Ursus is an empire that has endured a thousand years of winter. As dazzling as its iron order and noble glory are, in their shadow miners, commoners, and students freeze to death without a sound.

In a hearing chamber in Sankt Konburg. The nobles who gathered to judge the 'Katorga Incident' end up grabbing each other by the collar and brawling instead. Outside the assembly hall, hundreds of students stand silently, without flags or slogans.

And a girl standing in the witness box begins to tell the story of how people abandoned in a junkyard beyond a single wall became 'us.'

The Hearing Where Nobles Started a Brawl

The first witness is Absinthe (real name Zoya), daughter of an officer who died in the line of duty. A girl who hides warmth behind a cynical tongue.

What she recalls is the Student Union Congress a few days earlier. Everyone agrees they should rescue their captured comrade Lirea, but they nearly come to blows again over the method—the 'Guard' faction wants to storm the prison, while the 'Study Society' faction urges caution.

Besides her, the vagrant Ukusik and chairwoman Olga take the stand in turn. Each of them a voice that lived through the same winter from a different place.

There, arriving late, is Zima (real name Sonia). Leader of the self-government group from Chernobog, a person whose fists move faster than her words. Her level-headed strategist Istina (real name Anna) is with her too.

Chairwoman Olga's compromise is this: don't strike the prison—instead, surround the winter ballroom unarmed and simply protest. Zima thinks it's reckless, but to protect the self-government group, she ultimately raises her hand in agreement.

They Surrounded the Ballroom, and Found Three Assassins

Leto (real name Natalia) infiltrates the ball under the guise of a fallen count's heiress, to dig for information. The elderly noblewoman Madam Vabrozova, who dotes on her like a daughter, gently urges her to 'learn politics, and simply enjoy herself.'

Madam's teaching is to 'blend into the crowd.' At the whisper that a single signature could restore her fallen parents and protect her friends, Leto feels there is still much she has to learn.

In that gorgeous hall, Leto sees Pavlovich, the privy councilor in charge of Katorga, for the first time. A man who hides calculation behind a friendly smile.

Meanwhile, a ridiculous commotion breaks out below. A clumsy assassin targeting the baron runs into another assassin targeting the duke, and the two bicker with each other. Then there's a third shadow that silently grabs only a kitchen knife and disappears.

At the appointed hour, the entire city of Sankt Konburg loses power. In the darkness, the students' chants erupt.

The Emperor Vanished from the Ball

In fact, that night explosives were discovered in the ballroom's main hall, and one person quietly vanished without a trace—none other than the Emperor of Ursus.

It's revealed through a conversation between Chairman Vit and the Guard called the 'Emperor's Blade.' The Blade evacuated the Emperor through an underground passage, but deliberately chose not to hold him back—saying, 'let him see the Ursus outside the window with his own eyes.'

Outside, the protest turns into a tragedy. Military police who show up late pour out tear gas and trample the students. Gummy (real name Rada) freezes when she spots her missing father's wristwatch on an officer's wrist.

Zima, who rushes in to save Gummy, ends up caught herself—ordering Rosa (real name Rosalind) and Istina to take everyone out in her place.

Not Enough Prisons, So the Young Masters Get Thrown in the Junkyard

Most of the arrested students were children of the nobility. The troubled police chief, rather than putting them in a proper prison, dumps them all wholesale into the Katorga District, the quarantine zone ruled by Pavlovich.

There, the Offbeat Alliance led by Antosha was already fighting. Young revolutionaries determined to burn oppression out by its roots. By his side, his commoner-born friend Matvey always stands silently.

There's also Ukusik, the nameless vagrant Antosha brought from the police station. They were the first to give this girl a 'place where she wouldn't be driven away' and a name. So to Ukusik, this place was the first 'home' she'd ever had.

Zima and Antosha bump fists once and promise to cooperate. Their paths differ, but to survive this hell, they need each other. Rosa crawls through a power conduit alone to sneak into the quarantine zone and reunite with Zima.

Went to Rescue, Killed an Innocent Man

The gang called the 'Sixteen Heroes,' who control the quarantine zone, sorted and killed students by their price under the name of the 'Auction.' The Study Society's leader Leonid also never returned that way.

Zima organizes a rescue team and brings her comrades back. But in the process, two terrified students mistake a man stripping clothes off a corpse for a robber and kill him. He was an ordinary laborer collecting the belongings of the dead for his starving family.

The students offer everything they have to the wife who collapses before her husband's body, but all that comes back is hollow hatred.

Only Matvey, left standing alone, approaches her and quietly tells her that her husband wasn't a robber, but a man who fought to the end for his family.

To Antosha, who says 'only fight for those worth it,' Zima answers that no matter their status, she won't abandon anyone who's willing to raise a fist.

Across a Single Wall

Leto enters the quarantine zone on behalf of the children's parents and meets Zima across a single wall. On her way, she sees a beast gnawing on a human finger, and nearly breaks down under memories of Chernobog, but swallows it back down.

Zima quietly asks a favor: to cut off, from outside, Pavlovich's daily heavy weapons supply.

Outside, Leto learns politics. She hears a startling fact from a member of parliament: since the night of the ball, the Emperor hasn't returned to the palace, and might possibly be inside this very quarantine zone.

But along with it came a chilling warning: if the 'special measures' to forcibly return the Emperor to the palace are triggered, the students inside will have to find their own way to survive.

A Noble Betrayal

In the theater where the frightened students are about to scatter, Istina takes the stage. She, who is usually so level-headed, raises her voice for the first time.

These hands aren't meant to clap and flatter those in power—they're meant to tear down high walls.

— Istina

Meanwhile, Leto ultimately refuses the 'favorable testimony' offered by Madam Vabrozova, who had doted on her. Instead, she writes a letter of her own 'confession'—to everyone deceived by her scheme, and to the students who were used and discarded.

Not noble blood, but the 'right to choose'—that, Leto says, is the one right everyone should be born with. Olga, who had been confined, also ultimately hands the students the secret passage leading to her father's mansion, breaking with her family in her own way.

The Voice Over the Radio

In the middle of the quarantine zone, the radio girl Botani was sending her 373rd distress call into a void where no one answered. The first to reply to that voice was a quiet man who called himself 'Fedya.'

Bolstered by Fedya's calm advice, Botani succeeds in capturing the enemy's accountant, a baron. And we learn Fedya's true identity—the very Emperor who vanished from the ball, Feodor.

But for Feodor, this tender night is instead a punishment. The student 'Little One,' to whom he'd given a gold coin, had already been killed trying to buy her life with that same money. He can hardly bring himself to look down at these two hands that have both saved and taken lives.

How simple a prayer it is, to say 'still, there is tomorrow.' For the first time, the Emperor truly grasps what he has been neglecting.

Over what to do with the prisoners, Zima and Antosha finally split. Zima says to keep them alive for their usefulness, while Antosha says parasites can't be allowed to live. Even Matvey, who has always stood by Antosha's side, quietly turns his back this time.

The Girl Who Wields the Legendary Hammer

The day of the final battle. Gromov, the boss of the Sixteen Heroes, drags out even a cannon to crush the students, but Zima lifts the legendary hammer-axe of Emperor Igor—the weapon no one was said to be able to wield.

An ambush luring the enemy into a narrow alley, Molotov cocktails raining from every window, and Rosa and Instructor Dur-nar throwing themselves into the fight. With the workers and citizens Crownslayer brought joining in too, the tide of battle turns.

Zima smashes the giant statue of Emperor Igor blocking the entrance to the quarantine zone with her hammer, bringing down the wall. The rubble buries Pavlovich, who was fleeing to the very end.

They say if you cut out your tongue, you can chew bread with butter. Carve out your knees, and you can get a pardon. But we answer: 'no.'

— Zima

Before the collapsing statue, Feodor too, without realizing it, mixes in among the students and shouts 'Ura—'

And Then, Matvey

Victory came with a price. The Offbeat Alliance that raided the rear ran into elite military police, and while shielding Antosha, Yura, and then Matvey, did not make it back.

Having lost all his comrades, Antosha challenges Zima to a duel. Saying 'step over my corpse and go forth into the new order,' he's trying to flee into a poetic death.

Zima refuses the duel. Destruction is only a means, she says—throwing away your life doesn't make an ideal shine any brighter.

On the day the two of them planted a cherry tree together in the school garden, Antosha believed an Ursus where no one suffers would come. As the price of that belief, he lost his mentor, and now he has lost Matvey too.

The next day, Antosha alone visits Matvey's home, slips the obituary he wrote for him into the window crack, and turns away as if fleeing. But beyond the window, on his old mother's table sit three bowls of red soup—thanks to a letter Matvey had sent ahead.

Live. Live, and someday carve me, our mentor, and our comrades into the martyrs' monument. That is how the vision releases Antosha.

The Truth on a Blank Page

And we return to the hearing. In fact, this trial had been a play from the very start. The clerk's record book was pure blank paper, and Zoya's long testimony was bait to stall for time.

In the meantime, the students raided Prison No. 3, which had been left empty of guards, and freed Lirea and all the others held there. The once-scattered 'Union Congress' had, before anyone knew it, become one united force.

The reunited self-government group hands Zoya a badge with a fist emblem, telling her she's now definitely one of 'us.' The red-haired Rhodes Island operator Crownslayer (Lyudmila) sets off again over the radio, chasing the clue left by Gummy's father—'the sarcophagus' and 'the satellite city.'

Emperor Feodor walks with his own two feet for the first time, passing through the snowy streets back to the palace. Only now realizing that snow is equally cold whether it falls on ruins or on a palace.

But this winter isn't over yet. In the distance, an unfamiliar young man looks up at a Sankt Konburg he's seeing for the first time, and somewhere, a legion is quietly preparing to test a new type of weapon.

Ursus is still in its thousandth year of winter. But through that frozen tundra, a fist that refused to kneel has risen up. Where the wall dividing 'them' from 'us' has fallen, only one word remains now—us.