The air bit harder that morning.
It clung to skin like stone dust and made every breath feel carved from ice. Kael stood at the edge of the village, spear in hand, eyes to the tree line. Behind him, warriors gathered—his chosen. Not the green recruits, not the loud ones eager to prove themselves. These were seasoned. Scarred. Steady.
Ben had summoned them before first light.
"The meat we have will not last," he said, his voice low but final. "Fish slows. Traps bring little. We need something bigger. One kill to feed many."
He didn't name the beast. He didn't have to.
Kael just nodded. "Titan Boar."
A few breaths stirred in the cold.
Mala and a half-dozen from her unit stepped from the shadows. "We go too."
Ben looked between them, then to the forest that waited like a mouth.
"Twa Milhoms watches the hunt," he said, almost like a warning. Then he turned away.
Kael felt the old pull in his chest—not fear, not pride. Just duty shaped like bone. He led his hunters into the white-dusted wild, where the trees thickened and the sky grew distant.
They tracked the beast through clawed-up roots and cracked stones the size of canoes. Its prints sank deep—each one wide as a warrior's chest, steam still rising from where it stepped.
"This thing eats trees," muttered one hunter.
Kael raised a hand. Silence.
They found it in a clearing surrounded by snapped trunks and half-chewed bones. The Titan Boar was nearly the size of a longhouse, its fur matted with ice, its tusks yellow and thick, curved like war horns. A scar ran across its snout, fresh and weeping.
It raised its head. It saw them.
It charged.
The first warrior didn't scream. His ribs snapped too fast. The second jumped too soon and took a tusk through the thigh. Kael moved like thunder—ducked, rolled, planted two spears in the creature's flank before being thrown backward into a tree.
Then Mala's group arrived. No call. No signal. Just steel and movement.
They worked like wolves, circling, harassing, never stopping. They used ropes to tangle the boar's back legs. Used spears tipped with bone soaked in fermented root to slow its rage.
It screamed.
The snow turned pink.
When it finally collapsed, its body still jerked with death. Its mouth chewed the air like it still hoped to kill something.
Three Ikanbians lay dead. Five more bled into the soil.
No one cried.
They carved the beast where it fell. No fire. No song. Just knives and frozen breath. Slabs of flesh strapped to backs, ropes wound through bone, hides bundled in leaves.
Kael moved like a shadow, blood on his hands, no triumph in his eyes.
By the time they reached the edge of Ikanbi, the sun was rising behind pale clouds.
People lined the path.
Children stared. Elders whispered.
No one clapped. No one celebrated.
Ben watched them return from the granary path. His eyes followed the bones. The blood. The limp of a wounded warrior leaning on a friend.
Sema gave orders quickly. "Salt it. Smoke it. No waste."
Boji was already near the river, carving a deep hollow in the ice with Jano. "We freeze the best cuts. Keep them hidden," he said. "Winter takes what it can smell."
Behind them, fish swam slow in ice-trapped channels. The tribe had food now—but food was not the same as peace.
In the far ridge, two figures crouched behind a frost-covered boulder—Red Clawed scouts. One held a small bone to his eye, trying to gauge the size of the carcass the Ikanbians carried.
"They fight beasts like they fight men," he muttered.
The other scout scoffed. "Winter should starve them. Not make them strong."
"We tell the chief?"
The first scout nodded. "Tell him everything."
Night fell slow that evening. Smoke curled upward from the meat pits. The children ate boiled strips. The elders chewed soft fat. Warriors sat together, not talking much, sharing marrow in silence.
Kael sat outside the longhouse, watching his breath in the cold. His arm throbbed. A rib felt cracked.
Still alive.
Still strong.
Inside the leader's circle, Ben watched the flames in the central hearth.
Meat was no longer the question.
Winter would not break them.
But war still waited, hungry.
The snow fell thick that night, smothering sound and sight. But in the folds of wind and shadow, three figures moved—barefoot, cloaked in silence, unseen by man or beast.
Shadow Blades.
Ash, Echo, and Thorn had returned once more to the land of the Red Clawed.
Not to kill.
Not yet.
Their blades stayed sheathed, their hands wrapped not in cord or leather—but in intention. They watched. They listened. And this time, they chose.
In the eastern war camp of the Red Clawed tribe, a boy no older than twelve stacked bonewood for fire. He paused when Echo stepped from behind a tree, motionless.
No threat. No sound.
Just a glance.
The boy froze. Echo raised one finger, then slowly drew a shape into the dirt: a river, a hill, and a circle beneath it.
A hiding place.
Then he vanished into the cold.
Elsewhere, Ash knelt by a Red Clawed hunter who limped alone through the tree line—blood trailing from his leg, frost biting his face. Ash didn't speak. He left roots mashed in a gourd. Painkiller. A salve tucked in leaf wrap.
He also left a question, carved lightly into bark:
"Why do you still follow them?"
And then he disappeared.
In the Red Clawed stronghold itself, where torches burned high and tempers burned hotter, rumors had begun to spread.
"They say a god walks with Ikanbi," one warrior muttered. "That he makes men vanish, makes the sky weep blood."
"Lies," spat another.
"Then how do they have food? How do they fight beasts that kill warbands?"
In silence, Thorn had watched their argument from the rafters of a half-finished war hall. Later that night, he slipped a dried strip of Ikanbian smoked meat onto a Red Clawed elder's cot. Nothing more. But when the elder tasted it, when he realized its source, he said nothing.
The next day, he packed his things in silence.
Small things.
But Shadow Blades never worked in floods.
They worked in cracks.
And cracks were spreading.
In the council tent of the Red Clawed tribe, their war chief slammed his fist against a hide map.
"We move now! Before the ice locks our feet!"
But half the elders did not speak. Some stared at the floor. Others looked to one another—remembering the meat that had not come from their own, the whispered warnings of watchers in the night.
"They bleed without blades," muttered one elder.
Another added, "Ikanbi is cursed. Or blessed. Either way… something watches them."
The chief growled. "Cowards."
But doubt had roots now.
Even among the soldiers, the youngest began to whisper of choices. Some had seen the marks drawn in ash on stone—circles around trees, strange sigils carved into wood. Trails left not for enemies… but for those who wanted another path.
The path to survival.
That night, a Red Clawed family vanished.
No sign of struggle. No blood. Just footprints leading west… toward the hills, toward the river.
Toward Ikanbi.
Back in the grove, Khol stood by the dark fire pit. No light. No warmth. Just silence.
He knelt and pressed his fingers into the soil.
"They do not fear us," he whispered. "But soon, they will not trust each other."
Behind him, the Shadow Blades emerged from the dark. One by one, they dropped tokens onto the earth—scraps of stolen bark, overheard conversations, a Red Clawed war sigil sliced in half.
Ben would see it all soon.
But for now, they returned to the dark.
And the Red Clawed tribe, once a roaring fire, began to flicker.
Not from battle.
From something colder.
Doubt.
The flames inside the sacred pit danced without warmth. Thick black smoke curled up into the night like coiling serpents, drawn by the drums that beat low and steady outside the bone-walled tent. Inside, the air was heavy—thick with burnt herbs, powdered ash, and old, bitter blood.
The Red Clawed chief knelt low, fists clenched against his knees. His breath trembled despite his bulk. He had never feared battle… but this was different.
Across from him, seated in a crouch that seemed part human and part beast, was the tribe's Bone Voice—their spiritual guide, the last speaker of their god.
She was old. Bent like a broken branch. Her eyes were white with rot, but she saw more than the living. Feathers and bone beads hung from her wiry hair, clacking softly as she stirred the coals with a forked stick.
"You come late," she rasped. "The air smells of rot and snow. You fear too late."
"I fear nothing," the chief growled.
"Then why do you kneel before smoke?"
Silence.
He reached to his belt and tossed a bundle into the coals—bloodied cloth, marked with the carved Ikanbian sigil one of the scouts had found etched on bark.
"They whisper without blades," he said. "Our young question. Our elders murmur. The cold grows… and the wind tells them Ikanbi does not die."
The Bone Voice did not look up. She murmured in a tongue older than fire, then tossed crushed beetle shell and dried teeth into the flames. The smoke turned green, then black, then vanished altogether.
And then—
The shadows deepened. The wind outside stopped. Time did not stop, but it bent.
Her voice grew hollow.
"Your god… listens."
The chief's mouth went dry.
"Ask," she whispered, eyes rolled back.
He hesitated. But then he bared his teeth and growled:
"Should we march? Should we crush Ikanbi now, while they sleep beneath the snow?"
Silence.
Then the fire flared bright blue—unnatural, unnatural, hungry—and the voice that answered did not come from the Bone Voice's mouth. It came from everywhere, and it cracked like dry bone in a firepit.
"You will break them.
But first, you will break yourselves."
The chief staggered back, snarling. "What does that mean?!"
"One among you has chosen the dark soil over fire.
Another whispers doubt into young ears.
And one you cast out now speaks to your enemy."
The chief's hands curled into fists. "Khol…"
The Bone Voice collapsed forward, coughing blood into the coals. The flames sputtered, then died. The smoke vanished.
She looked up with weak, red-smeared lips.
"Your god is not blind," she said. "But your warriors… they soon will be."
The chief stood in silence for a long time.
Then he left the tent and called for his war captains.
Winter or not—they would move.
They had no choice.
Their god had spoken.