I shall begin with that which is passionate and beautiful, as an old man is wont to do. Fire, who consumes and destroys even as she gives light and warmth, loveliest of the Elements. Once, she locked herself away, hidden in a land of snow and ice, fearing the power that burned within her. 's the folly: we brought her back.I've heard people say that the Forbidden City and the Elements are myths. My own grandchildren laugh at the stories my father told me, of an age when men lived in cities a thousand times the size of Eastpoint-by-the-blight or Silverfall, when they sailed the sky in ships made of metal and were masters of all they saw. Even my son considers the tales of Fire and the Second Sun or Wind and the City that Fell from the Sky to be nothing more than bedside stories or the ramblings of a senile old man. I fear that we have lost all we once were, as the Pact of the Elements fades from the memory of man, vanishing into the mists of the past. When I was but a boy, my great grandfather, lying on his deathbed, sat me down and looked hard into my eyes. He was a ferocious man who would never tell a lie, and he said to me, "Ezekiel, you listen well. Your father never held with the stories, and so now I'm telling you. Every one of them is true, sure as the sun and moon and ground beneath your feet. You mind your letters, and you keep those stories alive, or so help me I will come back and take it from your hide." I nodded solemnly; he has never yet proven himself to be a liar. So here I am, Ezekiel Masukawa, last of the true Scribes, in this two hundredth year since the Return of the Elements and the Fall of Man. I commit these truths to paper and ink, that they might be remembered and heeded in the days to come. We must never forget that we are not alone, that the Forbidden City still sits within a ring of stone and fire, shrouded in mist and guarded by air and lightning. They live in opposition to the natural order of things, waiting to reclaim the world they have lost. But I am getting ahead of myself...

Wind-Scarred tells a story of after the end, of a world that was once our own. Of people to whom even nature will bend, and the places mankind has grown. In a time of wormholes, secrets, and powers, where nothing is quite what it seems, shadowy forces hunt in twilight hours, while Elements dream their dark dreams.Ezra Hawkins is going to change the world. Although, honestly, there isn't that much world left to change. After the Great War that nearly destroyed the Earth, mankind has been reduced to a single city: Sanctuary. Hidden from the ravages of the world, the last scions of humanity have eked out their existence through hard work and ingenuity, managing survival, maybe even a little happiness. But Ezra Hawkins, last heir to the legacy of wormhole technology, will show them something that no human in over a thousand years has known: Hope.This is a story of science against magic, of people who can bend the elements to their will and the shadowy forces that police them. And most of all, Wind-Scarred tells the tale of a young man desperate to learn the true nature of the past, and of a planet that has its own ideas about the future.