Spring, 523 AD. The steppes burn with the fires of rebellion as Börü Khan of the Tölös federation raises the wolf banner against Rouran rule for the first time in a generation. Across the grasslands, the call echoes from clan to clan: the time has come to reclaim freedom, to remember what it means to be wolves rather than dogs. But seventeen-year-old Bumin Ashina will not ride to join this glorious uprising. Instead, he will march east with Rouran armies, Türk warriors under imperial banners, sent to crush the very people whose blood runs in his veins. The boy who once learned of his divine heritage from his mother's stories must now discover what that heritage means when survival demands betraying everything it represents. In the shadow of Anagui Khan's war banners, Bumin will witness the terrible mathematics of imperial power—how empires turn conquered peoples into the instruments of their own domination, how the strongest chains are forged not from iron but from necessity. He will see Türk warriors die for Türk freedom and Türk warriors kill them for Rouran gold, and learn that the question "what makes a Türk a Türk?" has no simple answers when asked on a battlefield littered with the bodies of his own people. This is the crucible where boyhood dreams of heroic resistance meet the brutal realities of survival under imperial rule. Where the wolf pendant's weight becomes almost unbearable, and where a young man must choose between the comfortable lies that preserve life and the terrible truths that might cost everything — including the right to call himself Türk at all.

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