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The thaw and the fragile alliance
The ice is drawing back. Freyalise has ended the long winter, revealing roads, stretches of land, and remnants that have been beyond the reach of the living for centuries. The people who survived can begin thinking about something other than enduring another season of snow. Kjeldor and Balduvia faced Lim-Dûl together. Darien and Lovisa joined their forces against an enemy who could turn the dead into soldiers. Their victory made cooperation possible, but it did not erase the differences between their peoples. Kjeldor still has its military order and defenses; Balduvia still has its own identity. Varchild has not given up her hostility toward the Balduvians. Her riders keep that conflict alive, and Lovisa demands her head. The enemy who once made an alliance necessary is no longer standing between them. Now the alliance must survive the ambitions of the people it was meant to protect.
Terisiare changes
Terisiare itself is changing. War, mining, the movement of glaciers, and the work of the viscerids have all altered the continent. As the climate changes, enormous areas will disappear beneath the water, leaving four great islands and many smaller ones. This is not a continent sinking in a single moment. The damage has accumulated over generations, and the melting ice is only part of the cause. Shores and routes that once seemed dependable can no longer be taken for granted. Communities emerging from the winter must learn to survive on land that will not remain as they remember it.
The missing ring
Twenty years after Lim-Dûl's defeat, Jaya Ballard returns to Jodah at the School of the Unseen in Lat-Nam. The archmage has withdrawn while the world around him continued to change. Jaya brings something that makes remaining apart impossible: the necromancer's severed hand. The finger that carried Mairsil's ring is missing. The ring was more than an ornament. A will remained within it, capable of reaching for a new bearer. Without the missing finger and its ring, an old victory has become an unfinished investigation. Jaya and Jodah search for whoever might have recovered it. Their journey carries them through Tresserhorn, Balduvia, Kjeld, and Krov, toward Soldev. Familiar places have changed, and the traces of the old enemy have not all disappeared with him.
What wakes beneath Soldev
In Soldev, Arcum Dagsson and the machinists are uncovering ancient devices. Arcum believes these discoveries can improve people's lives. Sorine Relicbane warns that the machines buried beneath the city may bring back the danger that earlier generations suffered. The Soldevi Adnates awaken Phyrexian machines through ritual sacrifice and dark offerings. Once active, the machines rouse others concealed in the caverns. They tear through Soldev, devastating the city and killing many of Arcum's followers. Arcum's beloved inventions have become the instruments of a catastrophe. His confidence cannot protect the people who trusted him. Those who survive must face both the destruction and the responsibility of having brought it into the daylight.
Jaya’s spark
The ring's danger reaches Jaya herself. The intertwined presence of Mairsil and Lim-Dûl possesses her through the ancient object. In Soldev, Jodah suffers a mortal wound to his throat. He turns to his mirror to heal himself, despite his fear of the spell Freyalise left within it. Then he recognizes what Jaya might become. She has the potential to be a planeswalker. The same mirror that helped end the Ice Age becomes the means of freeing her: Jodah shatters it over her head and ignites her spark. Jaya enters the Blind Eternities and escapes the possession. The ring remains unaccounted for. Her world has expanded beyond Dominaria, but the people she leaves behind still live among buried machines, unsettled borders, and ambitions that survived the winter. The path opened by Jodah and his companions will help lead toward Argive. Peace still requires work from people who once had little choice but to fight together. The thaw has given them a future. It has not decided what they will make of it.
