Imperial Year 2148. The war had ended, but the land did not know it yet.

Ostermark lay silent beneath a sky the color of old iron, its clouds swollen with the weight of another storm. Snow drifted across the battlefields like a shroud pulled over a corpse, softening the jagged ruin of war but hiding nothing. Spears jutted from the drifts like broken ribs. Shields lay half‑buried, their heraldry faded and scratched. The bodies beneath the snow were countless, though the land had grown too numb to mourn them.

For three years, the War of Ostermark Succession had torn the province apart. Brothers fought brothers, cousins fought cousins, and every noble house claimed a right to the throne. Now, at last, the banners had fallen, the armies had scattered, and the claimants lay dead or fled. But peace did not return. Instead came winter — early, merciless, and wrong.

The first storm had swept down from the Worlds Edge Mountains like a vengeful host, burying villages overnight. The second storm froze the Talabec’s upper reaches solid, trapping boats in ice thick enough to walk on. By the third storm, even the hardiest Ostermarker muttered prayers to gods they barely remembered.

And still the snow fell.

On a lonely road hundreds of leagues north of Mordheim, a rider pushed through the drifts. His horse was a gaunt, frost‑bitten creature, its breath steaming in the air like smoke from a dying fire. The rider wore a cloak of black wool, heavy with ice, and a hood that hid his face. A long, wrapped bundle hung from his saddle — too long to be a tool, too narrow to be a shield.

He rode without pause, without hesitation, as though the cold itself feared to touch him.

Behind him, the wind howled across the empty fields, carrying with it the faintest echo of voices. Not living voices. Not anymore.

The rider did not look back.

Ahead, the land sloped downward toward the Talabec valley. Smoke rose from a distant settlement — thin, wavering, as though the fire beneath it struggled to stay alive. The rider urged his horse onward, though the beast stumbled with exhaustion.

He had followed the trail for weeks.

Through ruined villages.

Across frozen rivers.

Past battlefields where the dead whispered in the snow.

Each step brought him closer to the source of the unnatural winter.

Each step brought him closer to the one he hunted.

As he crested a ridge, he paused. The wind shifted, carrying with it a scent he knew too well — the cold, metallic tang of death, old and restless. Beneath the snow, something stirred. Something that should not have been able to move.

The rider’s gloved hand tightened around the reins.

“Too late,” he murmured, his voice low and rough from disuse. “It has already begun.”

Far below, the smoke rising from the settlement flickered — then vanished, snuffed out as though by an unseen hand.

The rider lowered his hood, revealing a face carved by frost and grief. His eyes, dark and hollow, reflected the storm gathering above.

He nudged his horse forward.

The War of Ostermark Succession was over.

But the true war — the one fought in shadow and silence — had only just begun.