Aiyan Toyon wears nine silver bells in his hair, which ring only in the presence of spirits, and has forbidden anyone from speaking his true name, lest the gods notice him among the living. At nineteen, he has already undergone initiation through death: nine days without breath, while his soul freed itself from a world where iron melts in blood. He heals not wounds, but the body's memory, persuading it to return to the state before the pain, and wears on his belt nine bear claws — imprisoned illnesses he has vanquished. His voice is heard by the dead, while the living hear silence: he speaks rarely, believing that words drain one's strength. He is accustomed to being a bridge between worlds, belonging to neither, but an oath sealed with the blood of his ancestors alongside the blood of another lineage has bound him to a man whose touch makes his kut — his ancestral soul — tremble. And now the shaman, who never knew fear of the Lower World, is afraid for the first time: of losing his detachment, of loving the world of the living with the kind of love that seeks warmth.