Ostara is a forsaken world, plunged into eternal winter at the murder of its goddess a thousand years ago. Some humans retreated into burrows deep within the ice sheets to survive, clustering in the ice caverns formed by hot springs; others drained dry their innate gift of magic to transform themselves for survival in the killing surface cold. For all mortals, life is an unforgiving struggle against the dark.
The MC is a skinshifter, one of the few of their kind to possess magic, and they’re determined to use their gifts to secure prosperity for their small, impoverished clan—even if it means venturing far from home to attend training school with the deepdwellers. Their teachers and classmates are hostile, from the xenophobic deepdwellers to the skinshifters from other clans playing their political games…but they finds an ally in a mysterious, beautiful fellow student cursed with a vision from a near-death experience.
The Goddess isn’t dead, just sleeping. When she wakes, spring will come, a spring that will usher in a paradise of unimaginable plenty even as it melts away every existing civilization on Ostara.
And it’s up to our intrepid protagonists to save what they can save from their doomed world.