Five years after the assault on New Hope, the town has grown and prospered. The psychic abilities awakened by the Red Scourge have been studied and honed. Preeminent among her peers, Rina Hampton realizes the threat from their former foe hasn't gone away. It has simmered and grown stronger. From time to time she surreptitiously spies on Silas Barringer, the architect of the first invasion. On one such occasion, she discovers that a spring incursion is in the planning stage. The plot is to take over New Hope and eliminate every resident, down to the last child.

Silas Barringer has been busy assembling a fighting force to complete the mission that failed five years before. He's cemented his power by using his psychic skills to suppress the psychic abilities of the citizens of Roland Park. When the rapid growth of the settlement forces him to conclude he can't do it alone, he decides to share a portion of those powers with a group of hand-picked men to assist in controlling the Roland Park population. When a freak mid-autumn snowstorm knocks out their water supply, Barringer is forced to move up the timetable.

Fearing for her five-year-old daughter Gwen and for the town she has grown to love, Rina alerts town officials to the impending attack.

What does the future hold? Is this the beginning? Or is it the beginning of the end?