A STORM IS COMING. ARE YOU PREPARED? Men who possess magic have been branded outcasts, hunted nearly to extinction. Exiled to the remote corner of the west, they stir in silence, plotting revenge on those who betrayed them. Meanwhile, to the east, a wealthy lord's thirst for power outgrows his vast empire. His path leads to death and destruction, but for whom? And to the north, a seaside merchant dares to brave the mountains in the dead of winter. There, he discovers a darkness he cannot escape. "Trees with sickly white wood and brown splotches, their bark warped into sneering faces, wore long, wiry branches sharp as knives. The ground was uneven and filled with hidden marshes beneath the frost, trapping boots in sticky ponds of something that was not quite water. Roots tangled together to form clumps of slippery wood in which snakes slept and when they didn't, the roots shot up like small, twisted spears, jabbing at passersby. But there were no passersby here-not often, anyway. Not since The Desolation, a war on the border of Thundersong and Aslund, which brought ruin to a lush woodland and gave birth to the Sunken Swamps and the Threshlands and mutated the once-proud Kolomine Keep into a catacomb. An abandoned land; cursed, some said- empty, at any rate. Empty, save for at least one. A young man he was, tattered hood drawn over his head, sleeves pulled over his hands, ripped cloak fluttering just above the mud. He was muttering to himself, not loudly, though he could shout his words and be heard by none. He stepped over roots and under branches and around the bog puddles even as he appeared to pay no attention to his surroundings, as if he had been here before a hundred times, this place where no one had dwelled for a generation. A lone crow perched on a knife-branch, tiny talons wrapped around its wooden blade, watching the strange figure with two black eyes. The bird let out a guttural caw as the man passed and flew away. A grey haze hung in the sky, dimming the rising sun. It was late morning and he had been walking for some time. He had shed things as he walked: first, the sword in his hand; then the ring on his finger passed down from his father; and finally, his boots. His feet were black with mud and slashed up a dozen different ways each but it did not seem to affect his pace."