The flashback structure worked so well here. Seeing young Borakchin marvel at a crumbling rock then realizing she spent the next six years weaponizing it into empire-scale murder is genuinely terrifying writing. She consulted Chinese medical texts learned alchemy timed the poison across multiple days all while wearing kind eyes for Mogge. That girl in the tent who saw a pretty stone became the reason Sorkhotani nearly lost everything. But watching Sorkhotani choose her sons and her pride anyway at that assembly knowing her family already lost Tolui to these schemes felt like the show finally giving the good people a win. Science SARU's lighting in Borakchin's yurt versus the bright grassland really sold the contrast between internal rot and outward stability.