Ciri falls unconscious out of a rip in the sky above a vast desert.

Jaskier arrives at the ruins of Aretuza, hearing the screams of the wounded and trapped. He finds Radovid sniffling in the corner of a room strewn with dead soldiers.

Radovid fills Jaskier in on what Vilgefortz did.

Jaskier gives him a note to access a safe house in Oxenfort. Radovid wants him to come with him but Jaskier warns the war will be nothing compared to Geralt’s wrath.

Radovid insists he can support Jaskier and prove he’s more than a mask. Jaskier says maybe.

Radovid tells him to look for Geralt because the tower shattering probably killed Ciri.

Jaskier finds Yennefer. She tells him Ciri is missing and Triss is taking Geralt to Brokilon to heal.

In Brokilon, Mother Eithné tends to Geralt’s wounds but Milva sniffs him and assesses that he’s not wounded, he’s dying.

Geralt mutters that she shouldn’t waste her time on him. He’s lost Ciri.

Ciri wakes up in the desert. She sees the red sand and realizes she’s in Korath, also known as the Frying Pan. She resets her dislocated shoulder.

She tries to activate her locator token. A cloaked figure watches from a distance but disappears when she turns.

She tries to pick a direction to travel. She passes out. She wakes up burned and remembers she has a jar of salve. She starts putting it on her face but ends up eating it for its moisture.

She drops the jar and keeps moving. She walks through the night. As the sun comes up, she finds the jar and realizes she’s gone in a circle.

She sees footprints in the sand and suspects there is someone else there. She follows the footsteps.

She sees what looks like a pool of water. When she scoops it up, it’s sticky. Confused, she sits there and then hears frantic neighing. Looking around, she sees a unicorn. The ground around her moves and spikes emerge around her. Leaping just in time, she avoids the sand monster whose mouth she was sitting above.

She acquaints herself with the unicorn, naming them Little Horse. He won’t let her touch him and sets a quick pace, expecting her to follow.

Approaching some outcropping rocks, she sees a desert lizard and tracks it to its den. The cloaked figure appears again in the distance. Ciri finds lizard eggs and eats them.

A voice speaks from behind her. She turns to see her mother, Pavetta. Pavetta voices all the insecurities Ciri harbors about herself and then disappears when Ciri confronts her with her abandonment.

She catches the lizard, bashes it against the rocks, and eats it.

It makes her horribly sick. She keeps walking, seeing visions of Geralt and Yennefer being attacked and wounded. She hears Pavetta and her grandmother Calanthe’s voices. She vomits.

The cloaked figure appears to her in a vision, sitting on a table in an empty room that echoes with men’s laughter. They talk, the cloaked figure revealing she was also an insane princess and that Ciri could change and end the system that has betrayed them both.

The figure disappears.

Ciri wakes up, huddled by the rocks, hearing Little Horse neigh. He lets her pet him to prove he’s real and then leads the way to an oasis. Ciri’s able to detect a vein of water and taps into it to drink.

They travel on together, Ciri occasionally stopping to catch and eat a bug.

Climbing through a ravine scattered with human skeleton remains, Ciri hears Calanthe’s voice again. The vision of her grandmother berates and belittles her. Ciri stands up to her and tries to strike her only to smash her fist into a rock.

As she binds her hand that evening, the cloaked figure returns. She reveals she is Falka, a princess who was denied the throne and rose up with the common folk to kill her father and family. She was killed by being burned at the stake and history refers to her as a demon.

Falka advises her to use her power to destroy the system designed to destroy them.

Little Horse wakes her up. As they travel, Ciri senses something’s off just before a monster emerges from the ground and attacks them.

When the monster wounds Little Horse, Ciri attacks it with magic and then climbs it and uses a scale to bash its head in.

Little Horse’s wound is infected. They travel on, but it gets worse. Ciri despairs.

Falka returns. She points out the fire is a source of Chaos that Ciri can use to heal Little Horse.

Ciri heals Little Horse with the fire magic. He leaps to his feet and runs away. Falka encourages her to embrace the fire magic. She pushes Ciri directly into the fire and it engulfs her and energizes her.

She sees her enemies – Vilgefortz, Cahir – dead or imprisoned. Then Falka describes how those she loves will use her and trick her so they must be destroyed too. Ciri cries to see Jaskier, Yennefer, and Geralt tortured and killed. She refuses to accept her power if it means giving up her family.

She relinquishes her powers and the fire explodes.

A group of men find Ciri passed out at the edge of the desert. One identifies her as the one being looked for. They carry her off.

Jaskier walks through a wood looking for the elves of Brokilon. He calls out in Elven and they emerge, armed and ready to kill him. He declares himself a friend of Geralt’s.

He sits down to wait until they take him to Geralt. He sings an Elven song and brings the scouts to tears.

Milva arrives and tells him to cut it out and come with her.

She points out the hut where Geralt is. Jaskier is shocked at his condition. Geralt wants Jaskier’s news. Jaskier assures him Yennefer is fine but Ciri is missing. He reports the Nilfgaardian forces are burning villages to the ground looking for Ciri.

Jaskier shows him a proclamation handbill, announcing the celebration planned for when the Princess Cirilla arrives in Nilfgaard.

Geralt sighs.