Germany, 1659: When a dying boy is pulled from the river with a mark crudely tattooed on his shoulder, hangman Jakob Kuisl is called upon to investigate whether witchcraft is at play in his small Bavarian town. Whispers and dark memories of witch trials and the women burned at stake just seventy years earlier still haunt the streets of Schongau. When more children disappear and an orphan boy is found dead, marked by the same tattoo, the mounting hysteria...

In 1666, Magdalena, the hangman's daughter and her physician husband arrive at Andechs Abbey where they, along with Jakob Kuisl, the hangman of Schongau, set out to find the mysterious Brother Virgilius, a monk, watchmaker and inventor, who disappeared after creating an eerie automata