The Silhouetted Pale

On the continent of Tolna-Karcag, death leaves behind something far colder than rotting flesh. When soldiers fall beneath photolytic shellfire, their dying agony stains the reactive atmosphere, leaving upright, pitch-black silhouettes that drain warmth from the frozen earth and petrify entire valleys into silent stone. Dorottya Illyési is an incinerator-herald, wielding a heavy brass thermite lance to vaporize these uncanny shadow-hulls before the trench front freezes solid. But as three coal-starved continental leagues clash over dwindling fuel reserves, Dorottya uncovers an atrocity behind her own line: her army's marshals are systematically executing captured enemy battalions to erect freezing defensive walls of shadow-corpses and farm expendable phantoms. Trapped between an enemy counter-offensive and her high command's monstrous industrial slaughter, Dorottya must turn her lance against her own army's depot before the creeping frost swallows every living breath.