***Start of the First Draft...separate story to that of the chapters you may have read before this point***
Prelude
The sky was darkening. It had begun.
The Ever Winter, the free folk were calling it. Word had spread quickly across the realm, riding on the waves of bitter winds swept cold over grey-grass fields. They spoke in hushed voices within their old granite inns, sharing stories and rumors over horns of ale and mead.
As they talked, the skies drained grey as stone and the rain hardened into hail, and then snow. The crops shriveled in the frost while the farmers huddled by their roaring fires, cloaked in wool and furs. The lands froze under the dark grey cloud as it crept across the sky and the cities hoarded their provisions deep in their lower vaults and storehouses. The men died.
It came like a torrent of ice in the height of summer. Down from the frigid reaches of the far north it howled, blanketing the realm in snow. The drifts climbed up stone and wood, blanketing road, wall, and direction.
Provisions kept cities alive, while the water made them perish. Lakes, streams, springs, rivers, and ponds had all been frozen solid after the fifth night of the Ever Winter. Seawater was the only other option, but soon, the Magisters, the great scholars of the realm, declared that even the great salt sea would be covered in ice and begin to shiver with the realm.
Then came the ash. On a grey morning, the first flake trickled with the pearly white snow. It was a grim omen, a shadow amongst the white. More came. The Magisters imprisoned themselves in their studies high in frosted stone towers, reading scroll and lore book, until on the day that the ash fell hard as the snow, and tainted the white blanket grey, they appeared from their solitude. Their answer was more devastating than the Ever Winter itself. The gods were dead.
From the dawn of time, the gods had held sway over the seasons in their sacred halls high in the clouds. They changed spring to summer, summer to autumn, and autumn to winter. Except winter had stayed. For a year now, the Ever Winter ruled the realm, killing hundreds. Mothers would smother their newborn babes to save them from the harsh life, a life they couldn't even support.
Nobody knew how long the winter would last, or if it would ever end. They feared the worst.
They feared death.
They feared life.
Feel free to comment and VOTE! Or the Ever Winter shall take you too!
P.S. If you don't want it to, it doesn't have to take you. Free will ;)