In the remote northern town of Forzen, winter never ends. When eighteen-year-old Elara returns to her birthplace after her mother's mysterious death, she discovers the town's inhabitants are slowly freezing—from the inside out. Frozen in body yet conscious in mind, they linger between life and death, remembering everything.
As Elara investigates, she uncovers an ancient pact made generations ago: the town's warmth was traded for the immortality of memory. Now the debt has come due, and only she—daughter of the woman who broke the covenant—can reverse it. But thawing Forzen means freeing the dead, and some things are better left frozen.