On her 18th birthday, Constanze encounters a highly guarded secret. She discovers in amazement that she has six brothers, who have been transformed into snow-white swans by a careless word from their father on the day of Constanze's birth. Constanze is stunned when suddenly the six swans appear. They explain to her sister that only she alone can curse the curse: for six years Constanze could not speak a single word and has to sew shirts made of stinging nettles. The shirts will be able to turn the swans back into people.

Architect Alexander Beck has just won an architecture prize. He wants to modernize GDR building blocks in Thuringia. Alex travels to the heart of rural Eastern Germany where he grew up and where people remember him as Alex from the Free German Youth, a pro-GDR youth organization.

Berlin students Ben, Jonas, Leo, Ozzi and Sophie are on a class trip to "boring" Hildesheim. Their schedule includes visiting the medieval cathedral and witnessing a complete solar eclipse, but destiny intervenes… A bomb goes off at the cathedral and the students are evacuated by the police, only to find themselves in the clutches of an occult secret society calling themselves the Lunaris Cult, who aim to use an ancient pagan artifact, the Irminsul, to harness the vital force of their teenage captives and use it for their own purposes on the eclipse. The evil cultists are after immortality and divine power, and are even prepared to sacrifice the friends' lives. Ben and his gang manage to escape. Chased from one danger to the next, the cultists pursue them, closing in on them more and more. The fanatics have it all planned out, it seems, leaving nothing to chance. They disable the cell phone networks and satellite connections, leaving the friends to fend for themselves...