Everyone knows the story of Hearth's Warming Eve. Everyone knows how six ponies brought the three tribes together and banished winter with the magic of friendship. But what if fear and hate had won instead, and created a society where winter is eight months of the year and earth ponies are little better than slaves. Millennia later, a dark lord plans to use that hate to power a foul magic. Can six new ponies, brought together by chance, find a way to end the winter, or will they be just a footnote to the end of the world?