The Sacred Biomedical Church, which is a floating gothic mega city, is a place where death is not a final state, it is just properly engineered.
The grave surgeons of the Church mend the bodies of the dead with cybernetic organs, blessed marrow and living scripture, and bring the dead to life as framing Lazarus obedient Slaves. They call it salvation. The others refer to it by its name: mass corpse engineering disguised as miracle.
Elian Voss is a young grave-surgeon acolyte, who does not believe in miracles. He believes in fixing things. He finds some forbidden books on resurrection in a rare anatomical Bible, and like any obsessive, guilt ridden genius does, he violates all the laws the Church puts sacred, and illegally restores a legendary knight of the corpse pits to life.
Ser Gideon Lazarus wakes with a scream in a black iron coffin armor, which has grown into his flesh. He remembers dying. He recalls the visage of the woman he was in love with being vivisected on an altar in a cathedral. He recalls how he was forgotten centuries ago. He is alive again now, patched up with a dozen dead saints, and it is the poor trembling acolyte who somehow restored him that appears to care whether he remains a human being or not.
Dark Order of the Church sends Sister Veyra who is cold and surgical executionist, who had killed more heretics than she has recited rosary to take back their stolen property. However, as she stalks them over moonlit roofs and cemeteries of the dead, she starts to realize that there is something wrong about it: the monster is a knight, is a saint, he is a man who, in spite of everything, believes in mercy.
Meanwhile, Grand Cardinal Severin is a watcher in the tallest spire of the city. He has devoted half a century to the art of restoring the dead, of transforming warriors who died into puppets. Gideon was to be his master piece, a Frame so perfect as to attain to sainthood. Rather, it was stolen by some grave surgeon acolyte.
He smiles. His masterpiece will be returned to him. One way or another.
Death is not the end, whispers Elian. "It's just poorly engineered."
Gideon has a crimson visor in the dark. Then why then do I still seem like a dead man masquerading as alive?