I Came from a Distant Glacial Age

Huo Lin has no surname. She is the sharpest sword in the empire and the last traitor to the Balkes family. In the Battle of Yingke Fort, she lost an arm and received a prosthetic made of tempered steel. After the war, she discovered that her father hadn't died at the hands of the barbarians: he had died because of the king's secret orders. Decades of war on the northern frontier had been nothing more than fuel to keep the royal family in power. In the eyes of the powerful, the soldiers who took arrows for her were worth less than warhorses. She doesn't want to be a hero. She only wants those who shouldn't have to kneel to stand up. She raises the eagle banner in the north and defies the entire empire.

Heinrich has no name. Dragged out of the lies of the Gota Snow Mountains, she was made the “messenger of God” by the Church, then made into a god. She recited the most hypocritical prayers and stained her hands with innocent blood, thinking she would rot away in a church, until she met the general who refused to kneel. Huo Lin was the only person she had ever met who wasn't a hypocrite. She was willing to become kindling for that fire. In front of Byron Cathedral, she told the faithful, “The Church is a lie.” Then, bound to the stake, she cried out through the flames, “Everything Huo Lin said is true!”

Edwin has no way back. He is Huo Lin's older brother, building walls around her with the law. When Huo Lin decides to smash the old world, he must choose: protect his family, or protect his sister? He casts Huo Lin out of the family and announces that the Balkes family will no longer serve the throne. Then, in secret, he conspires with his sister to drain the royal family's last drop of legitimacy with her blood. On the night Huo Lin storms Golden Broom City, he stands in the throne room and plunges a silver-steel pen into her heart. She smiles and says, “Thanks, brother.” He doesn't cry. This is their last strike together.