The severed Root lay in the snow where Minerva had fallen, green and broken and faintly smoking, and the frost crept across it from the broken end.
No Progeny stirred on the golden clouds. No Keeper stepped forward. Above, on their ring of floating thrones, the Immense Ones sat as still as the statues on the mountain's flanks, and not one of them spoke.
Only the snow moved!
And then, very slowly, it began to change!
It thickened first. The steady fall that had covered the Legacy since THE Long Night began grew heavier, and heavier still, flakes crowding the air until the far thrones blurred and the edge of the Plain vanished into white. Thicker than anyone on the mountain had ever seen it. Thicker than anyone in the Legacy had ever seen it!
Then the wind came!
