Nes­ryn awak­ens in the Hall of Altun, dis­ori­ent­ed by the time and anx­ious about over­sleep­ing in front of the rukhin, who might mock Prince Sar­taq for his court­ly habits. After a rest­less night, she notices move­ment out­side her door and pre­pares for the day, wash­ing her face with luke­warm water. She joins Sar­taq, who is already sad­dling his ruk, Kadara, in the emp­ty great hall. They take flight into the freez­ing dawn, join­ing oth­er ruks hunt­ing for break­fast. Kadara catch­es salmon from a riv­er before Sar­taq guides them toward a train­ing area for novice rid­ers, where the ter­rain is less treach­er­ous but still daunt­ing.

Sar­taq explains the rig­or­ous train­ing reg­i­men of the rukhin, reveal­ing that chil­dren as young as four begin learn­ing to ride on sea­soned ruks, with fam­i­ly mem­bers accom­pa­ny­ing them ini­tial­ly. By their teens, they raise their own hatch­lings. Nes­ryn is stunned by the ear­ly age and the per­ilous nature of the train­ing, strug­gling to imag­ine chil­dren nav­i­gat­ing such dan­gers. Sar­taq com­pares their meth­ods to the horse-clans of the steppes, where chil­dren mas­ter rid­ing and weapon­ry ear­ly, a tra­di­tion that con­tributed to the khaganate’s mil­i­tary dom­i­nance. He high­lights the inge­nu­ity of their ances­tors, who trav­eled light and relied on engi­neers to craft weapons from local mate­ri­als.

The prince recounts the strate­gic bril­liance of the first kha­gan, who crossed the Kyzul­tum Desert with nomad guides, sur­pris­ing ene­mies by attack­ing from behind. Instead of open war­fare, the kha­gan used fear and selec­tive bru­tal­i­ty to force sur­ren­ders, reward­ing com­pli­ance and ensur­ing his rep­u­ta­tion pre­ced­ed him. Sartaq’s pride in this his­to­ry is evi­dent as he describes the khagan’s dual *sulde*—Ebony for war and Ivory for peace—and how the Ebony’s pres­ence alone often deterred resis­tance. Nes­ryn, fas­ci­nat­ed, lis­tens intent­ly, drawn deep­er into the cul­ture and his­to­ry of Sartaq’s peo­ple.

As they soar above the moun­tains, Sartaq’s sto­ry­telling weaves a vivid tapes­try of con­quest and cun­ning, con­trast­ing the khagan’s meth­ods with the brute force of oth­er rulers like Adarlan’s king. Nesryn’s curios­i­ty grows, and she relax­es into the flight, her ear­li­er ten­sion replaced by a sense of con­nec­tion to both Sar­taq and the lega­cy he embod­ies. The chap­ter clos­es with a lin­ger­ing sense of awe at the khaganate’s sto­ried past and the unspo­ken bond form­ing between the two char­ac­ters amid the vast, windswept peaks.