The story
Long ago, when the sky god still watched over the steppe, a banished power beneath the earth began to stir.
Cast down into the underworld for his envy, the lord of the dead never stopped looking for a way back. His creatures, the emegens, things of ice and hunger, now roam the steppe in his name. Camps fall silent overnight, people hide in the forests, and the weak of heart have started to listen to the voice from below.
One of those camps belonged to a boy. He survived the night it froze, followed a stag into the forest and grew up there in hiding, with nothing but his anger. Years later he walks back onto the steppe for revenge, and finds that revenge is only the beginning.
With a handful of friends, each carrying a gift of the old world, he frees the captured, gathers the scattered clans and sets out to stop a plan older than any of them.
The road leads from the steppe to the sky, and from the sky to the world below.