Three-Year Winter

Famine. Plague. Strange, unexplainable events. A winter that never ends. … Three years ago, winter came early. The first snow fell before the harvest was finished, and although the farmers cursed the weather and the nobles complained about lost taxes, nobody was particularly afraid. Winters had always been cruel in the northern kingdoms. The snow would melt eventually, the roads would reopen, and the fields would be green again by spring. Except spring never came. The following year was colder. Summer lasted only a few weeks, and the harvest failed across much of the continent. By the second winter, grain had become more valuable than silver, and villages that had survived for generations began abandoning their homes in search of warmer lands. The kingdoms assured their people that the seasons would return. Priests preached patience. Scholars promised that the weather was merely an unprecedented natural phenomenon. Then the third winter arrived. It has not stopped. Now the world lives beneath a sky of perpetual grey. Snow lies over fields that should be green, and rivers that once carried merchant ships are frozen solid. The forests are growing silent as animals disappear southward or die from the cold. In the countryside, people tear apart abandoned houses for firewood, while in the cities, hungry crowds gather outside the gates each morning, hoping the guards will let them in. As strange and unexplainable events spread across the land, many begin to believe the Gods have abandoned them.