A hand, calloused and strong as weathered oak, clamps onto Naci's shoulder. Gani doesn't pull; she wrenches. Naci, stumbles sideways with an undignified yelp, torn from Horohan's embrace.

"Lovey-dovey time," Gani announces, her voice a saw scraping bone, "is over." Before Naci can regain her balance, Gani's other hand shoots out, not with the blade, but with the flat, punishing palm of a mother who has waited too long. It connects with Naci's upper arm – a sharp, stinging crack that echoes like a whip in the sudden silence.

Horohan instinctively steps forward, a protest forming, but Gani is already a whirlwind of furs and fury. A fist thumps against Naci's ribs. A boot, surprisingly swift, hooks behind Naci's ankle. The mighty Khan of Tepr, who faced down imperial bureaucrats and pirate lords, staggers, genuinely off-balance, eyes wide with shock more than pain.

"Where in the Sky's frozen hells have you been?" Gani snarls, punctuating each word with another sharp jab, this time to Naci's shoulder. "Gallivanting across the empire while your mother cleans up your messes and your wife holds the wolves at bay?" She grabs the front of Naci's grimy leather tunic, hauling her close. The fury in Gani's eyes is volcanic, but beneath it glints a desperate, almost feral relief. "You left with four warriors! Where are they?" She gives Naci a hard shake.

Naci, normally a tempest in human form, is momentarily overwhelmed by the sheer, undiluted force of maternal wrath. She tries to bat Gani's hands away, but it's like trying to deflect a rockslide. "Mother! Enough! By the Sky—!"

"Enough?" Gani barks a laugh devoid of humor. "I'll decide when it's enough! Explain! Now! Where are they?" She punctuates the question with a final, sharp thump to Naci's chest that forces the air from her lungs in a gasp.

Naci shoves back, finally finding her footing and her voice, though it's roughened by exertion and emotion. "They are gaining time!" she snaps, wiping a smear of blood from her lip where Gani's knuckle had grazed it. "Right now! While you're beating your Khan! They're buying us the hours we need to move this entire camp!" She gestures wildly at the gathered people, the herds, the vulnerable sprawl of the Nedai settlement.

Horohan steps smoothly between them, a cool blade parting hot air. Her voice is calm, but carries the weight of command. "Chieftain-Mother," she addresses Gani, her gaze steady. "Is it not the sacred duty of the subject? To stand between the Khan and the storm? To risk life for the hearth?" She doesn't flinch from Gani's blazing stare.

Gani's gaze snaps from Horohan to Naci. Naci's fierce expression fractures. The exhaustion, the grief she'd held at bay crashes through. Her shoulders slump, just for an instant. "Kalez. She fell," she glances towards Fol, who has stood motionless as a statue throughout the confrontation. His face is rigid. A muscle leaps in his jaw, and his knuckles are white where they grip his bow. He stares at a point on the frozen ground, blinking rapidly, refusing to let the tears pooling in his eyes fall.

A choked sob cuts through the heavy air. On the periphery of the crowd, Kalez's parents stand huddled together, their faces ravaged. Her mother clutches a worn shawl to her mouth; her father stares blankly ahead, shoulders shaking with silent tremors. A little further are Kalez's siblings and cousins, shocked too.

Naci pushes past Gani, not roughly, but with a sudden, focused purpose. The weight of leadership settles back onto her like armor. She strides towards Kalez's parents, the crowd parting silently before her. From within her tunic, she pulls a token: a smooth river stone, dark grey streaked with quartz.

She stops before the grieving couple. The grandeur of the Eagle-Bonded is gone; here stands only a weary leader bearing terrible news. She takes the mother's trembling hand and places the cool stone into her palm, closing the woman's fingers over it with her own.

"She was a great warrior," Naci says, her voice low but carrying clearly in the frozen silence. "She stayed true to herself until the very end…" Her own voice catches, just for a heartbeat. She clears her throat. "She said 'we fight with honor. We protect the innocent. And we die with our souls intact.' She died a warrior of Tepr…" She pauses, the weight of it almost crushing. "She is now riding in the free wind."

The mother's sob breaks free. She clutches the stone to her chest, folding over it. The father places a shaking hand on his wife's back, his own tears finally spilling over, tracing paths through the grime on his weathered cheeks. He looks at Naci, not with blame, but with a profound, broken gratitude, and nods once, unable to speak.

The raw grief hanging over Kalez's parents is a shroud Naci carries as she turns away. She strides back towards the heart of the storm – her mother, simmering like banked coals, and her father, a stoic mountain weathering the emotional avalanche.

Gani's eyes, still smoldering from the confrontation and the execution, track Naci's approach. A muscle ticks in her jaw, a precursor to another volcanic eruption. But Naci doesn't stop for her. She walks past Gani, her boots crunching deliberately on the frozen earth stained by Batu's blood. She stops directly in front of Tseren, forcing him to meet her gaze.

The air crackles. It's not the heat of Gani's fury, but the brittle cold of a glacier meeting steel. Naci stares at her father, her amber eyes hard as flint, stripped bare of the fleeting warmth she'd shown Horohan. Contempt, cold and sharp, radiates from her like winter mist. Tseren meets it head-on. His face, usually a map of patient endurance, is carved granite. His deep-set eyes hold no apology, only a weary, fathomless depth of knowing.

"You," Naci states, the single word dropping like a stone into a silent well. "I know. Everything." Her voice is low, devoid of inflection, yet it carries the weight of a landslide.

Tseren doesn't flinch. He holds her gaze, the silence stretching taut. Then, a slow, deliberate nod. "I wanted you to know," he rumbles, his voice the scrape of stone on stone.

A harsh, humorless bark escapes Naci's lips. It's a sound devoid of mirth, sharp as a cracking whip. She takes half a step closer, forcing him to tilt his head slightly to maintain eye contact. "You are an interesting kind of scum, Father. Lying. All these years. Breathing our air. Eating our food. Playing the quiet herdsman." Her voice dips, laced with a disgust that cuts deeper than anger. "While another family… a wife… a son… rotted in your absence? Abandoned like scraps after a feast?" She shakes her head slowly, a predator assessing wounded prey. "And then… asking me? In an indirect way too! To find them? To… apologize?" She lets the absurdity hang, bitter and sharp. "The sheer, breathtaking gall."

Tseren absorbs the verbal blows. His broad shoulders seem to sag infinitesimally under the weight of decades laid bare. "Yes," he agrees, the word heavy as a tombstone. "Unforgivable." No defense. Just stark, bleak acceptance.

Naci shrugs. It's a dismissive, almost casual gesture, jarring in its intensity. "Frankly? I don't care." She waves a hand, encompassing the steppe, the camp, the looming threat of Noga. "Your ghosts? Your failures? They don't keep me awake at night. They don't feed my people or stop my enemies." Her gaze sharpens, piercing. "Brother, however… He might have a few choice words for the man who sired him and abandoned his mother."

The impact is instantaneous. Tseren's stoic mask cracks. His breath hitches audibly. Beside him, Gani, momentarily stunned out of her simmering rage, gasps, her hand flying to her mouth. "Dukar?" Tseren breathes, the name a prayer and a wound. "You… you've seen him?"

Naci gives a single, curt nod. "He's fine." A flicker of something akin to reluctant admiration touches her eyes. "Wriggled out of the Moukopl's iron fist. Though he seems to have landed squarely in the jaws of a Yohazatz prince." She delivers the news with dry understatement. "Puripal, the fourth son. A complicated story."

A murmur ripples through the crowd that had been holding its breath, transfixed by the family drama unfolding amidst the blood and tension. Men and women whose faces had been etched with grief for Kalez now surge forward, eyes wide with desperate hope.

A woman cries, her voice cracking. "My husband, Orlon? Drafted with him!"

"My son, Röfek!" shouts an older man, pushing forward. "Taken the same day!"

"Where are they?" another voice demands, raw with anguish.

Naci raises her hands, a gesture both commanding and weary. The weight of leadership presses down, visible in the tightness around her eyes. "According to my wayward brother," she announces, her voice cutting through the rising clamor, "they are not dead. Not yet." A collective breath is held. "They are currently imprisoned in the Yohazatz Khanate." A grim smirk twists Naci's lips. "Which, given that the very brother of the prince my brother is entangled with is currently leading the army marching to grind us into dust… presents a certain irony." She scans the worried faces. "Perhaps we can skip Brother's elaborate rescue schemes.

Then, Naci turns back to Tseren, her expression shifting back to that unnerving, detached scrutiny. "While we're airing the family's fascinating laundry, Father," she adds, her tone conversational yet laced with steel, "you have a granddaughter."

Tseren freezes. Utterly. The world seems to narrow to the point of Naci's words. The granite face softens, fissured by shock and something like awe. "A… granddaughter?" he breathes, the word fragile. "Bazhin…? Is he… safe?"

Naci's gaze doesn't waver. "Bazhin," she states flatly, "is dead." She watches the hope die in Tseren's eyes, replaced by a profound, silent grief. "Dukar found her. Swore to her mother he'd protect the girl. Jinhuang, her name is." A flicker of something fierce, almost possessive, crosses Naci's face. "He intends to raise her. But I plan to snatch her." She meets Tseren's devastated stare. "She's… remarkable. Strong. Fierce. Like you wouldn't believe."

Tseren stares at his daughter. The shock, the grief for the son he failed, the bewildering news of a granddaughter… it coalesces. Slowly, a tremor runs through him. A spark ignites in the depths of his weary eyes. He looks at Naci, truly looks at her – the indomitable force she has become. The echo of Demoz. The future of Tepr.

A slow, almost imperceptible nod. "Oh," Tseren rumbles, his voice thick with an emotion too complex to name, "I can believe that." His gaze holds Naci's, acknowledging not just the girl, Jinhuang, but the terrifying, magnificent legacy standing before him.

...

The raw energy of Naci's return, the shockwaves of Gani's declaration, and the lingering scent of blood from Batu's execution create a charged, brittle atmosphere in the Nedai camp. Yet, the Khan cannot linger in the epicenter of familial strife. Survival demands motion. Naci, with Horohan falling instinctively into step beside her – a shadow, a shield, a counterpart – begins to walk. It's less a royal procession, more the deliberate stride of a commander assessing her ground before battle, the weight of leadership settling like familiar, battered armor.

They move through the throng. Eyes follow them – awed, fearful, hopeful. Naci acknowledges warriors with a curt nod, meets the gazes of elders with a steely respect, offers a smile to children peeking from behind yurts. Her presence is a live current, galvanizing the stunned camp back into purposeful murmur.

"So," Naci begins, her voice pitched low for Horohan alone. "The fire burned bright in my absence, I see." Her gaze sweeps the orderly chaos – the repaired fortifications, the stockpiled supplies, the watchful, disciplined guards Horohan has clearly instilled. "Tell me, Khatun. How fares the heart of Tepr?"

Horohan walks tall beside her, the mantle of regency lighter now that the true Khan has returned. "The heart beats strong, though it bled," she replies, her voice steady, a calm river running deep. "Kolopan fell." She says it simply, but the weight of the conquest hangs in the air. "While my father..." Horohan pauses, a flicker of cold satisfaction in her eyes. "...succumbed to the wound I gifted him."

Naci grunts, a sound of fierce approval. "Good riddance to bad rubbish. What else?"

"Akun. My childhood friend, if you remember. He slithered to Kolopan with Urumol, then, smelling greater carrion, crawled to Noga alongside Batu. They became our prisoners when we retook this ground. Batu paid his dues." She gestures subtly towards the bloodstained earth near the ruined yurt. "Akun languishes in chains. A problem deferred, not solved."

Naci stops, turning fully to face Horohan. The fierce amber of her eyes holds genuine, profound admiration. "By the Skyfather's frozen breath, Horohan," she breathes, the words carrying the weight of stunned realization. "I knew you had the steel. I believed. But this..." She sweeps a hand encompassing the camp, the implied victories. "...this is beyond even my wildest boasts. You held the line. You advanced it. Against wolves on all sides." The praise is utterly sincere.

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A faint blush, incongruous on the fierce Khatun's wind-chapped cheeks, rises beneath Horohan's scrutiny. She ducks her head slightly, then meets Naci's gaze again, a flicker of unease crossing her features. "I... I did not stand alone. Not entirely." She hesitates, choosing her words with uncharacteristic care. "Help came... from an unexpected quarter. Someone whose past... complicates the present."

Naci's brow arches, a predator sensing an intriguing scent. Her lips curve into a knowing, almost predatory smirk. "Let me guess," she drawls, the low rumble carrying a dark amusement. "The slippery, fish-stinking, fake shaman with more secrets than a Moukopl tax ledger? Konir? Or should I say... Kuan?"

Horohan's eyes widen in genuine shock. "How...?"

Naci chuckles, a dry, rasping sound. "The man is practically infamous south of the Tengr. A eunuch ghost haunting the imperial bureaucracy, they say." She shakes her head.

As if summoned by the invocation of his name and profession, a voice cuts through the murmurs of the camp, high-pitched, theatrically resonant, and dripping with artificial reverence. "Great Khan! Eagle-Bonded! Scourge of the World and Beacon of Tepr's Glorious Dawn!"

Kuan emerges from between two yurts, robes flapping like the wings of a startled, garishly plumed bird. He throws himself into an elaborate, deeply unnecessary bow, forehead nearly scraping the frozen mud. "Konir, humble conduit of the Sky's whispers, offers his most profound obeisance upon your triumphant, nay, legendary return! The very winds sang of your approach! The eagles wept tears of joy!" He remains prostrate, awaiting royal acknowledgment.

Naci looks down at the groveling figure, her expression one of profound, unimpressed boredom. "Oh, get up, Kuan," she sighs, the weariness palpable. "Save the theatrics. The fish smell gives you away, and the shaman act is wasted. I know what you are."

Kuan's head snaps up. The carefully crafted mask of pious serenity shatters, replaced by genuine, theatrical hurt. He scrambles to his feet, dusting off his robes with offended dignity. "Great Khan wounds Konir!" he laments, hand fluttering to his chest. "An actual shaman, I assure you! Trained by the venerable Master of Orogol's the Whispering Marsh! My arts are genuine! My powders potent!" He puffs out his chest, then deflates slightly, suspicion narrowing his eyes. "...Have you perhaps encountered... Yile?"

Before Naci can answer, a smaller figure detaches itself from the shadows clinging to Naci like a second skin. Meicong steps forward, her expression as impassive as ever, though a faint glimmer of dry amusement might lurk in her dark eyes. She inclines her head fractionally. "Hello, scummy Kuan."

Kuan's face undergoes a transformation worthy of his finest stage tricks. Shock melts into pure, unadulterated delight. "Meicong!" he cries, genuine warmth flooding his voice as he completely forgets his wounded shamanic pride. He rushes forward, grasping her shoulders, peering into her face. "Little sister! You live! The Sky be praised! Tell me, tell me everything! Did you find him? Did you deliver my... message?" His eyes gleam with mischievous anticipation.

Meicong blinks slowly, her voice flat as the steppe horizon. "I found him. I delivered the message." A beat. "He cried."

Kuan beams, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. "He cried? Oh, glorious! Details, Meicong, details!"

Meicong's expression doesn't change. "He cried... a lot." Another beat, delivered with deadpan perfection. "Then he sent my siblings to kill me."

For a heartbeat, Kuan stares. Then, a sound erupts from him – not a chuckle, but a full-throated, belly-shaking roar of laughter. It echoes across the camp, startling warriors and scattering nearby chickens. He doubles over, slapping his knee, tears of genuine mirth streaming down his cheeks. "He sent them? To kill you?" He gasps for breath between guffaws. "Oh, the beautiful, predictable fool! The sheer, magnificent idiocy!"

The echo of Kuan's uproarious laughter fades into the general murmur of the camp. Horohan watches the white fox wipe mirth-tears from his eyes, then turns to Naci. A silent communication passes between them, the shared understanding of a necessary, unpleasant task deferred.

"This way," Horohan murmurs, her voice tight. She leads Naci towards a smaller, heavily guarded yurt on the camp's periphery, far from the central bustle. Two Orogol warriors, faces grim, stand rigidly at the entrance. Horohan stops short, her hand clenching into a fist at her side. She stares at the felt flap as if it conceals a nest of vipers. "To face him again would be to risk unleashing the tiger within me, and that fury is better saved for Noga."

Naci understands. She places a brief, grounding hand on Horohan's forearm. "Guard the door," she instructs the warriors, her voice devoid of inflection. She doesn't wait for acknowledgment. She simply pushes the heavy felt aside and steps into the yurt's dim interior, letting the flap fall closed behind her, sealing herself in with the stink of fear and treachery.

The space is cramped, lit only by a single, guttering oil lamp casting long, dancing shadows. Akun, once a leader among the Alinkar rebels, now sits slumped against the central pole, wrists bound behind him, ankles shackled. A sneer twists his split lip.

"Well, well," he rasps, his voice hoarse from disuse or shouting. "Look what the carrion crows dragged in. The bitch returns. Come to gloat over your captive, Khatun?" He spits the title like an insult, a gob of bloody phlegm landing near Naci's boot.

Naci doesn't flinch. She doesn't even look at the spittle. Her gaze locks onto his, and it's like twin suns igniting in the gloom – fierce, incandescent amber, burning with a cold, controlled fury that has nothing to do with the insult to herself. It's the fury reserved for those who dared touch what is hers. "Quiet," she says. The word isn't shouted. It's a low, resonant command, vibrating with such absolute, terrifying authority that Akun's next sneer dies in his throat. His remaining eye widens, the defiance flickering, replaced by a primal jolt of fear. His jaw snaps shut with an audible click. The silence that follows is thick, suffocating, broken only by the frantic hammering of Akun's own heart against his ribs.

Naci takes a slow step forward, the soft crunch of grit beneath her boot unnaturally loud. She circles him, a predator assessing cornered prey. "You breathe," she states, her voice flat, analytical, "because Horohan, in some unfathomable corner of her spirit, still values the husk of the man you once were. Likely the ghost of years spent riding together." She stops directly in front of him, looking down. "Sentiment. A luxury we can ill afford. Yet, here you are. Untortured. Unbroken. Mostly." Her gaze flicks dismissively over his bruises. "There is a reason for that."

Akun tries to muster his sneer again, but it wobbles, lacking conviction. "Your Khatun's soft heart?" he scoffs weakly.

"Possibly," Naci concedes, a flicker of something almost like pity in her eyes, quickly extinguished. "Or perhaps she simply has better things to do than waste time with you." She snaps her fingers, a sharp, decisive sound like breaking bone.

The felt flap is thrust aside. Fol stands framed in the doorway, his expression impassive as weathered stone. In his hand, held casually by the matted, blood-caked hair, is Batu's head. The eyes are wide, frozen in terminal surprise. The neck stump is ragged, dark, and glistening faintly in the lamplight. Fol steps inside, his movements economical, and without ceremony, he hurls the grisly trophy. It lands with a wet, heavy thump at Akun's shackled feet, rolling slightly to stare sightlessly up at him.

Akun jerks back violently, chains rattling like a death rattle. A strangled gasp escapes him. He stares, transfixed, at the familiar, lifeless features of his fellow traitor. The smell of old blood and decay fills the small space. He tries to look away, tries to summon bravado, but his gaze is magnetically drawn back to the horrifying proof of Naci's ruthlessness. His throat works soundlessly.

Naci observes his reaction, her expression unchanging. "Intimidation is such a blunt instrument," she muses, almost conversationally. "Effective, certainly. But crude." She crouches down, bringing her face level with Akun's, ignoring the head between them. Her proximity is invasive, terrifying. "Let's talk about loyalty, Akun. Yours seems… fluid. First Alinkar. Then rebels. Then Batu. Then Noga." She ticks them off on her fingers. "Tell me, when the Yohazatz Prince offered you gold, did he also promise you a place at his right hand? Or were you always just… expendable muscle? A useful idiot to point at the enemy until a better weapon came along?"

Akun flinches at each point. "Noga values strength!" he blurts, a desperate assertion.

"Does he?" Naci asks softly, dangerously. "He values winning. And you, Akun…" She leans closer, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "...you lost. To Horohan. To your friend. Noga doesn't keep broken tools. He discards them." She nods towards the head. "Why are you not on the battlefield with him? Why were you left behind? You could be feasting with him in our previous camp if he valued you." She lets the silence stretch, the implication hanging like a noose. "You were convenient. Now you are inconvenient. Forgotten. Just another piece of offal left for the wolves."

She watches the color drain completely from Akun's face, the last vestiges of defiance crumbling into ash. His shoulders slump, the chains seeming to grow heavier. The reality of his utter abandonment, his complete worthlessness in the eyes of the master he chose, settles upon him like a physical weight. He looks broken, hollow.

Naci stands. "Good. We understand each other." She dusts nonexistent dirt from her knees. "Now, there is one last thing I require of you, Akun."

He looks up, a flicker of bewildered dread in his eye. "What… what could you possibly…?"

"It's something you want to do," Naci states, her voice regaining its steely certainty. "Deep down, beneath the greed and the fear and the pathetic scramble for relevance… you want this. Because it's the only shred of purpose left to you. The only way your miserable existence might mean something beyond betrayal and failure."

Akun stares, uncomprehending, utterly defeated.

"You cannot refuse," Naci adds, a hint of that terrifying amusement returning. "Because the alternative…" She gestures vaguely towards Batu's head, then lets her gaze rest meaningfully on Akun's own neck. "...is rather final. And decidedly less dignified."

She doesn't elaborate. She doesn't need to. The terror, the crushing weight of his insignificance, and the terrifying glimmer of… something… in Naci's words hold him paralyzed.

Naci takes a single step forward. Her hand moves with the swift, precise motion of a herder stunning a fractious goat. The heel of her palm connects with the precise junction of Akun's jaw and temple. There's a sickening crack. Akun's eyes roll back. His body goes utterly limp, sagging against the chains. He slumps forward, unconscious, his forehead resting perilously close to Batu's frozen, staring eyes.

Then, a sudden, different light shines in Naci's eyes. One of confusion, slight fear, and sheer realization.

"I forgot to ask my wife why there is a tiger in our camp," she tells Fol, gravely.

...

The alleged Khan of Tepr, swathed in bulky, nondescript furs, hood pulled low, sits rigidly atop a shaggy Yohazatz pony, flanked by grim Tiger Guards. Lanau Axi-Örukai rides beside "her," back straight despite the exhaustion etched into every line of her wind-burned face. Noga observes them from his midnight stallion, a predator amused by the bizarre, flimsy cage he's constructed around this strange prey. The theatricality of it all – the mute Khan, the defiant voice – is almost endearing in its audacity.

He dismounts before his command yurt, larger and more ornate than the others, its felt darkened by soot and ingrained grime. "Dismount," he commands, his voice cutting through the curious stares of his warriors and the lowing of hungry cattle. Lanau slides down stiffly, then helps the cloaked figure down with exaggerated care. The figure stumbles slightly, leaning heavily on Lanau.

"Speak," Noga orders, folding his arms. "Your Khan's silence has traveled far. Let her voice fill the air now."

Lanau meets his gaze, defiance battling exhaustion. "Great Prince," she begins, her voice raspy but clear, "we have ridden hard from the distant halls of Pezijil. The Skyfather himself would crave rest and water after such a journey. We are thirsty. We are tired."

Noga stares. A dry chuckle escapes him. "Respite? In the belly of the beast?" He shakes his head, a slow, predatory smile spreading. "Very well, little voice. Play your game. I find it… diverting." He snaps his fingers. "Ahal! See our guests to a yurt. Water. Food. Let the Silent Khan… recuperate." The last word drips with sarcasm. "We shall parley when the shadows lengthen."

As Lanau and the cloaked figure are led away by guards towards a smaller, isolated yurt, Noga turns to General Ahal, his granite face impassive. "Gather the Tiger Guard. All of them. Ready the horses."

Kirzeh of the Tiger Guards single eyebrow rises slightly. "You do not ride with us, Khanzadeh?"

Noga's gaze sweeps west, towards the unseen Nedai camp. "Third time's the charm, Ahal. The Khatun plays games. She sends distractions." He gestures contemptuously towards the yurt housing the 'Khan'. "A mute pretender? A sharp-tongued girl? Transparent as ice. Her real strength, her heart, is still at the Nedai camp. Crush it. Now. Swift as the blizzard's first bite. Ride them down. Leave nothing breathing that draws Tepr air." A flicker of genuine regret passes over his face. "The plunder… the sport… I would relish it. But this," he nods towards the silent yurt, "requires my… personal attention. Go."

Kirzeh thumps his fist against his chestplate. "By your will, Khanzadeh!" He turns, bellowing orders. Within minutes, the elite core of Noga's horde – the Tiger Guard, mounted again.

Noga watches them go, a solitary figure radiating cold purpose. He sighs, a rare admission of weariness. Missing the kill chafes. He turns back towards the command yurt, intending to contemplate his bizarre prisoners.

Before he can take three steps, a commotion erupts near the camp's northern perimeter. Shouts. The jingle of harness. A patrol of Yohazatz warriors rides in, herding a bedraggled group of newcomers before them. These aren't warriors. They are young, thin, travel-stained one man and two women, dressed in strange, layered garments of coarse wool and leather, utterly foreign to the steppes. Their language, when they cry out in protest, is a guttural mix of Moukopl and something else entirely, harsh and unfamiliar.

General Ahal, who had lingered near the departing Tiger Guard, strides towards the newcomers, his face alight with brutish anticipation. "Merchants!" he booms, a hungry grin splitting his beard. "By the Skyfather's frozen beard, finally! What treasures do you flee from, little mice? Gold? Silks? Salt?"

One of the three newcomers, a young man, steps forward, hands raised placatingly. "No treasures, Great Lord. Tools. Crafting tools. For… for fixing things. We are Seop. Artisans. Seeking new markets. We are peaceful."

Ahal, frustrated by the lack of immediate loot, kicks at a crate. It doesn't budge. He gestures to a warrior, who roughly pries the lid open with a spear point. Inside, nestled in straw, are strange metal implements – gears, rods, intricate clamps – and several large, tightly sealed clay jars. Ahal rummages, tossing aside tools with disdain. He pulls the stopper from a jar, sniffing. A pungent, acrid, sulfurous smell wafts out. He recoils, wrinkling his nose. "Bah! Dirt! Worthless dirt!" He kicks the jar, sending it rolling. A fine, gritty black powder spills onto the frozen ground.

Noga, watching from a dozen paces away, freezes. His eyes, sharp as a hawk's, lock onto the spilled powder. A memory flashes – about a powder that roared like thunder and spat fire. The blood drains from his face. "Ahal! NO! DO NOT TOUCH—!"

But Ahal is already turning away in disgust. He sees a warrior idly playing with a flint and steel, sparking it near a pile of dry dung for a cookfire. Ahal's frustration, his hunger, his desire for any spectacle to alleviate the tension, boils over. "Worthless!" he snarls at the cowering Seop. "Your lives are worthless! Let's see if your dirt burns!" He snatches the flint and steel from the warrior. "Let their despair warm me!" He strikes the flint, a shower of bright sparks cascading towards the spilled black powder and the open crate full of jars.

One of the women shouts, "NO! IT WILL—!"

At that precise moment, the flap of the nearby guest yurt twitches. Temej, still swaddled in the bulky furs meant to mimic Naci's frame but unable to resist the commotion, peers out. His eyes widen in shock as he recognizes the obsidian-eyed young man. "Goeghon?" he breathes, forgetting his disguise.

Noga's warning shout is lost in the sudden, unnatural silence that seems to suck the air from the camp. Time stretches, thin and brittle.

Then, the spark touches the powder.

And the world comes to an end.

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