This winter, the frost was brutal, sharp, and ringing with bitter cold—the kind of winter the steppes had not seen in generations. At times, the elements felt like a tightening fist, squeezing the very breath from their lungs. A small band of nomads from the Moyyr tribe, who had been journeying toward the Kartal winter camp for two days, now found themselves stranded right before the Bozbolyk River, just across from their destination. There were barely twenty people in total, accompanied by a few massive warhorses of the Stena-Warr breed, a dozen two-humped tuyek camels laden with heavy baggage, thirty plump khoy sheep, and a handful of domesticated dakh-gal hounds. The collective braying, barking, and lowing of the livestock rose through the freezing air in a deep, guttural drone, as though the earth itself were groaning under the sheer weight of man and beast. The vapor rising from the nomads froze instantly upon their eyelashes into a glittering, silvery rime, forcing them to squint and blink constantly to keep their eyelids from freezing shut. The culprit behind their misery was the steppe jhut—a flash freeze that seals the grasslands under a shell of ice so thick that no beast can break through with its hooves. The jhut had struck the Kartal camp without warning in the dead of winter, and it took a mere three days for the flocks to begin collapsing one after the other. The Elder chose not to wait. He split the people and the remaining livestock into several parties, sending them toward the distant winter camp by different routes—some straight across the mountain pass, others following the winding banks of the Bozbolyk—anything to escape before the ice claimed the last of their livelihood. This particular detachment of twenty Moyyrs had taken the shortest route across the ridge, but the ancient trail that cut the journey in half had been destroyed. Where the path to the winter camp should have been, the Moyyrs were met by a dark, yawning abyss. To reach their destination, they now had to attempt a crossing farther down the Bozbolyk, below the point where the trail had collapsed. The true danger lay in the river itself. It carved its way through a black canyon hemmed in by sheer stone cliffs, and its ice was notoriously treacherous. Every nomad, from the youngest child to the oldest elder, knew this truth: in one spot, the ice might be as solid as granite, but a single step away, it could shatter at the slightest weight. Above the Moyyrs’ heads, where the frigid air of the gorge clashed with the warmer breath of the water flowing beneath the ice, a dense fog hung low—a milky-white mist that swirled at a grown man’s knees. The elders called it the Breath of Ulgen, believing the high god himself was exhaling it through a rift between worlds. "Halt! We go no further," a voice rang out from the rear. It was steady, devoid of doubt, and powerful enough to cut through the din of the migrating camp. Erasyl, the dark-haired, gray-eyed leader of the party, who stood slightly above average height, tightened his grip on his camel's reins and turned toward the voice. Throughout their grueling two-day march, he had barely slept a wink, even atop the swaying hump of his beast; the journey was treacherous, and nothing could be decided without his word. "O Span-Ata, we have no time for your premonitions and elderly grumbling," Erasyl said, straining to make his young, ringing voice sound as firm as possible. "Our people are freezing. We must cross the water swiftly, or we will lose the rest of our livestock." The old man Erasyl spoke to remained seated on the snow, motionless and utterly unmoved by the leader's words—as serene as if he were basking in the warmth of a spring sun rather than sitting in a biting blizzard. This was Ospan Kariy, a blind wanderer and storyteller who had spent his last three winters with the Kartal camp. With his gaunt, withered frame wrapped in a thin, moth-eaten sheepskin coat, he appeared so frail it seemed a miracle he had survived the journey on foot at all. Slowly, Ospan turned his head toward Erasyl, who stood over him with a darkened, sullen face. The old man's milky, sightless eyes seemed to look directly at the young leader, yet simultaneously pierced right through him, as if he were listening to the air itself and the raging winter spirits. "As usual, you want to charge blindly ahead. You are far too hot-headed and reckless, Erasyl," Ospan chuckled, his sightless eyes crinkling into dark slits amidst the deep wrinkles of his face. "Have you forgotten how your father, Darbol, led his men straight across the Syrkalu ridges during the Year of the Snow Jolbors? Truly, they say human memory is short. Do you really not remember how that ended, boy?" Erasyl fell silent. He had no memory of his father—neither the shape of his face, nor the heavy palms that used to ruffle his hair, nor the cadence of his voice. He had been far too young back then, but he had heard the tale from his mother and kin so many times that the tragedy had burned itself into his mind. Still smiling, Ospan slowly pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. He pulled the mitten from his right hand, exposing bare, weathered fingers darkened by age and steppe winds. He touched the pristine snow crust before him, then leaned down and pressed his right ear to the surface—looking exactly like a healer pressing his ear to the chest of a dying man, checking whether life remained or if the soul had already departed into the sacred waters of Unutma. The surrounding Moyyrs held their breath, and Erasyl did the same. Even the camels and horses nearby, as if sensing the gravity of the moment, grew remarkably still. "I hear the river singing," the old man said at last, though his timbre held a grim, heavy tone. "Do you hear it? No, you do not. Frazil ice is running beneath the surface. Countless shards of fine, porous slush are grinding relentlessly against the thick ice floes. Down below, a grinding legion of ice is at war. The river is restless and uneven; here the ice is as solid as stone, but with your very next step, it may be as brittle as a withered autumn leaf." "Then we will find a safe path and cross the Bozbolyk anyway," Erasyl snapped, his restlessness still simmering. "We will find it, my boy, of course we will. But not in the way you intend." Ospan rose slowly, leaning heavily on his asatayak—his shamanic staff—which had been lying beside him in the snow, and finally turned to face the silent crowd. The asatayak in his grip was long, towering three heads higher than Ospan himself, and the bronze konyrau bells dangling from its tip chimed softly with his movement. The bells produced a pure, dry sound unlike any ordinary metal—it sounded less like iron striking iron and more like a sharp clicking deep within a throat. "Listen to me, noble Moyyrs," Ospan said, and despite his advanced age, his voice seemed to expand and fill the entire space between the travelers, though he did not raise it to a shout. "We shall cross the frozen surface of the river, but we must move in a single, straight line. Hold fast to the main rope; do not let go for even a single moment. You will walk in lockstep with the chime of the konyrau. I will strike my staff against the ice ahead of me, and every step you take must fall precisely upon that chime. No faster, no slower." He raised his hand high, extending three fingers stiffly into the air. "And remember three things as clearly as you remember the names of your own children or the prayers to your guardian gods. First: step only to the chime of my staff, and no one else’s. Second: if a voice calls your name out of the fog, do not answer. I do not care who it sounds like, even if it is the voice of your own mother. Third: if you hear your own voice calling to you from the mist, close your eyes and hold your breath for three heartbeats. Three. Not two, not four, but exactly three." In the dead silence that followed, one of the women let out a soft, trembling sob. "This place is choked with the Breath of Ulgen," the old man whispered, his voice dropping low. "It does not claim our bodies. It steals the souls of those who answer the call." Erasyl stared intensely at the old man for a long moment. Then, pulling off his mitten, he exhaled a heavy cloud of vapor into the freezing air and extended his hand to help the elder down the steep incline first. "Very well, Ata," Erasyl murmured, yielding but reluctant. "We will follow the chime of your bells. But if you make a mistake..." "I will not mistake the path, young man, fear not," Ospan cut him off, his eyes narrowing with a knowing, sly glint. "I lost my sight thirty winters ago, back when I was still young and strong, much like you. In all these years, my ears have learned to perceive what the eyes of the sighted have long forgotten."