From that point on, the seasons changed. The bounds of winter could not be controlled, nor could the hope of spring always break through. There was merely the time when the storms slumbered, and the time when they raged.

—The Time of Tempests

1

Sweat gathered along the back of Aurora’s neck as she followed her fellow storm hunters through the swaths of people to the growing settlement that edged the city of Pavan. The air hung heavy with impending rain, but that was not what made Aurora struggle to pull in a breath.

It was the souls.

They assailed her from every direction—they pulled at her from the earth, laying invisible tangles for her feet, and pressed at her from the air, prickling over her skin. Overlapping whispers clashed with louder bellows and pleas to form a cacophony that ground nearly all her thoughts to a stop. It was difficult to discern the difference between the crowd of living people around her and the swarm of spirits that came with them, but she knew it was not normal for this many unsettled souls to gather in one place.

Either a great many people had died here in recent weeks, or these souls had followed their surviving loved ones here after they fled their destroyed homes as remnants. Perhaps it was a combination of the two.

The remnant camp clung to the exterior walls of the city of Pavan like a wounded arm bandaged close to the body. This place felt wounded too. It was in the air, in the earth, in the creeping puddles of water that made mud of the places where people had done their best to create homes from whatever they could salvage. Aurora felt the spirits of the dead most clearly, but in the last few weeks her ability to sense living souls had grown as well. The desolation here had a taste, a bitterness that she did not even have to search for. It was there every time she opened her mouth to breathe.

People had made tents and lean-tos from whatever materials they could scavenge. Ripped and patched blankets passed for roofs in places, while mismatched pieces of wood, tied together with string or torn fabric, were the nearest thing to walls. Most hadn’t bothered with walls, opting instead to focus on sheltering themselves from the sky as much as possible, but Aurora knew with certainty that none of these structures would hold up in a storm. In fact, she had the feeling that this little community had been rebuilt on its own bones more than a few times. There was more despair in this place than any one patch of land should ever lay claim to; that it was in a place she used to call home shredded something inside her.

“Roar?”