The horn sounded before dawn.
Its deep, trembling cry echoed across the Shal'Ka valley like the groan of an ancient beast stirring from sleep. Fires flared in response, and the village came alive with movement—hunters gathering spears, elders rushing toward the Circle.
Sam stood at the center, arms folded. The tower had worked.
But the message it brought was worse than he feared.
Two new plumes of smoke on the horizon.
The Rava-Ka weren't sending scouts.
They were preparing to march.
---
"I want every fire tender at the Circle," Sam said. "Elders too. Warriors, builders, mothers. Everyone."
Karun's eyes crinkled as he looked at him. "A council?"
"A fire council," Sam said. "Our first. If we want to survive the Rava-Ka… we stop being just a tribe. We become a people."
---
The Council Circle was prepared before midmorning. It wasn't a perfect ring—just a collection of smooth stones arranged in a crescent. But it was sacred ground now. Sam had taught them that meaning didn't come from magic. It came from choice.
In the center stood the fire, and beside it: the new tokens Tek had carved—stone chips, flat and marked with one of two glyphs.
Yes.
No.
"We vote now," Sam said as the tribe gathered, "because every voice matters. Not just the strongest. Not just the loudest."
He looked toward Karun, who nodded solemnly and stepped forward.
"I was once like them," the old man said. "Wild. Reckless. No law but hunger. But that was before the fire taught me to see."
The crowd hushed.
Karun reached into his cloak.
And from it, he pulled a weathered strip of dark leather—a fragment of his old life.
---
[Flashback – Karun's Forbidden Years]
Long before he became an elder, Karun had no name.
He was a child of the broken lands—an orphan raised among the Bone-Eaters, a nomadic clan who worshipped death as sacred and wore the skulls of their prey as armor.
He learned to kill before he could speak fluently. Fire, to them, was not warmth. It was a god's eye—a watcher that punished softness.
Karun hated it.
One night, a raid went wrong. The Bone-Eaters ambushed a forest village near a volcanic ridge—but something went wrong. The villagers, led by a firekeeper woman, unleashed a smoke trap that blinded the attackers.
Karun, then barely fifteen, was caught in it. Alone, gasping, choking—he staggered from the edge of the ash.
And there she was.
The woman who would change his life.
She didn't kill him.
She sat beside him.
And lit a fire.
"Cold takes from all," she said. "But fire—fire asks who you are first."
Her name was Maara.
And in the months that followed, Karun lived among her people, learned their ways—not just how to burn, but how to build.
He loved her. And for a time, it seemed like he could escape the savage legacy of his birth.
But peace is fragile.
When the Bone-Eaters returned, he had to choose.
He fought against them. For Maara. For her people.
He won.
But at a cost.
Maara fell in the battle, fire-lanced through the chest. Her last words were simple:
> "Light others… even if you burn."
From that day forward, Karun walked with the fire. Not as a god. But as a memory.
---
In the present, the old man pressed the leather into Sam's hand.
"A piece of her cloak," he whispered. "It belongs to fire now."
---
The council began.
They spoke of Rava-Ka raids, of scouts and weapons. Of what would come when the smoke finally reached their skies.
And then Sam spoke.
"We will not run," he said. "But we also won't become what they are. We'll build. We'll train. We'll use what we know—and what we remember."
"Do we prepare?" Karun asked. "Or do we beg?"
The stone tokens passed from hand to hand.
Each member dropped theirs into the center bowl.
Tek counted them.
All marked with the symbol for "Yes."
---
That night, under torchlight, construction began.
Sam sketched new schematics—trip alarms with tension vine, flame towers with reflective plates, and spike traps buried beneath ash.
Warriors trained not just to kill, but to stand in lines, to rotate shifts, to hold.
Even the children took part—learning to run messages, to stir smoke, to warn.
And at the heart of it all, Karun stood beside Sam, eyes lit by memory and fire.
"We are no longer Shal'Ka," he said quietly.
Sam looked at him. "Then what are we?"
Karun smiled.
"We are the first city."
---
CROWN PROTOCOL ENTRY 10-B – "Council of Flame"
> Social Milestone: Tribal Democracy Established
> Voting Protocol via Symbolic Token
Engineering Milestone:
– Trip Alarm Schematics
– Flame Tower Prototype Approved
Legacy Upload: Karun Memory Stream Extracted
– Cultural Echo Logged
– Archive Classification: "Firewalker's Code"
Uplift Influence: 39.6%
Observer Distance: 27.1 km – Arrival Imminent.