A warrior is never a former warrior. He lived for seventeen years in voluntary exile, hiding from people after a terrible family tragedy. But the time has come, and a new challenge forced Sergei Ushakov, a strong and tough opera, to return to the world. A childhood friend was monstrously murdered and a valuable collection was stolen from his apartment. A friend's granddaughter has disappeared. Someone opened the grave of Ushakov's wife. The killer, who is serving a life sentence, calmly walks around the city. Someone is relentlessly watching the opera's every move; an incomprehensible threat literally hangs in the air. And all this is just the beginning in the chain of crazy events swirling around him. In addition, the world has completely changed over the past years; it is very difficult for a hermit to get used to the new Moscow realities...