While the Dark Remains (The Winter Dark, #1)

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

I have often thought it strange that the three peoples who share this peninsula have such wildly different beliefs about the First Ones, the original twelve beings to inhabit the world. The Iljaria, indeed, claim them as their ancestors, the beginnings of their power, and refer to them as Lords instead of gods. They believe that if they are faithful to their traditions and their people, that if they nourish and grow their power, they themselves will become immortal after death and join the ranks of the First Ones. If they are not, they will be reborn powerless. Damned. Skaandan. The Daerosians don’t believe in the First Ones at all. They believe in nothing, no one, and hold that the world knit itself together, and will one day likewise tear itself apart. They scoff at the idea of life after death, resigned to their assertion that there is only emptiness. Darkness. Nonexistence. But Skaandans revere the First Ones as gods. We build temples and shrines and write books of truths and prayers. We fight wars in the gods’ names, and we believe that if we are devout enough, they will reward us with eternal paradise after death. If not, we are damned to 65dwell outside the gates of paradise, our backs bent with eternal labor, tormented and ashamed. Not for the first time, I think that none of us have got it quite right.