a great technological civilization. The overall leadership of the land is overseen by the Council of Spirits, who work out disputes between the tribes amongst themselves. But this system is on the verge of toppling when another tribe, steeped in mysteries and secrets, comes out of the shadows to reveal a centuries-old plot. One or more of the Hunter tribes’ Spirits has been deceiving and manipulating human- and animal-kind so that they could be the supreme ruler of the land of Ritigabid.

Kilala, the newest Spirit of the Cat Hunters tribe, was chosen at her birth but was adopted and raised by her parents, who had no knowledge of her true identity. Immediately after she was officially recognized as the successor to the long-acting Spirit of the Cat Hunters, the elder Spirit, having lived far past her time, died and left Kilala without a mentor. Even with the help of her village’s Sentinels, the white tigers, she has a difficult journey ahead without a mentor to help her transition into her new, powerful, and vital role. Not only does she need to discover who she is as the Spirit of her tribe and master her mystical powers, but she is immediately confronted with even more challenges. She must reconcile with the revelation of a hidden Hunter tribe, discover the secrets of the enigmatic mists, learn about a mysterious entity, and stop a diabolical plan from destroying the Hunter tribe system.

As Kilala meets the other Spirits of the Hunters tribes, she is surprised to discover that the Council of Spirits is not the highest power in the land and that there is an even more powerful, mysterious entity. As she watches the interactions between the other Spirits, she quickly sees that even with the powers endowed to them, they still have the very human tendencies of jealousy, pettiness, and pride. While observations of her fellow Spirits lead her to believe they were who they said they were, she is quickly proven wrong. The one she thought wanted to be her friend was her enemy. The one she thought was her enemy was in love with her. The one she thought was the most honest of all still had secrets. And the one whose attitude was the haughtiest of them all was the one who was most deceived.

As she flounders about in how to find out who is being truthful and who is being deceitful, she relies on books that were left by the first Spirit of the Cat Hunters several hundreds of years earlier, volumes that had never been opened by the many Spirits that had come before her. As she unlocks deep mysteries and expands her powers more than any Spirit knew they could, she is instrumental in rescuing the cubs of the Cat and Bear Hunter Sentinels who had been kidnapped by their mysterious enemy, an opening gambit in the plan to topple the power structure of those Hunter tribes before they were attacked.

When Kilala discovers that the enemy has supporters throughout all the Hunter tribes, she warns the Spirits and Sentinels who will listen. When the action intensifies, and the enemy is revealed, Kilala and her tribe are joined by other tribes and their Spirits to work together in order to enact justice on the threat to their very existence. If they fail, the stability of the Hunter Tribe system and the balance of power of Ritigabid will be destroyed, and evil will rule with an iron hand.