Sami is a land of nothing but snow and ice at the far north of Columbia. People from the south call it a land of barbarians, but the Sami live by following nature and fate rather than civilization. It's a place where shamans read the 'will of Sami' from the cryptic script that surfaces on trees, and so avert disaster.

The young Columbian explorer Magallan learns that the mentor she reveres, Supervisor Miriam of Rhine Lab's Scientific Survey Department, has gone missing along with her entire expedition while surveying the 'endless icefield.' But of all times, Ursus has sealed off every route to the icefield.

So Magallan decides to enter the icefield by crossing through Sami. But along that road, she comes face to face with the 'witch' that Ursus so dreaded.

The kindly guide Ursus assigned turned out to be an informant

At the Ursus border, the courier Ivan checks Magallan's papers. Though he says all icefield expeditions have been canceled this year, upon hearing her plight he offers to accompany her himself. On the surface, he's the most courteous of men.

But out of Magallan's sight, Ivan reports to someone in Ursine—he's passed along the Columbian's coordinates and orders her kept under watch. Every Sami tale he tells is about nothing but 'savages' and 'witches.' He claims that vengeful spirits wandering the border isolate Ursus soldiers in blizzards and kill them.

At the Ancient Tree outpost, Ivan stepped out saying he'd go check on the blizzard—and never came back.

And then a blizzard approaches the outpost, as if someone were commanding it. The one who led that blizzard was none other than Magallan's icefield best friend, Santalla—the Sami shaman who commands blizzards, whom Magallan calls 'Sister Simone.'

The witch Ursus spoke of was her sister all along. Since Santalla, being Sami, can open the way to the icefield, the two set off together.

A mountain where you must hold moss under your tongue to survive

As they enter the Winterthus Mountains, Magallan begins to hear her mentor's voice calling, 'Magallan…' Just as she moves to run toward it in delight, someone clamps a hand over her mouth.

It was Typhon, the Sarkaz hunter with a black bow—a child raised in the cave of the Cyclops Arges. Typhon tells her the voice is a hallucination, the calling of the 'Calamity.' If you hold moss under your tongue, he says, that noise will vanish.

Typhon joins as their guide, and the three encounter Sami warriors guarding the Northern Front. Santalla even invokes her former standing as a shaman to ask for passage, but the warriors won't budge. Santalla, it turns out, is an exile who was nearly made High Priest but abandoned the duty and left.

Frustrated, Magallan blurts out an explanation in a loud voice—and in that instant the warriors' faces turn grim. She has brought with her an omen of the Calamity.

You fool, run! You've just brought an omen of the Calamity down on us.

— Typhon

The shadow she was told never to touch—she finally touched it

Fleeing along a side path Typhon knows, the three reach a tribe in the forestlands. As it happens, this tribe too had received a revelation from Sami and was preparing to migrate. Santalla deciphers their genealogy, which not even the tribe's own people can read.

That night Magallan is tormented by a nightmare in which she becomes a hunted beast. When she wakes, a huge shadow—part human, part tree—is silently pacing the room. A shadow that shows up in no photograph, visible only to Magallan's eyes.

Typhon says it's just a shadow, and that to overcome fear she should touch it herself. Surviving despite the fear is the hardest thing of all, he tells her—and Magallan is already doing exactly that.

When Magallan stretches out a trembling hand and puts it into the shadow, she truly feels nothing at all. She gives the shadow a name: 'Mr. Solitude.'

The next morning, the tribe's awakening ritual is held. Thanks to Santalla's decipherment, the ritual succeeds—

The tribe's great tree uproots itself and rises, beginning to walk southward together with the tribe.

The chatty guide they met in the forest was an apprentice shaman

The party enters the Primeval Forest, said to be the heart of Sami. There they meet Oakcup—a talkative apprentice shaman whose master, a High Priest, left her in the forest telling her to 'grasp the will of Sami.' Oakcup volunteers to be their guide and joins them.

That night Magallan dreams again. This time a pure-white Hornbeest sleeps soundly at her side—a strangely wistful dream.

The next day the party finds a mother Rock Hornbeest tainted by a Demon, along with her calf. The mother is already beyond saving. Oakcup sings a Sami funeral hymn to lay her to rest, and takes in the orphaned calf, resolving to wait for her master. Santalla asks Oakcup to tell her master that Ursus's 'Blackmark' is entangled in all of this.

A brother and sister returned home—one of them lying upon a boat

Coming out of the forest and reaching the marshland tribe, Santalla receives an unexpected request: to examine the bodies of the warriors who have returned. Among them was the elder brother of Gitano, the Rhodes Island fortune-teller. Having foreseen her brother's death and come home, Gitano was being called by her old name, 'Ragna.'

Years ago, during a disaster of snow, the siblings chose opposite paths. Her brother went to the Northern Front to try to stop the disaster, while Gitano led the people south to safety. Over that, the two turned their weapons on each other and never met again.

Santalla finds black blood in the bodies—the taint of a Demon. She realizes too late that the water-burial rite, which sinks these bodies into the water, could be dangerous. But the funeral has already begun.

Gitano divines whether the dead wish for a funeral. Most answer yes, but one alone—her brother—remains silent to the end.

Brother, why is it that you will not answer me?

— Gitano

As the funeral proceeds, the taint of warriors long accumulated in the marsh awakens and takes physical form. Typhon raises his bow to block the way, and Santalla freezes the marsh solid to buy time.

Just then Eikthyrnir, who received Gitano's distress signal, appears leading the warriors of the Treescar tribe. The most authoritative Northern warrior in all of Sami, he scatters the shadows of the warriors—now transformed beyond recognition—with a single swing of his hammer.

To the tribe about to retreat south, Eikthyrnir declares that Sami has no need to flee. Fear itself becomes the breeding ground of the Demon, he says, so they must overcome that fear and stand firm against the Calamity.

The client waiting for Typhon was his master Arges himself

The party at last reaches Chapart, the southernmost city of Sami—a tourist city covered in steel and concrete, where Columbian corporations have set up their offices. Here Santalla goes on ahead to attend to her own business.

The client who had been waiting for Typhon in Chapart was, astonishingly, the Cyclops Arges—that is, the adoptive father who raised Typhon. Arges, who foresees the future, hands Typhon a box and asks him to deliver it to Rhine Lab.

The box belonged to Supervisor Miriam. Arges recounts that he entered the icefield together with Miriam's expedition, encountered a Demon, and that only he and Miriam survived. Miriam then ventured alone into the deeper reaches of the icefield.

Inside the box was a single flower with neither color nor roots. But the moment Rhine Lab's researchers open the box, the flower stains the entire lab with an invisible color. The Calamity—Anskotarnir, which means 'enemy' in the Sami tongue—has opened its eyes.

Typhon immediately reseals the flower and holds it back. Only then does Magallan recall the last words of her mentor that she had heard as a hallucination: 'If the box is opened, Anskotarnir will take notice.' Though it had already been opened.

The witch who returns into the blizzard

The researchers are giddy over their new discovery, but Typhon quietly warns Magallan: Arges's prophecies always end in misery, and if anything happens, she must come find him.

Meanwhile, Santalla had captured and was interrogating an Ursus spy who had infiltrated Sami. The man confesses that 'Blackmark' is a guardsman of the Ursus emperor who lost his nation—one wholly consumed by a Demon. He still defiles the land of Sami to this day, yet no living soul knows where he is.

We are the very fangs of Sami that bite down on the Demon's footprints. And you… you aren't even worthy of being the 'enemy.'

— Santalla

Having finished with the Ursus man, Santalla once again calls to mind her own mission—the tainted land of Sami, and the blizzards of the icefield beyond it.

Magallan never did come to understand why people must clash when they could cooperate instead. Even so, in this land where words don't reach, there were friends who reached out a hand to her. Somewhere in the icefield her mentor still remains, and the journey of searching is not yet over—so Magallan turns once more toward the blizzard.