The voices of mourning drifted through the bamboo walls, sounding at once intimately close and miles away. To Chinua, caught in a hazy, fevered limb, nothing was certain. She tried several times to force her eyes open, to demand to know where she was, but her eyelids felt as heavy as stone, refusing to lift.
In this blurred reality, she could feel the vibration of people talking—a frantic, overlapping sea of sound. Some voices were sharp and close, smelling of copper and pine; others were distant echoes, lost in the wind. They all seemed to be speaking at once, a chaotic tangle of words where no one was listening, and no one was being heard.
She wanted to call out, to ask for her mother and brother, but the voices just swirled faster, pulling her back down into the silent, suffocating heat of the fever.
In the darkness of her mind, a voice hissed, sharp as a whetstone against steel. "Do you feel robbed?"
"Do I feel robbed?" Chinua murmured, her voice a dry rattle in her throat. "I do..."
She turned her head toward a sliver of light that pierced the gloom. Through a blurred, watery vision, a shape began to coalesce—a massive, grey shadow detached itself from the darkness and stalked toward her. As it drew closer, the predator's form became clear: a gargantuan Grey Wolf with fur like winter mist and fangs that gleamed with a predatory light.
The wolf didn't growl; it spoke with a sinister, human smirk. "Do you want revenge?"
"Yes," Chinua whispered. She tried to shift, to reach for a weapon that wasn't there, but her limbs felt like they were cast in lead.
The wolf was upon her now. She could feel its hot, rank breath against her right ear, followed by the terrifyingly cold, wet touch of its tongue licking her skin. With a sudden, violent motion, the beast lunged, pinning her to the earth under the crushing weight of its paws.
"Then what are you waiting for?" the wolf demanded, lowering its snout until its golden eyes were inches from her own.
Chinua fought to bring her arms up to tackle the beast, but they felt like they weighed ten thousand stones. Despite the terror of the moment, she stared back into the wolf's eyes—not with fear, but with a burgeoning, matching ferocity. The wolf grinned, a flash of ivory teeth, and then unhinged its jaws. It lunged down, sinking its teeth deep into her right shoulder.
The phantom pain jolted Chinua back to reality. Her eyes snapped open, staring up at the woven bamboo ceiling of the hut. Her chest heaved, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. It wasn't just the fright of the nightmare that made her groan; a searing, white-hot agony radiated across her upper chest and back, marking the place where the blade had been and where the wolf had "bitten" her in the dream.
The hazy voices she had heard before were gone, replaced by the heavy, suffocating silence of the hut and the smell of scorched flesh and cedar.
Slowly, Chinua struggled to sit upright. Her head felt heavy, swimming with a dull ache as if she had just woken from a long night of heavy drinking. She groaned, the movement pulling at the fresh stitches in her shoulder, making her feel hurt in places she didn't know existed. Although her face felt hot—burning as if she were lying under a relentless summer sun—her body shivered uncontrollably, as if she were stranded on the summit of Whitefang Peak in the middle of January, when nature is at its cruelest.
She took several deep, ragged breaths, trying to ground herself. She was studying the woven bamboo walls of the hut when she saw Hibo approaching, carrying a steaming bowl.
"You are awake," Hibo said, a small, relieved smile flickering on her face. She rushed to Chinua's side and set the bowl of brewed medicine down on the packed earth.
"How long? How long have I been out?" Chinua asked, her voice raspy.
"Three hours," Hibo replied. She picked up the bowl and pressed it into Chinua's hands. "Drink it while it's still hot. It becomes much more bitter once it cools."
Chinua took the bowl and drained it in one go, the herbal heat stinging her throat. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes sharpening. "Where are the others?"
"They are in the other hut," Hibo said, her gaze dropping to the floor to avoid eye contact.
"Tell me. What is the situation?" Chinua demanded, her commander's instinct cutting through the fever.
"It's... complicated," Hibo whispered. She looked at Chinua, weighing the truth. She knew that on the other side of the clearing, Batsaikhan was already drowning in his grief. There was no use in hiding the storm. "Chinua, the palace is in chaos. The Second Prince has charged the Crown Prince as your co-conspirator. General Mönkhbat traveled all the way from the south to break him out of prison. And as for the Queen..."
"What about her?" Chinua asked, her chest tightening until it was hard to breathe.
"You should go see for yourself," Hibo said softly, pointing toward the hut on the left. "She is in there. With the others."
Despite the fire of the fever and the jagged pain in her back, Chinua threw the blankets aside and jumped to her feet. She ignored Hibo's startled cry, rushing out of the hut and across the dirt clearing.
She rounded the corner of the neighboring hut and froze.
There, laid out on a bed of simple straw, was Qara. Her mother's face was pale and utterly bloodless. Chinua stopped, her heart aching with a pressure that felt like it would crack her ribs. Her lips trembled, but her eyes remained dry—the shock was too deep for tears. As she stared at that waxen, silent face, she knew the truth instantly. It was a color she had seen a thousand times on the battlefield while collecting her fallen soldiers.
The Queen, her mother, was gone.
Chinua stood rooted to the spot, her shadow stretching long and thin across the dirt floor toward her mother's remains. She didn't know if she should step forward and touch the cold skin of the woman who had given her life, or if she should stay right there, frozen, and pretend this was just another layer of the fever dream.
Perhaps if she felt enough pain, the world would shatter like glass and she would wake up in her tent on the front lines, the war still simple and her mother still safe in the capital.
Desperate for a wake-up call, she sucked in her lower lip. She bit down, her teeth sinking deep into the tender flesh until the metallic, copper tang of blood flooded her mouth. She blinked rapidly, once, twice, three times—waiting for the hut to vanish. But the image did not flicker. Her mother remained motionless on the ground, a silent statue of ivory and silk, and the raw, jagged sound of Batsaikhan's sobbing continued to fill the small space.
She pressed her teeth down even harder, determined to draw enough pain to break the spell of this waking nightmare. But before she could pierce through her lip, a heavy warmth settled on her shoulder, and a voice—grounded and real—cut through the ringing in her ears.
"Chinua," Tong said, his voice trembling with a grief that spanned generations of service to the crown.
The touch broke her trance. Chinua's shoulders shook violently for a moment, but the tears stayed locked behind a wall of sheer iron will. She turned her head slowly, her eyes hollow and vacant. Seeing Eunuch Tong there, far from the safety of the Inner Court, was more than a shock—it was a confirmation of total collapse. If the most loyal shadow of the palace had fled to the woods, then the world they knew was truly gone.
A terrifying thought pierced through her grief: If the Queen is here, and the prince is here... where is my father?
At the sound of Tong's voice, the men inside—Mönkhbat, Naksh, and Jeet—slowly pulled their gazes away from the Queen's lifeless form. The flickering light filtering through the bamboo walls danced across their features, casting long, wavering shadows. Outside, the rhythmic crunch of gravel and the sharp creak of a wagon announced the arrival of the rest of the party. Buqa, Dolgoon, and Yize approached the small hut with hesitant, heavy steps. Their expressions drained of color as they saw the General standing motionless at the corner, his refusal to step inside speaking louder than any words of the horror that lay within.
"Eunuch Tong?" Chinua's voice was barely a whisper, a thread of sound in the cold mountain air.
Mönkhbat didn't wait; he surged forward, his massive frame cutting through the tall grass to meet the old man. His eyes were wide with a rare, flickering fear. "Why are you here?" the General demanded, his voice like grinding stones. "Where is the Royal Father?"
"His Majesty..." Tong's voice broke. His lips began to tremble violently as the horrific images of the palace coup flooded back to him.
Inside the hut, Batsaikhan had heard the name. Driven by a desperate, frantic energy, the prince crawled toward the opening, his prisoner's rags dragging through the dirt. "How is my father?" he shouted, his voice cracking with the strain.
"Oh, Your Highness!" Tong wailed. Seeing the once-proud Crown Prince reduced to crawling in the dirt like a common thief was too much for the old servant. "I thought you were gone... I thought they had killed you too!" He collapsed to his knees, groveling in the dust before the prince.
"Eunuch Tong, tell me!" Batsaikhan's fingers dug into the old man's shoulders, shaking him. "How is father?"
"His Majesty... His Majesty was murdered by Prince Dzhambul," Tong sobbed, his forehead hitting the earth. "I witnessed it with my own eyes. I saw it... His Majesty is no more!"
At that moment, the world simply ceased to exist for Chinua.
The wailing of the Eunuch, the sobbing of her brother, and the rustle of the wind through the bamboo walls all faded into a dead, ringing silence. Her world froze in place. While her body remained a statue, her mind accelerated, a whirlwind of memories flashing before her eyes. She saw her father's face—not as the King of a kingdom, but as the teacher who had shaped her spirit. The memories were too short, the years too few, but every lesson he had passed down felt like a heavy stone being added to a pile.
Finally, the weight became too much. The boulder she had carried on her shoulders since the start of her journey finally crushed her spirit. Her knees buckled, her eyes fluttered shut, and Chinua let the merciful darkness take her away from a world where she was now truly orphaned.