A vanished ancient civilization connected habitable worlds with a network of portals. One such portal was discovered on Earth, and people poured into a new world that turned out to be uninhabited by intelligent life. Among them also went the hero of this book—a hereditary intellectual and archaeologist. But he isn’t looking for opportunities, like the other settlers, to get a better life than on Earth—he already had everything, and things were fine. What he’s interested in is the ancient culture and artifacts of the disappeared civilization (the “Gone Ones”), one of whose components was magic. But if researching the legacy of ancient magicians goes quite well for the hero, then finding a common language with other settlers—their leadership—and even with the girl who moved to Zaportalye with him turned out to be much more difficult: he’s simply too different in spirit.