You

  are and will be slaves to your memories and your secrets.

  Thus

  it was burned into the door of the shaman’s dacha.

  A warning to those who seek to unravel the truth weighing upon

  their souls, or a reminder of the limits imposed by mortality?

  Shadows. Lights. Glimmers. The forest is always restless: vibrant,

  extreme, and threatening. It opens only to the brave.

  The full moon rose over Kalmanka with slow deliberation, as if

  ascending from the very entrails of the earth rather than from the

  horizon. It was a colossal moon, golden at first, then white, so

  sharp that each crater looked like an open wound in the skin of the

  sky. That night was no ordinary full moon: it coincided with the

  spring solstice, when—so the elders said—the visible and

  invisible worlds touched like two surfaces of water vibrating in

  unison.

  The entire taiga seemed to hold its breath.

  The lake reflected the lunar disk so perfectly that it seemed

  there were two skies: one above, one below, both equally infinite.

  Between them, Mariya’s dacha glowed like a tiny heart in the middle

  of the darkness.

  As Ksenia approached, she felt that something recognized her.

  It was not an emotional sensation. It was physical. As if every

  particle of air touched her with unsettling familiarity, as though

  she had returned to a place where she had already been… but in

  another life.

  Sasha, by contrast, sensed danger.

  The forest did not feel welcoming to him, but watchful. The

  shadows between the trunks were too dense, too deep, as if they were

  not mere absence of light but lurking presences. The silence felt

  unnatural: no night bird, no cracking branch, no whisper of wind.

  Only his breathing.

  Only the pounding of his heart, too loud.

  Mariya waited for them outside, motionless, facing the moon as if

  listening to something descending from it.

  Her figure seemed taller, thinner, almost inhuman under that

  silvery clarity. The dark cloak embroidered with red and ochre

  threads absorbed the light instead of reflecting it. In her hands she

  held a wooden bowl from which rose a whitish smoke that did not

  disperse but descended toward the floor like living mist.

  —You have arrived when the world opens —she said without

  looking at them—. Tonight, the earth remembers.

  They entered.

  The dacha had been transformed into a primitive sanctuary.

  The floor was covered with fresh birch branches and dried petals

  of wildflowers. The scent was penetrating: resin, sap, damp earth,

  and something metallic, almost like ancient blood. In the center

  stretched a large circle traced with ash and bone dust, crossed by

  lines that formed archaic symbols impossible to interpret.

  Four small fires burned in stone vessels, yet their flames did not

  flicker: they rose straight upward, as if they did not belong to the

  air of that room.

  On a low table lay objects of power: tiny skulls, blackened

  feathers, translucent stones, fragments of corroded metal, amulets

  carved with intertwined animal and human forms.

  —Take off your shoes —Mariya ordered.

  The contact with the floor was a shock. It was not simply cold: it

  vibrated. A dull pulsation rose from the earth into the soles of

  their feet, as if beneath the dacha a gigantic buried heart was

  beating.

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  Mariya marked their foreheads with damp ash.

  The touch burned.

  —So that your eyes may see those who are no longer alive —she

  whispered.

  She lit a dark resin. The smoke invaded the room with an almost

  liquid density. Ksenia felt it enter her lungs, her blood, her

  memory. Each inhalation brought fleeting images: unknown hands,

  nameless faces, landscapes she had never seen and yet recognized with

  devastating nostalgia.

  The drum began to sound.

  A deep heartbeat. Ancient. Relentless.

  It did not mark a human rhythm. It was irregular, like the pulse

  of something wild, something never domesticated. With each strike,

  the air compressed and expanded, as if the room itself were

  breathing.

  Mariya sang.

  Her voice rose from an impossible depth, rough and cavernous,

  laden with sounds that belonged to no living language. At times it

  sounded like a lament, at others a growl, at others a lullaby warped

  by centuries of pain.

  The smoke began to spin.

  The flames leaned toward the

  center.

  The circle came alive.

  Ksenia first felt heat at the base of her spine… then an

  unbearable cold that climbed up her back like a hand of ice. Her

  muscles tensed. Her fingers curled. Something inside her was being

  opened without permission.

  Then the world vanished.

  An endless steppe beneath a sky set ablaze by sunset. The wind

  dragged dust and the smell of horses. Thousands of hooves struck the

  ground like continuous thunder. Dark banners waved, their symbols

  seeming to move like living creatures.

  And there she was.

  Not Ksenia.

  Another.

  A young woman of royal bearing, with heavy black braids like

  sleeping serpents and a simple crown of dull gold. Her face was

  beautiful, but not delicate: it was the face of someone accustomed to

  being obeyed. Her eyes—black, deep—held immense sorrow and

  unbreakable resolve.

  —Sora… —Ksenia whispered, her throat torn by an emotion she

  did not understand.

  The name pierced her chest like a spear… and at the same time

  filled it with unbearable tenderness, with a love so ancient that it

  hurt.

  The vision spun.

  A warrior on horseback emerged from the storm of dust. Tall,

  imposing, clad in dark furs and metal plates. His gaze was fierce,

  yet anchored to something invisible, as if he obeyed a force greater

  than his own will.

  A blue amulet gleamed on his chest.

  The same one.

  Chinggis Yud.

  When his eyes met Sora’s, time stopped. There was no smile. No

  gesture at all. Only absolute recognition. As if two halves separated

  for centuries suddenly fit together in a single instant.

  Love… and doom.

  The drum became frantic.

  Ksenia screamed, arching, pierced by a surge of pain and ecstasy

  at once. It was too much. Too intense for a human body.

  Sasha tried to help her.

  He could not move.

  Something held him from within, as if his own history were

  claiming him.

  The vision dragged him away.

  Darkness. Snow. Wind that cut the skin like tiny blades.

  A

  lost forest.

  He walked beside another man in a military uniform. Heavy

  breathing. Confusion. The contained panic of those who know they are

  completely alone.

  —We’re lost… —the companion said.

  Sasha felt the tension. The suspicion. That thick silence that

  precedes violence.

  And then…

  The shove.

  Brutal. Deliberate. Without hesitation.

  The ground vanished beneath his feet. The fall into a white void.

  The instant certainty of betrayal.

  He looked up.

  The colleague’s face appeared through the blizzard. There was no

  hatred. Only calculation. Necessity. As if Sasha were an obstacle

  that had to disappear for the other to survive.

  The snow devoured him.

  Absolute cold penetrated his soul.

  Sasha screamed inside the dacha, collapsing to his knees, gasping

  as if he had truly emerged from an icy grave.

  Ksenia tried to reach him, but an invisible barrier stopped her,

  vibrating like a membrane of air.

  Mariya struck the drum with savage fury.

  —The same story! —she cried with a voice that seemed to come

  from multiple throats—. Love sealed in blood! Betrayal! Death!

  Rebirth!

  The shadows stretched toward them like black roots.

  —Princess Sora… Prince Chinggis Yud… united beyond death.

  Separated again and again by the violence of men. Your spirits seek

  each other… and so do your enemies.

  The drum fell to the ground with a dry blow.

  All the fires

  went out at the same time.

  The darkness was total… for an eternal second.

  Then the moon flooded the room with its cold, spectral light.

  Mariya was hunched over, suddenly aged, breathing with difficulty.

  —Now you know —she whispered—. You did not meet by chance.

  You have found each other again.

  Ksenia finally managed to embrace Sasha. His skin was icy, but his

  heart pounded with a wild, almost violent force, as if he had

  returned from a place where he should not have survived.

  They both trembled.

  Not from cold.

  From the magnitude of

  what they had just touched.

  Outside, the moon reached its highest point.

  The forest

  remained silent.

  But it was no longer the silence of waiting.

  It was the

  reverent silence of something very ancient that has been invoked…

  and has answered.