Miryem takes over her father's moneylending business and collects unpaid debts from the townspeople, rescuing her family from poverty.

Wanda begins working in Miryem's household to pay off her father's debt, finding safety from his violence and abuse.

The Staryk king leaves six silver coins on Miryem's doorstep and demands she turn the silver into gold.

Miryem has a jeweler craft the Staryk silver into a ring and sells it to the Duke of Vysnia for gold coins.

The Staryk king delivers sixty silver coins and declares Miryem must change silver to gold three times or become his queen.

The Staryk king takes Miryem as his queen after she completes three challenges and brings her to his glass mountain kingdom.

Wanda's father arranges her marriage to a neighbor for alcohol, but Gorek dies in the ensuing fight, forcing Wanda and Sergey to flee.

Irina marries Tsar Mirnatius despite knowing him to be cruel, as her father uses enchanting Staryk silver jewelry to secure the match.

Miryem seizes the Staryk crown in the royal court and transforms it to gold, proving her power to the hostile Staryk courtiers.

Miryem and Irina meet in the Staryk lands and plan to lure both the Staryk king and Chernobog into a mutual confrontation.

At Basia's wedding, the Staryk king fights Chernobog and binds the fire demon inside the fireplace using Chernobog's own name.

Wanda throws a silver chain around the Staryk king while he is distracted fighting Chernobog, successfully binding the fairy king.

Miryem enters the underground tunnels, bargains three answers from the Staryk king, and frees him by transforming Irina's silver necklace to gold.

Miryem transforms all the silver stored in the mountain tunnels into gold, using its trapped sunlight to shrink and defeat Chernobog.

The Staryk king formally asks Miryem's family for permission to court her, and they wed in a traditional Jewish ceremony.

Miryem Mandelstam rescues her family from poverty by taking over her father's failing moneylending business, but her boastful claim that she can turn silver into gold draws the attention of the fearsome Staryk king. He tests her three times before claiming her as his reluctant queen and bringing her to his glass mountain kingdom. While Miryem navigates her strange new life among the Staryk, Irina is forced by her scheming father into a dangerous marriage to the demon-possessed Tsar Mirnatius. The two queens form an unlikely alliance, devising a plan to pit the Staryk king and the fire demon Chernobog against each other at a wedding celebration. After Wanda captures the Staryk king and Chernobog threatens all of the Staryk people, Miryem defies Irina's plan and rescues her husband, then uses her power to destroy Chernobog from within his own mountain. The story concludes with both queens triumphant — Irina expels the demon from her husband's body, and Miryem earns the Staryk king's genuine respect, choosing to marry him on her own terms.

Miryem's rise from moneylender to Staryk queen and the defeat of Chernobog.

Sergey poaches a white rabbit belonging to the Staryk and falls into a catatonic, unresponsive state as punishment.

Wanda boils bark from the white tree into tea and forces it down Sergey's throat, reviving him from his Staryk-induced trance.

Miryem visits her grandfather in Vysnia, receives his validation of her moneylending skills, and borrows capital to expand her business.

Miryem's mother convinces Miryem to hire Sergey as a nighttime guard to deflect potential anti-Semitic suspicion about the Staryk visits.

Isaac crafts a Staryk silver necklace that makes Irina appear captivating when worn, and the Duke pays a hundred gold pieces for it.

The driver Oleg attacks Miryem at knifepoint to steal the Staryk's gold; the Staryk king appears behind him and frostbites his neck.

Isaac crafts a crown from Staryk silver as Irina's dowry, for which the Duke of Vysnia pays a thousand gold pieces.

Stepon arrives alone at the Mandelstam home after his siblings flee and is immediately taken in by Miryem's parents without hesitation.

Miryem orders her servants to dump the silver from the largest storeroom into underground tunnels, reducing the amount she must transform.

Miryem offers to turn her servants' silver to gold as thanks, unknowingly binding Flek, Tsop, and Shofer as her bondsmen.

The Staryk king tells Miryem her gold has been strengthening Staryk winters, making her unknowingly responsible for the deadly spring snowfall.

Chernobog rises from the fireplace at the wedding and demands the bound Staryk king surrender his true name.

The Staryk king refuses to give Chernobog his name, declaring his people will die with their names locked in their hearts.

Irina leads a weakened Chernobog through a mirror into the Staryk lands, redirecting his destructive hunger toward the Staryk people.

Irina slides a Staryk silver ring onto Mirnatius's finger, forcing Chernobog out of the tsar's body and ending his possession permanently.

Behind the main plot, smaller but crucial events build the world and shape the characters' fates. Wanda's brother Sergey nearly dies for poaching a white rabbit, and the ordeal of saving him deepens the bond between the siblings and sets them on a path toward solidarity. Miryem's visits to her grandfather and her clever handling of Staryk silver establish her business reputation and inadvertently set the stage for Irina's transformation and arranged marriage. As Miryem settles into the Staryk kingdom, she unknowingly binds her servants as bondsmen with a well-meaning gesture of gratitude, dramatically raising the stakes of her impossible silver-to-gold challenge. At the wedding, Chernobog's demand for the Staryk king's name and the king's fierce refusal reveal the true rules of Staryk power and identity. The pool concludes with Irina's two decisive moves — drawing Chernobog into the Staryk lands and then expelling the demon from her husband's body — which end the possession that has threatened two kingdoms.

The supporting moments that shaped the three heroines and the world around them.

Josef sighs that his daughter truly can turn silver to gold, and Miryem realizes her boast in the woods first attracted the Staryk king.

Miryem travels the Staryk road for the first time when her driver falls into an enchanted sleep on the journey home.

The Staryk king explains that Miryem's demand for payment invoked the laws of high magic, leaving him honor-bound to offer her marriage.

The white tree silently touches each sibling in farewell and places a nut in Stepon's hand just before Wanda and her brothers flee their home.

Irina hides in the Staryk forest and watches through a river's reflection as Chernobog seizes control of Mirnatius's body in a violent rage.

The Staryk king knocks a poisoned goblet from Miryem's hands on their wedding night, revealing he had initially intended to kill her.

Miryem trades away her marital rights in exchange for three honest answers per night from the Staryk king.

The Mandelstams, lost in the woods, stumble upon Wanda and Sergey sheltering in the witch's house, reuniting the two families.

The servant Tsop reveals that Miryem's impossible feat of magic has granted the Staryk king the power to bend time as a return.

Mirnatius reveals he never chose Chernobog — his mother bargained away his soul to the demon before he was even born.

As the Staryk king is led away in chains, he bows to Miryem and acknowledges she has given fair return for every insult.

Miryem's grandfather reveals secret tunnels beneath the city, and Miryem resolves to enter them alone and rescue the Staryk king herself.

Miryem realizes inside the tunnels that the Staryk king sacrificed everything for his people, and her desire to see him dead disappears.

Miryem plunges her hand through a washtub of water and presses Stepon's nut into Irina's hand across the barrier between worlds.

Josef suggests a Jewish blessing for fruit trees in bloom, and Miryem uses it to call a white tree from the seed.

Key revelations and turning points drive the deeper arc beneath the story's surface events. Miryem's journey from boastful moneylender to true Staryk queen is marked by hard-won discoveries about the nature of high magic, the significance of names, and the true reason her husband has been hoarding gold at the cost of mortal lives. Irina's discovery that a demon controls her husband from within transforms her from a passive political pawn into a calculating strategist. Quieter moments prove equally decisive — the white tree's farewell gift to Stepon, a servant's explanation of reciprocal magic, and a father's gentle suggestion of a prayer each shift the course of the story. The pool ends with the most powerful revelation of all: that Miryem's real gift is not her magic alone, but her willingness to act without knowing whether she will succeed, embodied in the moment she calls a living tree from a seed using only a blessing.

The discoveries and emotional shifts that transform the characters' understanding of themselves and each other.