First came a thin line—almost invisible, like a crack on ice. Then it began expanding, defining itself, as though someone unseen were carving it from the very fabric of space.

  The portal's oval grew slowly—cut through the air line by line, as though an invisible hand traced an outline on transparent canvas. The void within shimmered with silvery radiance, and through it emerged vague outlines of the visualised place.

  None of those around froze. None gasped. None fled, frightened by the spectacle of magic. They simply continued talking, bustling, sorting supplies. The portal was invisible to all save two orcs. Ayan had added only his instructor to his Etheric link.

  At the sight of the portal, Orgatai experienced mixed feelings.

  On one hand—relief. Almost physical, like breath after prolonged suffocation. The scroll would save them days of travel. Days which Ainur might no longer have. Each hour's delay could cost her life—or something worse. He knew the Order. Knew what they did to prisoners, especially those who wielded Ether.

  On the other hand—vexation. Burning, almost angry. Why hadn't they used the scroll immediately? Why hadn't Ayan used it the very moment he'd emerged from the time loop? Why hadn't they bolted to Aksu right then, losing not a minute?

  Orgatai checked himself. He understood perfectly—it would have changed nothing.

  Even if they'd used the scroll immediately after the lad's exit from there, they still wouldn't have made it. Ainur and Yernazar were already gone from the aul. They'd been taken the moment the lad emerged. The Order acted swiftly and brutally—as always.

  Ayan's plan was simple to the point of crudity.

  Jump through the portal to the designated place—there, where the Order's caravan would be forced to pass. A known place, the only path leading through the winter steppe. There to create a barricade, force the caravan to stop. Then notify Kaisar that his son and Orgatai's granddaughter were held captive by the Order.

  Everything simple. Everything clear.

  The portal finally took full form—an oval the size of a small house, its edges shimmering with faint silvery radiance, visible only to the two of them. Inside swirled outlines, but not frightening—rather enticing, promising passage.

  Orgatai exhaled and looked at Ayan.

  "Ready?"

  The lad nodded silently, adjusted his cloak's strap at his neck and stepped forward without a second's hesitation. His figure touched the oval's edge—and vanished, as though swallowed by water.

  The old man followed him.

  Stepping through the portal, Ayan felt for an instant absolute emptiness—not cold, not darkness, but precisely the absence of everything. As though the world had momentarily ceased to exist, then reassembled anew, but in a different place.

  When his feet touched solid surface, the first sensation was wind.

  Not simply strong—furious, vicious, as though alive. It struck his chest with such force that Ayan barely stayed on his feet, swayed, spread his legs wider. The freezing blast sliced his face, crept beneath his hood, found every gap in his clothing and bit into his skin with icy needles. His eyes immediately filled with tears from the cold and stinging, his breath caught—the air was so frigid it scorched his throat from within.

  Ayan squeezed his eyes shut, covered his face with his hand and tried to look around.

  Through the horizontally flying snow he managed to discern he stood on the edge. The edge of a depression.

  Enormous, ancient, stretching across the steppe as far as the eye could see. This was no gully with its gentle, sloping edges and crumbling sides. Not a gorge hewn by water into rock. Rather—a subsidence, as though the earth itself had grown tired of bearing this burden and sagged beneath the weight of ages.

  The depression's edges were steep, rocky, dropping sharply downward. Snow lay in layers—thin on the heights, where wind tore it away without pause, and thick below, where it settled, accumulated, transformed into dense drifts. The depression's floor was lost somewhere far below, fifty metres perhaps, maybe more—difficult to judge precisely through the curtain of snow and mist raised by the wind.

  The horizon vanished in a white haze. The depression stretched in both directions—endless, monotonous, straight. Only occasionally did it veer aside in a smooth curve, only to soon return to its former direction. Like a gigantic scar on the body of the steppe, inflicted by something so ancient and powerful that even time couldn't heal it.

  Ayan recalled Zhalgaztur's words about glaciers—about those times when the north was covered with a thickness of ice so enormous that earth beneath it sagged, cracked, left wounds. This depression was one of such wounds.

  Beside him materialised Orgatai, stepping from the shimmering oval of the portal. The old man immediately crouched lower, instinctively sheltering from the wind, and covered his face with his hand. The portal behind his back slowly began to collapse, as though an invisible hand were erasing its edges, returning space to its former state.

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  "Howling Death," Orgatai shouted through the wind's howl, almost inaudibly. "Now do you understand why it's called that?"

  Ayan nodded, though the nod was barely visible beneath his hood. Wind here didn't simply blow—it howled, moaned, roared. The sound was so piercing and constant it seemed the steppe itself issued this cry. And this howling never ceased for a second. It changed pitch, intensified, weakened, but never quietened completely.

  Standing on the depression's edge was impossible. Wind tore one off one's feet, stole warmth, sliced skin with snow and ice. Remaining here longer than several hours meant freezing to death.

  But below, at the depression's floor, everything was different.

  There the wind weakened—didn't vanish, but lost its murderous force. There one could walk, breathe, survive. Snow there also lay in a thick layer, sometimes reaching chest height, but at least it lay beneath one's feet rather than flying into one's eyes, trying to gouge them out.

  Road of Life.

  The only path through the winter steppe. The only place where caravans could pass without perishing from cold and wind.

  And precisely here they'd set their ambush.

  Orgatai leant over the lad, moved closer. Wind struck his back, tore at the folds of his cloak, ripped off his hood. The old man tried to shout loudly—but knew his words would be instantly torn away and carried off by the wind.

  "Begin building the barricade!"

  Ayan heard. Clearly, distinctly, as though Orgatai spoke straight into his ear. His heritages worked flawlessly. And the lad had long since learnt to filter sounds—separating, for instance, the roar of wind from his instructor's voice. Sounds divided in his perception into layers: the steppe's howl, the crackle of ice, the old man's breathing. Everything separate, everything distinguishable.

  He nodded and moved to the very edge of the depression.

  The earth underfoot was hard, frozen through. Snow crunched, gave way beneath his body's weight. Ayan stopped at the boundary, where the slope dropped downward, and exhaled. Before him opened the Seal's inventory, his inner space. Reaching for the first item, he retrieved it.

  The log appeared instantly.

  Thick, unprocessed, three metres in length. Ayan cast it from his hands in one movement—wood materialised directly in them, the system didn't work otherwise with heavy objects. The log crashed down, rolled along the rocks, leaving deep scores on stones. Then a second. A third. A tenth.

  Logs of varying sizes tumbled down one after another. Thin, thick, short, long—everything they'd managed to prepare in Aksu. Some rolled evenly, others overturned, stuck in snowdrifts, wedged across the slope. Heaps grew, interwove, forming a chaotic barrier across the entire depression.

  Orgatai stood nearby, watching, assessing. He didn't help—there was no point. But the old man estimated volume, strength, weak points. When the final log rolled down and crashed into the already formed barricade, he slowly nodded.

  "Enough. Now water."

  The plan was simple to the point of primitiveness. Pile enough wood so that dismantling would take a day. Better yet, two. But they weren't going to rely on chance. Wood could be hauled away, chopped, burnt. Ice—no. Ice didn't burn, couldn't be shifted by hand, couldn't be chopped through with an axe in an hour. Ice would transform the barricade into a monolith.

  Ayan again mentally touched the Seal's icon.

  Clay pots appeared beside him—dozens, covered with rags, filled to the brim. Water from several open ones spilt onto the snow, instantly beginning to freeze in the frost. The lad grabbed the first, lifted it above his head and hurled it down. The pot exploded against the logs; water sprayed in all directions, seeped between the wood, began filling the gaps.

  Orgatai joined in. The old man moved more slowly, but more precisely—aimed at weak points, there where the logs held loosely. Water flooded the structure layer by layer. It flowed across the wood, ran downward, filled voids. And with each minute the cold did its work.

  The first crusts of ice appeared within several minutes. Water thickened, clouded, lost its fluidity. Then froze completely, binding the logs tight. The barricade transformed into a single icy mass, stretched across the entire depression.

  Then followed another batch, and another, and another. Pots tumbled into the chasm like projectiles. Water sprayed, spattered, found its way into every crack, every gap between logs. Frost seized upon it greedily, instantly gripping the surface with a thin crust, then deeper—to the very depths of the barricade.

  When the final pot flew down and shattered to pieces, Ayan slowly straightened, swept the strand of hair from his brow and looked at his handiwork.

  A monster. A genuine monster of interwoven wood and ice, completely blocking the Road of Life, to the very edge of the depression. Four metres high, as wide as the entire passable section of the gorge. Logs jutted in all directions, shackled in icy bonds, merged into a single uneven mass. Dismantle this in a day? Impossible. In two? With enormous difficulty, and only if one knew what to tackle.

  "Enough," Orgatai tossed out curtly, dusting off his gloves. He swept his gaze across the barricade once more, as though assessing the final details, then nodded to himself with satisfaction.

  The old man turned and silently accepted a new scroll from Ayan. The portal opened more slowly than before—Orgatai struggled noticeably to hold the image of the needed place in his head. The oval cut through the air uncertainly, edges flickering slightly, leading somewhere downward, to another section of the road.

  Stepping through it, they found themselves at the depression's floor, but in an entirely different stretch of the path.

  Here it was noticeably quieter. Not silent, but quite tolerable. Wind carried from above as a muffled rumble; snow didn't lash the face, didn't work its way behind the collar. The Road of Life stretched beneath their feet—well-trodden, firmly trampled, covered only with a thin layer of freshly fallen snow.

  Tracks.

  Many tracks. Sentient beings, animals, sledge runners. Everything merged into one wide, furrowed scar, running along the depression in one direction. Orgatai crouched, removed his glove, ran his rough palm across the snow, cautiously touched the edge of a hoof print, as though checking its freshness.

  "Ours," he exhaled hollowly, not raising his head. "Passed quite recently. Half a day, no more."

  Ayan gazed silently at the tracks, clenching and unclenching his fingers. He didn't ask how his instructor determined this. Perhaps by the trace of horseshoes, perhaps some other way. He himself wasn't yet strong at reading tracks, but right now they had no time to be distracted by training.

  The old man rose, dusted off his palms, straightened his back with a slight crunch.

  "If we hurry—we'll catch them by nightfall," he added confidently.

  Despite the fact that all the Torks and their baggage moved mounted, their speed of travel was in any case rigidly limited by the slow pace of the Order of the Twelve's column on foot.