Introduction: Scram and Owen never asked for more than this: a quiet outpost at the edge of the world, a life built from snow and stubbornness, an unspoken understanding neither of them dares to name.Former mercenary Roland Scramvyrn has spent years guarding Owen鈥檚 life, never telling him why. Owen, useless third son of the Astrophales, has spent just as long trying to give Scram the future he deserves, never telling him the cost.Then the riders come. Strange guests arrive. A child is born. And the world shifts.Something is wrong. Or maybe, for once, something is right. Somewhere in the vast machinery of reality, in the silent calculations of an unseen Engine, a variable has changed. An anomaly has been introduced. And Scram and Owen stand at the center of something that should never have happened鈥攕omething inevitable all the same....