After her mother’s death, Inés Suárez lives in Plasencia with her sister Asunción and her authoritarian grandfather. There, she meets Juan de Málaga, a merchant with whom she falls in love and marries after running away from the family home and travelling to Seville, a vibrant and prosperous city, gateway to the "New World."

After her journey through the jungle, Inés arrives in Cuzco exhausted and devastated to find out that Juan has died. Without anything or anyone tying her to the New World, Inés arranges an audience with Francisco Pizarro, Marquis of Peru, to ask him for a ticket back to Spain. But her desire to return will have to wait until the Carnival celebrations are over and there are boats available.

Christmas is coming to Cuzco, but it looks like there will be no time for peace and recollection: an Almagrist faction is plotting to rise up against the Pizarro regime and threatens to blow everything up. Meanwhile, Valdivia and De la Hoz dispute the right of conquest over Chile and challenge each other to see who gets there first.

Inés, Valdivia and the rest of the Spanish expedition finally part to Chile. But, in order to reach the ‘Promised Land,’ they will first have to cross the Atacama Desert, a vast, sandy terrain that threatens to consume all of their resistance: not only will they have to face the harshness of the land, but the threat of the Mapuches will also loom over them.

Six months have passed since the Spanish expedition led by Valdivia arrived in Chile and founded the city of Santiago of New Extremadura. Since then, Valdivia has been completely dedicated to the conquest of the country, while Inés spends her days alone and bored in the city except for when she is with Rodrigo de Quiroga, Valdivia’s officer and right-hand man.

Three months after Santiago was destroyed, poverty and famine seem to have taken their toll on the city’s inhabitants: the Promised Land turned out not to be what they were told. In the face of this desperate situation, a small group of soldiers who are dissatisfied with the project of conquest plots to rise up against Valdivia, who seems oblivious to the suffering of his own people.

Inés and Quiroga try to get married despite all the obstacles that Valdivia puts up for them. After the couple formalize their relationship, the Governor becomes extremely irascible and pours all his anger and frustration into the conquest of Arauco. So much so, that Valdivia proposes a crazy plan to complete it as soon as possible and thus satisfy his hunger for glory.