The old solar calendar collapsed when the sun died. Four broken seasons now partition the year — each an epoch of suffering measured not in months but in how many of your kin are still breathing when it ends.
The Broken Seasons
The sun's death did not merely darken the sky — it shattered the rhythm of the year. The old calendar's twelve months collapsed into four sprawling, unequal seasons whose character is felt rather than measured. No one knows why the seasons still change at all without the sun, but they do, with a grinding inevitability.
The White Dark (120 days)
The longest and cruelest season. The diffuse daylight dims to almost nothing, the temperature drops to lethal extremes, and the dead are most active. Travel is nearly suicidal. This is when the Compact's hearths matter most — and when tithes are collected with the most ruthlessness, because refusal means freezing.
The Iron Frost (90 days)
Still frozen, still dark, but the light strengthens slightly and the dead grow sluggish. Trade routes reopen cautiously. The Long March Caravan does most of its business during the Iron Frost. It is a season of grim commerce — the economy of survival.
The Grey Thaw (45 days)
A brief, deceptive reprieve. Surface ice melts into black mud, fog blankets the lowlands, and the Ashen Mire becomes impassable. The air feels almost warm. Peasants emerge to tend cold-soil root gardens. Hope flickers — and is always extinguished when the Long Black arrives.
The Long Black (110 days)
The light dims again, though not as deeply as the White Dark. What makes the Long Black dreaded is not the cold — it is the silence. The dead do not walk; they wait. Animals disappear. Sound carries strangely. The Ashbound Covenant holds its gravemoots during the Long Black, speaking to the dead who are, for once, listening.