A writer in 1930s Moscow has his work banned and is expelled from the official union, leaving him without income. He then writes a novel about a mysterious dark visitor and gradually starts confusing his real life with the story.

The history of the confrontation between two worlds: the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Ural Parma, the ancient Perm lands inhabited by pagans. Here heroes and ghosts, princes and shamans, Voguls and Muscovites will clash. At the center of the conflict of civilizations is the fate of the Russian prince Mikhail, who fell in love with the young Tiche, a witch-lamia capable of taking on the form of a lynx. Passion for the pagan and fidelity to forbidden love, a campaign against the Voguls, bloody battles and a short peace, the battle between Muscovy and Parma, the hero will face trials in which it is not so terrible to part with life as to commit treason.

Medical student Aglaya Streltsova gives herself a cosmetic injection the night before her wedding, resulting in her death from anaphylactic shock. On Christmas night, she is resurrected in a coffin and miraculously gets out of it. In a cafe at a gas station, the girl runs into her classmate Savich. Trying to get back into university, the future pathologist writes a scientific study on the resurrection of the dead. Helping the girl return to the world of the living, Savich simultaneously makes her the object of his research. To Aglaya's surprise, none of her loved ones are happy about her return, including her fiancé, who is dating someone else.