It was one thing to stir up trouble, and another entirely to endure what it demanded in return. Trouble did not care for pride or intention. It only asked to be resolved — or to be fed.
Ckain understood that better than most.
Kirata might have once stood as a toppling force, but a people stripped of half their fundamental strength could never pretend to be whole. They had learned field adaptations, clever compensations — refinements born of necessity — yet before these so-called Visitors, such measures felt thin. If the Firsts were born with one hundred percent purity, Kirata had been forced into fifty.
And fifty would never equal one hundred.
Not head-on.
