Zhoigar

Calm. Silent. Unafraid. She is a young Tibetan healer, more mountain-stone than flesh at first glance. She speaks little, istens to breath and pulse. She turns a small prayer wheel while she works, believes all suffering is the same, whether the armor is enemy or ally. From the plateau, the war looks simple. An Lushan rose in the east, Tang armies marched away to fight their own. The frontier thinned, fortresses grew quiet, the roads of Hexi lay open like unhealed scars. So the empire in the highlands movesand Shazhou found itself ringed by Tibetan camps and prayer flags fluttering beside siege engines. Shazhou—the province of desert, once a way-station, becomes a prize. Armies encircle it. Banners rise like a forest of black spears around the city walls. She came with those armies, not as a soldier, but as a vow given human shape. Her lamas taught her to see war as another turning of the wheel of life and death, not a reason to stop being compassionate...