Bones of the Shroud-Elk

The Yul-Gorek was the guardian of the permafrost, a majestic beast with antlers of petrified ironwood that kept the lethal blizzards at bay. When Torvak, the village's ruthless timber baron, slaughters the beast to sell its legendary antlers to lowland elites, the winter descends with unnatural, howling fury. But the true horror is the Splinter-Blight. Those who shared in the profit or ate the meat find their joints stiffening. Wooden splinters push painfully from beneath their fingernails. Soon, their own ribs branch out, piercing their flesh to root them to the floorboards as living, conscious trees of agony. As the lethal blizzard worsens, desperate families begin chopping up their mutated, screaming relatives for firewood to survive the cold. The horrifying twist? Inhaling the smoke of the burning guilty spreads the curse to the innocent. Varnok, an exiled ice-cutter immune to the blight, realizes the terrifying truth. To break the cycle and save the uninfected children, he must extinguish every hearth in the settlement. Can he force the guilty to freeze in the pitch-black dark, or will the village burn itself into a forest of ash and bone?