A blizzard hits Iluk, forcing everybody to stay indoors while it runs its course. The twins, bored out of their minds, demand Dias entertain them with a story. Dias thus regales them with a tale from the war, a tale that—unbeknownst to the man himself—has become legend. It is an epic of battles and strategy, of good versus evil, and of a small, unassuming hamlet grown into the famed “Golden Lowlands” with more than a little help from Dias himself.