Where frost bears witness, and blood remembers the old songs…

Castle Svarthall was barely visible, shrouded beneath the fury of the blizzard.

They had marched for days, surviving on what little dried food and magic crystals they had stowed. Without those crystals, the legion would’ve perished long ago; they provided warmth and a means to melt ice into drinking water. Still, their numbers had thinned. Ambushes by the Howdûn were relentless—raiders emerging from ice caves, frozen tundra, and, according to whispered fears, sometimes even from thin air.

General Lares had left the capitol at the zenith of summer, under honeyed words and twin golden suns. He was a gifted orator, commander of the Red Ocean fleet, and a seasoned strategist. Officially, the legion had been dispatched to bring the Howdûn tribes into the Imperial fold—warriors forged in hardship, ideal recruits for the empire’s war machine.

But the true mission, delivered in secret by the Ascendant Council, was far more perilous: the acquisition of the Ever-Burning Flame, an ancient and jealously guarded power of the native tribes. Intelligence agents had died to confirm that Castle Svarthall was built atop the very crystal network that fueled it. And so, the march began…

Read the full tale and uncover the full ice-wreathed battle in the Scriptorium →

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