More fleshstalkers breached the mountain pass—the stench reached our noses as the first scream sounded. Something about the breeze told me that the rest of the world was quaking, too. Surely we are not the only ones to endure these beasts... When wind carried the smell of blood back to the delta, my mind shot to the years prior. The frigid air that swept through the mountains. The lines of smoke, billowing from bonfires on the horizon. And then the disappearance of those lines as each outpost was demolished by the ice spawn... The bearkin bodies, stacked higher than the peat harvest.