Life in the quiet village of Magen in rural Surrey is turned upside down when a new motorway bypass is proposed that will cut through ancient woodland.
Callum Kemble's decision to make a stand to protect this woodland sets off a chain of events that has major implications for the small village. Mysterious, unexplainable phenomena start happening, and the village is inundated with people trying to find an explanation for a glowing, sceptre-like object that suddenly appears close to a two-thousand-year-old yew tree growing out of a granite mound by the woodland.
Is it some type of weapon, or a portal key to another world? The military want to contain it and then study it; the scientists want to back-engineer it, and then there are the collectors of such antiquities that will do anything to get their hands on such artefacts for their own reasons.
None of them know where this is going to lead and just how much their lives would be changed forever, all started off by a small protest to protect an ancient woodland and a two-thousand-year-old yew tree.
