A young man named Charnokhoi lives with his fiancée Guerelma in a rented house in the suburbs of Ulan Ude. She fled her parents' house when they forbade her to marry this young man. While pregnant, Guerelma one day sees in the street a rider on a black horse, with a Hunnic harness and a weapon. She faints and is taken to the hospital. An old Buryat man tells Charnokhoi that she absolutely must undergo a shamanic ritual. It is then that the fiancée's parents finally decide to reveal to her the reason for their refusal of this marriage: it turns out that her great-grandfather was a commissar of the NKVD (forerunner of the KGB) and that in 1935, he chased away the shamanic religious services of his compatriots, destroyed the holy place and shot a shaman. After this, the appearances of the Rider on his black horse began, and all those of Charnokhoi's line began to die. And he, Charnokhoi, is the last of this line.
