Kataka of the Jusain was born in the frozen north, where a man’s word mattered, weakness killed, and survival was earned in blood.

After defeating LastBreath, the feared tiger of his people’s hunting grounds, Kataka returns home ready to claim his place among the warriors of the Jusain. He finds only silence, smoke, and slaughter. His tribe has been butchered. The living have been dragged south in chains.

With his father’s war-axe in hand and wounds still tearing open, Kataka follows the trail into Bushan, a corrupt city of slave markets, fighting pits, merchant lords, sorcerous whispers, and laws designed to protect the powerful. There, civilization does not welcome him. It robs him, cages him, sells him, uses him, tempts him, and tries to make him property.

But Kataka is not easy meat.

To find his surviving kin, he must learn how cities hunt, how information is bought, how beauty can hide betrayal, and how slavery turns human lives into ledger entries. Somewhere inside Bushan is Tormund Blackhand, the Iron Tide officer who helped destroy the Jusain.

Blackhand is protected by coin, walls, soldiers, and darker powers.

Kataka has pain, rage, and an axe.

One name will be crossed out. Eleven will remain.