A drowning man clutches at straws, a dying man clutches at any opportunity to survive. Alexander Eremeev, finding himself at the point where there is no way back, did not hesitate for a second when he was given a chance for a new life. True, they did not specify that it would begin somewhere in the Smolensk region, a turn of history and the intervention of evil sorcerers thrown back several centuries. Where meeting a ghoul, kikimora or goblin, encountering a bone monster at night or falling into a magical trap is easier than finding a porcini mushroom in the forest. And the “lucky one” will have to survive in the guise of a seventeen-year-old Russian, receiving along with a new body a “rich dowry” in the form of a pack of bloodthirsty enemies who dream of sending the young man to his forefathers. In the world of magicians, night monsters and powerful otherworldly strangers, the altar magician simply has no other choice: either he or him.