The world already ended. No one can say for sure when or why. While the tongues of the rumormongers are sopping with stories of plague, the inhabitants of Old City try to ignore them. But everyone can plainly see a little less greenery outside every day. It's bleak. Constant. And depressing.

Two gravediggers, Red and Sik, love it. Sure, everyone is dying at a stable pace, but it's a profitable pace. And does a corpse really need the money it's buried with? For years they had the run of it: graveyards, crypts, catacombs. They knew all the angles and spent gloomy midnights looking for their livelihood amongst the dead. Then came the Executioners, an organization tasked with corpse interment, that claimed certain 'cursed' bodies had to be exhumed and sealed away for the public's safety. Was it true? Red never believed it.

Now returning home from a successful dig, he and Sik are itching to sell off their precious, plundered offerings and live a lazy life. Instead, they are met with a proclamation from the government that grants the Executioners nigh-unlimited power. Red conceives of a dangerous plan to set out immediately on another journey, risking winter's brutal reign over the wilderness, in order to stay ahead of them.

In an adventure that devolves into a moribund fight for survival, Red and Sik discover that profit isn't always painless, fun, or even important. Confronted by a looming ignorance about the world around them and their Executioner rivals, these partners-in-digging must learn how to pick through a world alive with death.