Seft's brothers secretly load his carrying basket with extra flints; he retaliates by throwing a flint and injuring Olf's leg.

Seft refuses to leave the gathering to guard the family pit, and his father Cog beats him severely with help from Olf.

The herder Elders hear testimony against Cog and banish him and his sons from the Monument gathering for the assault on Seft.

Farmer women returning from the Midsummer Rite discover that men have plowed the Break, the shared grazing corridor, into farmland.

Seft slips away from his family camp at night and joins Wun's mining crew to begin an independent life.

Farmer men stage a night attack on the wooden Monument, leaving the structure in ruins before escaping into the darkness.

Seft leads a group to Stony Valley to inspect the giant stones, but head carpenter Dallo declares moving them is impossible.

Troon forces the widowed Yana to become the partner of his aggressive teenage son Stam, overriding community objections.

Stam ambushes Han and Fell on the couple's remote island, shoots Han dead, and forces Pia to return with her infant son.

Scagga orders the cleared vegetation burned rather than carried away, and a wind change sends fire racing through West Wood.

Bez leads the remaining woodlanders in a revenge attack on the Monument and the herder village of Riverbend during the Midwinter Rite.

After Ello dies, the priestesses unanimously choose Joia as High Priestess; she accepts only on condition the Monument is rebuilt in stone.

Hundreds of volunteers transport a massive stone from Stony Valley on a wooden sled and erect it at the Monument.

When the farmer army blocks the final stone's route, Joia orders a cattle stampede that overwhelms the soldiers and kills Troon.

The completed stone Monument, ringed by 30 uprights, 30 crossbars, and five triliths, draws visitors from lands beyond the Great Sea.

Seft escapes his violent family and builds a new life with the herder community, eventually leading the craftspeople known as the cleverhands. Hostility between farmers and herders escalates after Troon plows up the Break, and a night attack destroys the wooden Monument that the priestesses use to track the seasons. Meanwhile, the woodlanders' forest is accidentally destroyed, driving them to desperate revenge and a massacre at the Midwinter Rite that tears the Great Plain apart. Joia becomes High Priestess and, with Seft's help, inspires hundreds of volunteers to transport a massive stone from a distant quarry to the Monument, proving the impossible is achievable. Troon leads a military campaign to stop the stone mission, but Joia defeats his army with a cattle stampede and kills him herself. With Troon gone and the Monument rebuilt in enduring stone, the Great Plain is transformed and visitors come from distant lands to witness what ordinary people achieved together.

The headline events that built a legend and transformed the Great Plain.

Joia guides Seft through the Midsummer crowd to reunite him with her sister Neen before the feast preparations begin.

With no replacement leather straps available, Seft carves a new lintel using peg-and-socket joints, impressing the visiting miner Wun.

Joia and her friends creep out before dawn and secretly watch the priestesses perform their sunrise ritual at the Monument.

Han secretly follows his sister Joia to the Monument's perimeter, alerting the priestesses and causing the whole group to be seized.

Olf sneaks into Wun's camp at night and attacks Seft; Seft slashes Olf's face with a flint knife, permanently blinding one eye.

Neen confides to Joia that she is pregnant with Seft's child and admits that she loves him.

Robbo kills the priestess Inka with a flint knife during a livestock dispute, an unprecedented act of sacrilege among the herder community.

Joia arranges for Inka's body to be displayed and publicly cremated at the Spring Rite, turning the murder into communal mourning.

Pia's father Alno dies of illness, and Troon immediately demands that Yana choose a new male partner within seven days.

Bez and Fell travel to the Monument, where Joia uses her calendar knowledge to predict the exact date of the deer migration.

Pia secretly passes a message of love to Han through a herder contact, leading them to arrange nightly meetings in the woods.

Bez personally leads a nighttime cattle raid on a herder herd, stealing a cow to feed his starving woodlander tribe.

Bez returns to West Wood to find the elderly woodlanders, children, and nursing mothers left there massacred by the farmers' Young Dogs.

Pia uses Duff as a visible figurehead to restructure farmer society, and the community publicly rejects Shen's bid for power.

Olf and Cam rob the family home while Seft is away; Neen makes him promise to cut his brothers out of his life.

The story's turning points are made possible by the bonds formed between its characters, beginning when Joia reunites Seft with Neen at the Midsummer gathering. Seft's quiet ingenuity earns him an escape from his abusive family, while Joia's curiosity leads her to spy on the priestesses and discover a lifelong calling. The pregnant Neen, the murder of the priestess Inka, and the death of Pia's father each raise the stakes for the communities of the Great Plain in different ways. Han's friendship with the woodlanders creates a chain of connection that turns tragic when the woodlanders are driven to cattle raids and their vulnerable members are massacred by Troon's men. In the aftermath, Pia quietly rebuilds farmer society from within, while Seft's criminal brothers make a final, damaging return.

The relationships and quieter moments that shaped the story's course.

Joia kisses a boy at the Midsummer revel without feeling, then impulsively kisses her aunt Kae and finds it unexpectedly meaningful.

High Priestess Soo reveals the Monument's secret pottery-disc counting system to Joia and invites her to become a novice priestess.

Scagga's followers set fire to the newly plowed farmland at the Break in herder retaliation, prompting Troon to vow revenge.

Seft returns to Riverbend and joyfully reunites with Neen, learning that she is pregnant with his child.

Yana warns Stam that if he ever strikes her she will blind him in his sleep, terrifying the young man into submission.

Dying High Priestess Soo publicly recommends Ello as her successor over Joia, leaving Joia's bid for leadership with no path forward.

Joia privately confronts Ello about coercing novice priestesses into sex and forces her to stop under threat of public exposure.

Pia tells Han she is pregnant and they agree to flee the Great Plain together to raise their child in freedom.

Seft unveils the completed wooden sled to Joia at Stony Valley, demonstrating that giant stones could be transported in days rather than months.

Bez abducts Stam and ritually executes him in West Wood, declaring that the deaths of Han and Fell have now been answered.

Scagga delivers a ruling limiting the stone mission to 90 volunteers; Joia and Seft privately agree to simply ignore the restriction.

When levers and ropes fail to raise the stone upright, Seft builds a tall wooden pulley frame that lifts it successfully.

Ani travels to Farmplace to warn Pia but is struck by a guard and violently expelled from farmer territory.

Joia confesses her full romantic history and love to Dee during the nine-stone mission, and they consummate their relationship that night.

Seft uses a timber frame and peg-and-socket joints to lift the first stone crossbar and lock it onto its paired uprights.

Joia's journey begins with a confusing but revealing kiss at the Midsummer revel and gains purpose when High Priestess Soo opens the door to the priestesses' secret world. The burning of the farmland by Scagga's followers and Seft's emotional reunion with a pregnant Neen set lives on new trajectories that will take decades to fully unfold. As the drought sharpens tensions, Yana's chilling threat to Stam and Joia's confrontation of Ello both show how determined women assert control within communities that resist them. Pia and Han's decision to flee together, Seft's invention of the wooden sled, and Bez's ritualized execution of Stam each mark irreversible turning points that redirect the narrative. The final drive to rebuild the Monument demands constant innovation, from defying Scagga's volunteer limit to inventing a wooden pulley frame, and culminates in the moment the first stone crossbar is locked permanently into place.