The Orchard at World's End

Every winter, a mountain village burns an orchard tree to keep the glacier from reaching its walls. Failed surveyor Orin Vale finds the old records tell the opposite story: the roots have been holding the ice back all along. With a frozen valley, a reluctant council, and a strange new way to graft living defenses into the earth, Orin has to grow an orchard faster than the glacier can move. A slow-build crafting fantasy about food, shelter, and the cost of inheriting a bad rule.