The war was supposed to be over, but the fragile peace forged across the continent is built on frozen ground. As Chief Coalition Mediator, Ari Everhart thought his hardest trials were behind him, yet a terrifying new crisis shatters that illusion when a dormant wave of ancient hemomancy thaws beneath the northern permafrost to poison the municipal water supply. Alongside Melissa, whose body now bears the dangerous, glowing crimson mark of that very magic, Ari must journey into the high alpine wastes to confront a landscape of weeping slate and boiling blood.
Yet the broken weirs and corrupted rivers are only the beginning, and the events that unfold begin to make less and less sense as reality itself starts to fray. Within the upper echelons of power, deep fractures threaten to unravel the coalition from within, while hidden civilizations and forgotten entities stir in the shadows. Most unsettling of all is the waking presence entombed in the deep earth, an ancient force whose heartbeat grows louder with every passing day. To save the new world from total annihilation, Ari must learn to master the unpredictable chaos living within his own heart, even as the ice holding back the dark begins to fracture.
