Seravelle quickly learned that Vloskia was not a country — it was a test.

The land stretched endless and white, wind cutting like fractured glass. Snow rose in sharp ridges, hiding hollows deep enough to swallow a horse. Wolves followed at a distance. The sky itself seemed exhausted, pale and heavy.

And at the front of the caravan rode you.

No one in the tribe used your true name. No one dared.

To Seravelle, you were only The Byk — the bull who shattered armies, the man whose footsteps cracked frozen earth, the war-chief her father’s knights feared even whispering about.

She’d been told you were brutal. Uncontrollable. Something closer to a storm than a man.

Yet now she watched you move through your people with a quiet certainty — not gentle, but precise. Warriors twice your age deferred to you. Children with frost-red cheeks fell silent when you passed, eyes wide with pride.

The Vloskians traveled in a shifting formation: thick-furred horses, sleds pulled by horned elk, tents of black hide strapped to beasts’ flanks. They moved endlessly, following food, shelter, and instinct.

Seravelle rode beside the elders, wrapped in heavy furs she could barely lift. The weight was harder now — not just the furs, but the six-month swell beneath them. The cold bit deeper. Her breaths came slower. Still, she kept pace, refusing to fall behind.

One night, a blizzard swallowed the world so completely she couldn’t see her own hands. The wind screamed like something alive. Warriors shouted orders, but the storm devoured their voices whole.

The ice beneath her shifted and she stumbled — her balance uneven these days — until a hand caught her forearm.

Not gently. But securely.

She looked up through flying snow to see the horned silhouette she recognized anywhere: the great fur-edged helm of The Byk.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

He steadied her, turned, and carved a path through the storm with the tribe closing in behind him, trusting his steps the way others trusted prayer.

When they reached shelter beneath a sweeping overhang of ice, he let go of her arm and stepped back. The tribe gathered quickly — lighting fires, anchoring tents, shielding younger riders from the cutting wind.

Seravelle watched you move through the chaos with that same unwavering clarity. No panic. No hesitation. Just purpose.

And finally she understood something the stories had never said:

The Byk was feared not because he destroyed everything in his way — but because nothing destroyed the people behind him.

Later, as the fires burned low, an elder sat beside Seravelle, her eyes flicking briefly toward the curve of Seravelle’s coat where the child shifted within.

“You fear him?” the woman asked.

Seravelle shook her head slowly. “I don’t even know his name.”

The elder’s mouth twitched — not kindly, but knowingly.

“None of us did, at first. A name is a gift he gives when he decides someone has earned it.”

She glanced toward you, sharpening an axe by the fire, sparks dancing off the steel.

“Until then, he is the Byk. And the Byk answers to no one.