The cold came without warning.
It didn't descend—it devoured.
The first storm lasted three days. The second never truly ended. Snow rose past the waistline, then the shoulders, then to the rooftops of stone lodges. Wind screamed like a living thing, battering anything that stood unanchored. Ice formed inside sealed shelters. Stone tools cracked if gripped barehanded. The sky turned white—and stayed that way.
Winter had arrived in the world of the Ikanbi.
Ben stood at the center of the longhouse, silent, as the last of his war council entered. Kael, Mala, Khol, Sema—each carried the weight of duty, their eyes hollow from sleepless nights.
"There will be no strike," Ben said.
The silence was absolute.
"The Duru are out there," Khol said at last. "Somewhere beneath the drifts. Watching."
Ben met his gaze without flinching. "Then let them watch. We do not match death with foolishness."
Sema shifted. "So we hold?"
Ben nodded. "We survive. That is the order. No movements. No expeditions. Every hand turned inward. No one dies to prove a point."
He walked to the edge of the longhouse, knelt beside the central fire pit. There was no flame—just a low, steady warmth that pulsed from the carved stone.
The warmth of Twa Milhoms.
A god who did not need to burn to keep his people alive.
The decree spread like smoke.
All militia patrols were recalled.
Supply sleds were buried in place, protected by bone frames and ice.
The signal drums were silenced.
Within the longhouses and shelters, Ikanbi moved like breath—slow, silent, measured. They gathered in tight circles around god-warmed pits. Children worked without complaint. Elders rationed without argument. Warriors drilled not for battle—but for stillness and endurance.
The Red Clawed prisoners arrived during the third snowfall.
Their transfer had been deliberate and silent. No one marched them through the center of the village. They were escorted to a separate ridge, just close enough for the militia to watch, far enough to avoid conflict.
Bark-walled shelters were waiting—patched with hide, lined with snowpack, warmed only by deep stone trenches.
Mala ran the camp.
She saw to food, to discipline, to order. No cruelty, no comfort.
Just enough.
Some prisoners stared with hatred. Others with quiet confusion. But a few—young ones, mostly—rose at dawn to help. They shoveled snow. Repaired wall gaps. Hauled ice to melt for water.
One collapsed with firewood in his arms. An Ikanbi soldier saw it, lifted him without speaking, and returned him to his shelter. That night, extra hides appeared across the camp. No one said where they came from.
Mala knew.
Khol prowled the edges of the frozen world like a trapped beast.
He climbed the ridges when the snow let him, scouting what little he could before frost bit his face raw. He watched the tree lines. Measured shadows. Whispered to old bone.
He wanted to strike.
Burn the Duru before they could grow bold.
But Ben would not move.
"The cold is older than you," Ben had told him. "It has buried stronger tribes than either of us."
So Khol relented.
But he kept records—how many root bundles remained, which shelters leaked, how many warriors began to cough in their sleep.
Waiting.
Inside the great hall, Kael led training—not of swords or strikes, but of breath.
Stillness.
Discipline.
"Hold your breath," he said, "until your heartbeat is louder than your thoughts."
They did.
"You do not win winter by killing," he reminded them. "You win by not breaking."
And so, the Ikanbi endured.
No glorious battles. No resounding speeches. Only breath and patience. Only warmth and silence.
The cold howled above, around, through.
But the tribe did not fall.
For ten days, the sky had offered nothing but white.
Now, for the first time, it paused.
The snowfall lightened. The wind slowed. And the sky—though still pale—no longer threatened to swallow the earth whole.
That morning, Boji came running through the center of the Ikanbi camp, hair wild, eyes gleaming.
He didn't go to the elders. He didn't knock on doors. He went straight to Ben.
Ben was outside, overseeing a ration shift near the eastern granary. When he saw Boji stomping through snowbanks with smoke trailing from his shoulders, he didn't move—he simply raised an eyebrow.
"I need the militia," Boji said, out of breath. "Today."
Ben looked at him. "For?"
"Fishing."
A long silence.
Boji's eyes shone with madness and certainty. "For ten days I've been heating stones—big, flat ones. Had them cooking inside my furnace, underneath my house. Hardly any warmth got through—I nearly froze. But they're ready now."
Ben folded his arms. "Go on."
Boji began to pace, dragging his heel across the snow to sketch a crude diagram. "We melt holes in the frozen river using the stones. Sink bait below. The warmth will keep the water open long enough. The fish—trapped under ice for days—will come to any movement, any shadow. They'll think it's food or freedom."
Ben studied the lines in the snow. Then looked past Boji to the sky.
No storm—for now.
"Will it work?" he asked.
Boji nodded so hard his scarf fell from his neck. "It has to."
Ben didn't hesitate. "You'll have the militia. Go."
By midday, a team of twenty militia warriors moved toward the frozen bend near the outer ridge. They carried sleds, fishing lines made of braided sinew, and Boji's sun-blackened flat stones—wrapped in hide to preserve their heat.
Boji led the way, laughing like a man possessed.
And for the first time in days, the tribe moved not to survive—
—but to provide.
The river had frozen solid—thick enough that even a stone ax couldn't crack it without effort. The militia arrived in rows, dragging sleds packed with hide-wrapped bundles and coiled sinew. None of them had been told why they were summoned—only that Boji had an idea and Ben had said yes.
Now they stood in a half-circle, watching Boji shuffle across the ice like a mad priest.
He unwrapped the first stone—still steaming beneath its frost-blistered hide—and dropped it onto the ice with a grunt. The ice hissed, groaned, then cracked in a ring around the stone. A thin pool formed, vapor curling upward.
"See?" Boji shouted triumphantly. "We melt the hole, then drop the line. Fish are dumb. They'll come."
The militia exchanged glances.
A young one whispered, "Is this… is this really happening?"
Nearby, a seasoned three-ring warrior shook his head. "It's either brilliant or insane."
By the third hole, someone actually caught something—a flash of silver jerked upward on a sinew line, wriggling wildly before slapping onto the snow. The circle of militia froze. Then cheered.
It spread fast after that—another hole, another line, another catch.
Still, many kept glancing over their shoulders, waiting for the joke to end. This couldn't be war. This wasn't training. This was… fishing.
That's when a five-ring warrior named Seko noticed someone kneeling beside him, lowering a line with calm, practiced focus.
He looked once. Blinked. Looked again.
A rope-ring marked with a sharp "VI" glowed just above the man's left eyebrow.
Ben.
Seko stared in disbelief. "You're fishing?"
Ben didn't look away from the water. "You'd rather starve?"
"No, I mean—I just didn't think—"
"We need food," Ben said. "And we need to remember that not every act of strength looks like killing."
Seko opened his mouth, then closed it.
He adjusted his line.
By dusk, the militia had filled two sleds with fish.
Boji danced in the snow, frost in his beard, screaming something about "genius fire logic."
No one argued.