An ice age caused by greed for magic . . . A girl on a dangerous expedition . . . And a brooding prince she despises. At the dawn of an ice age, the Stelarian army marches far north in search of thawed, habitable land. As a conscripted soldier, eighteen-year-old Aurora has two options: carry out her sentence traversing a frozen wasteland, or die a traitor. But her mother, plagued by an illness linked to the freeze, has little time left to live. Determined to return home, Aurora chooses the riskier option: desertion. As Aurora gets nearer to escape, she also finds herself closer to the general, Ezra, who can either doom her or save her. But love is a luxury she can't afford in a deadly game of survival. On the day she plans to desert the army, enemy soldiers attack, sparking an unknown magic within Aurora. Enemy Queen Cressida of Alderfell covets that power, seeking someone to unearth dark magic long ago sealed away. A magic that, according to the queen, can heal Aurora's mother––if Aurora agrees to break the seal. But Aurora discovers that the dark magic leeches warmth from the world itself––and has been doing so for centuries. Aurora must choose: lend her power to the queen and plunge their world deeper into an ice age, dooming them all, or let her mother die.