The Snow Is Burning

The earth ran with rusty blood, forests crystallized into graveyards, and ancient caves were sealed forever by the hand of nature. The Hua Tribe, a matriarchal clan that followed the Stone-Nursing rites, lost its last shaman, the one who could speak with the gods, in the bitter cold of the apocalypse.

Their only guide was He, a baby girl whom their leader, Hua, had rescued at the edge of an avalanche. Her eyes were like snow-covered ground, with golden flames hidden in her irises. She could stir strange changes in the campfire and sense the poisonous wounds deep in the earth. The departed shaman had named her the “Wayfinder.”

Clutching this faint spark of hope, the tribe set out on a desperate migration south. Ahead lay unknown wilderness, hostile tribes, mutant beasts, and the rifts within themselves over tradition and faith. He grew in silence, and her eyes gradually came to reflect the paths of the stars, the language of plants, the principles of the lever... With an infant's intuition, she drew the route of their migration; with a priestess's authority, she brought scattered hearts together.

This is not one person's epic. It is the bloodline of a matriarchy flowing through utter desperation, an ancient pact of “Stone-Nursing” colliding with the new knowledge of “Star Patterns,” and the story of a civilization relighting its first spark on frozen soil with trembling hands.

They will prove that a tiny spark is enough to dispel the darkness, and that civilization's rebirth begins beneath our feet.