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“I’m not sure the correct word to describe our connection,” Oshrun said.

“But yes, ultimately we can communicate with it—feel it like the way one senses the moods and intentions of a wild creature. We can send our moods and intentions to it as well.” She turned the staff so that the crystal caught different angles of light.

“As you can imagine, it is extremely sensitive to magic and we are extremely careful with it.”

“So that’s why you were alarmed when I reached for my awareness?”

“Magic here doesn’t work the way it does in your land.

There is no abundance of magic in the air to draw from.

Without this,” Oshrun tapped the crystal, “we wouldn’t be able to protect ourselves.

Your ‘awareness’ as you call it, could damage it or cause errors or crack it…

It wasn’t made for the way you use magic and we cannot risk you using it here. ”

Naya nodded. “I understand. I won’t access it again while I’m here.” She glanced up at the crystal in the ceiling of the chamber. “You have expanded its use in other ways, then? I notice you have crystals in all the chambers.”

“Yes. Those work to a lesser degree, but they are a form of protection. Over the years, we have honed the way the device works for other things we need to be comfortable, but obviously this one, the Khesh’s staff, is the most powerful.”

Naya nodded, thinking for a long moment. So they had ended up making the tool the Sy Dynasty had originally wanted and were using it to ensure their survival. Smart. She gestured back to the wall. “Please continue.”

Oshrun turned back to the wall. “When the tool overloaded, it was like breaking a dam. Wild magic began rushing toward the cities and villages across Tsashokra, attracted to the Omegas and destroying everything in its wake. The only place that remained relatively safe for Omegas was this canyon.”

Nausea flooded Naya with a rush of memories of the destruction in Onn Kkulma when she’d drawn wild magic there during her escape. The screams, the collapsing buildings, the chaos. And she had caused that in just one city. For it to happen across an entire region....

Silence fell between them as Naya tried to process everything she’d heard. The implications were staggering, the scale of tragedy almost incomprehensible. Finally, she asked in a voice barely above a whisper, “How many died?”

Oshrun’s face remained impassive, but something in her eyes flickered with sorrow.

“Millions. Entire villages vanished. Cities fell in hours. The Tri-Dynasty collapsed as people fled or perished. Omegas were very strong in all three dynasties and present in every family across the region. No one was spared the loss.”

The number was too vast to truly comprehend. Naya thought of the ruins she’d seen on her journey with Akoro, the abandoned towns reclaimed by desert.

“And the visitor?” Naya asked. “Did she survive?”

Oshrun’s expression grew grave. She moved to an image that made Naya’s heart clench—a solitary woman standing amidst countless prone figures. Bodies.

“She did,” Oshrun said softly. “She was shocked and distraught by the first wave of destruction, consumed by guilt over what her actions had helped trigger. She led the charge in finding Omegas who still survived, sending them to this community for safety.”

The weight of history pressed down on Naya’s shoulders as she stared at the painted figure—a woman who’d come to help, only to inadvertently cause a lingering catastrophe. She thought of her own actions, her own attempt to escape that had resulted in so much death in Onn Kkulma.

“What was her name?” Naya asked.

“We call her the First Mother. But in her own language, in your language, she was known as Kaharine.”

Naya didn’t recognize the name, but if this woman did come from the Southern Lands like Mama suspected, and was connected to her friend Kaari’s family line, then the name fit. All of the recent high chiefs and their mates had names beginning with K.

“After the wild magic attack, it took years to regain even a semblance of safety,” Oshrun said.

“The dead couldn’t be buried quickly enough.

Disease spread. Wild animals, drawn by the scent of death, came into areas they’d never ventured before.

More people died in the aftermath because of this.

Life was extremely difficult and it became necessary to pick up and move for food and safety. ”

She traced the outline of a caravan painted on the wall. “Nomadic living became the existence of the ssukkǔrian people for a long while. It was dangerous and precarious.”

“King Sy told me about the nomadic period.”

Oshrun’s jaw tightened. “I’m sure he did.

But did he tell you how many took advantage of the chaos?

How women and children were enslaved if they weren’t part of a protected tribe?

How, even within tribes, the threat of violence and enslavement was constant?

” Her voice hardened. “And all while wild magic continued to hunt Omegas.”

She moved along the wall to the next image. “Kaharine was instrumental during this time. Before the first wave, she had been visiting her own land when she could, but once the wild magic was unleashed, she couldn’t travel back. She devoted herself entirely to helping our people.

“She was thorough and saved many lives, and after a while the wild magic began to calm. It slowed down its attack on the main city. But then...” Oshrun sighed, her shoulders dropping slightly.

She moved to the next image, and Naya followed, apprehension tightening in her chest.

“Years later, Kaharine discovered that there were still Omegas under Sy Dynasty control. With Onn Kkulma becoming safer, the Sy were trying to reestablish what they once had, and of course that meant using Omegas again. But this time, they were using their power to take advantage of their own people—desperate survivors in need of help.”

Naya nodded. This was what Akoro had said.

“They took Omegas from tribes and started to enslave them again. Kaharine was furious about it. She spent over a year trying to figure out how to free the Omegas.” Oshrun’s expression darkened.

“The Omega community suggested caution, but Kaharine was driven.

The idea the Sy would rise again to the power they had infuriated all of us, but Kaharine became obsessed.

She worked on how to free every Omega from them to the detriment of her own health.

It was all she focused on. She barely ate, hardly slept.

“She made a plan and proceeded with it, despite our warnings to wait until we could do some more surveillance. She managed to get the Omegas out from their prison.”

Oshrun’s voice dropped. “But none of us realized that the Sy’s Omegas were the reason the wild magic had calmed. They were keeping it at bay.”

A memory stirred in Naya’s mind. “King Sy told me that someone from my land had removed the last remaining artifacts,” she said slowly. “That this caused the second wave.”

Oshrun scoffed, a bitter smile twisting her lips. “Artifacts,” she repeated with cutting precision. “Is that what he called them? He was referring to Omegas.”

Naya’s stomach dropped, a strange discomfort crawling up her spine that Akoro would describe Omegas in such a cold, objectified way.

Oshrun moved to the next image, this one more graphic than the others, showing figures collapsed on the ground, dark fluid pooling around their necks.

“Kaharine and the freed Omegas fled the palace,” Oshrun continued.

“But as they ran, all of the Omegas began to bleed from their necks, as if someone had cut them straight across with a blade.” Her finger traced the horizontal line across her own throat.

“It started slowly—just a trickle. But within a few moments, it was so heavy they couldn’t continue. They collapsed where they stood.”

She stared at the image for a long moment, her expression distant. “They all died. Every one of them.”

“How is that possible?” Naya whispered, horror tightening her chest. “How could they suddenly start bleeding like that?”

Oshrun turned to face her fully, her eyes boring into Naya’s with an intensity that made her want to step back.

Instead of answering immediately, the Omega leader stepped closer and lifted her chin.

With deliberate slowness, she drew a finger across the dark, faded scar that marked her own neck—a thin, horizontal line that Naya had noticed earlier.

Then, just as deliberately, she moved her hand and traced the same finger along the fresh scar on Naya’s cheek.

The connection slammed into Naya like a thousand trampling nnirae .

Her hand flew to her face, fingers pressing against the raised tissue of her wound as her mind raced to comprehend the horror of what Oshrun was implying.

“The-the proximity wound?” she whispered.

“The nnol ttaehh mael , yes,” Oshrun said. “This was how the Sy Dynasty ensured that Omegas didn’t escape, and if they did, they wouldn’t live long enough to tell anyone anything.”

Naya stared at her in horror. So the Omegas had borne the same kind of proximity cut that Akoro had given her—but theirs had been across their necks.

The Sy Dynasty had treated them like cattle, like livestock, not just marking them but ensuring they could never escape, even if they found the opportunity.

And Akoro had done the same thing to her.

Her stomach lurched with confusion and hurt. All this time, she’d thought of the cut as a possessive gesture of an entitled Alpha, a way to ensure she’d never be far from him. Never had she imagined it was part of a generations-old tradition of controlling and enslaving Omegas.

Naya turned away from the wall, her thoughts in turmoil. Akoro’s accusation against her land wasn’t wrong, just misdirected. Kaharine’s actions had caused both waves of destruction and created scars that marked generations, but it had nothing to do with the Lox Empire.