**Synopsis**
In the 1890s, a ruined Russian explorer from St. Petersburg arrives in Chukotka under the Russian Geographical Society's initiative, having lost his wife and fortune. His mission leads him toward Yttygran Island's Whale Bone Alley, but during the journey he begins experiencing violent shamanic visions—spirits dismembering his body, boiling his bones in cauldrons, reconstructing him with iron organs, and placing glowing stones inside his flesh. Ancestral spirits and animal guides appear to him, dragging him through the upper and lower worlds while cosmic imagery of the axis mundi and the structure of the universe floods his mind. These ecstatic illnesses and dream-states mark his involuntary initiation into shamanism, as spirit voices call his name and grant him knowledge of the otherworld.
Upon reaching the island, the explorer discovers that the Whale Bone Alley was constructed by the ancient Thule people to seal away a cosmic evil that had frozen the world. The Thule shamans fought this entity and imprisoned it beneath the bones, but the site's proximity still allows people to hear the whispers of cosmic powers promising restoration and salvation. An old Cossack, driven mad by these voices, seeks to break the seal and unleash the trapped force, believing it will save the Russian Empire from revolution and demonic influences. The Cossack begins the ritual to open the gates.
The explorer, now fully accepting his role as shaman and guardian, confronts the Cossack and kills him to prevent the cosmic horror from being released. Having gained forbidden knowledge from the entity and the spirits, he chooses to remain on Yttygran Island as its permanent guardian, understanding that he must protect the seal and bear the burden of what he has learned from the thing imprisoned beneath the whale bones.