Chapter Forty-One

After trudging through snow and securing horses, Mikail, Sora, and Euyn arrive in Loptra. Their first priority is proper winter gear for Sora, whose makeshift boot wrappings have barely held after the avalanche. Sora chooses a dress house, where her easy charm wins the staff, though Mikail senses the grief and anger she carries.

Mikail leaves Sora to shop and deposits Euyn at an inn, assuming Euyn will lay traps and pace. Mikail reflects bitterly on Euyn’s silence about Sora’s parents not selling her, which allowed Sora to believe the worst, and on Euyn’s broader moral compromises.

Walking through bustling, modern Loptra, Mikail heads to the red-painted messenger house to send coded letters. Instead, he receives two eagle posts already waiting from Zahara. He decodes the first single-word message—“Alive”—confirming Tiyung survives in Idle Prison, and he weighs Tiyung’s earlier mercy in Oosant as a sign of better rule than Euyn’s ruthless calculus.

Mikail then opens a second, red-enveloped palace letter and decodes: “She is ashes.” The revelation that Daysum is dead shocks him. He fights for breath, reeling from the loss of a girl he never met and from the implications for their succession plans and alliances.

Alone at the counter, Mikail steadies himself. Tiyung’s survival preserves one path forward, but Daysum’s death narrows options and hardens his distrust of Euyn. Mikail prepares to return to Sora with the weight of new political stakes and private grief.