The cold still lingered, but the wind had quieted, and the snow around the frozen lake lay undisturbed. The Ikanbi tribe stood in loose formation—ringed warriors at ease, civilians moving to and from the supply sleds, packing the last of the fish with hides and bark.
Near the breach in the ice, a young one-ring warrior crouched with a thick fish in hand, holding it up with pride. He grinned and turned to show it off to a comrade.
Then the water erupted.
A monstrous form tore through the ice hole in a violent blur—long, scaled, and slick with glistening fangs. The creature's jaws clamped down on the warrior's arm, lifting him midair.
Everything froze.
Except Ben.
In a blink, he was there.
The black obsidian blade in his hand shimmered cold. One stroke cleaved the beast in two before the warrior could even scream.
The two halves thudded to the ground in steaming gore. The warrior collapsed backward, fish still clutched in his unbroken arm.
Silence didn't last.
Kael's voice rang out like a crack of thunder. "Rings forward—form a line!"
Mala followed, sharp and unrelenting. "All marked but unringed—pull the beast to shore! Move!"
Jaron and Enru shouted in tandem, calling their squads into position.
From all sides of the lake, the Ikanbi militia shifted instantly, sliding into ranks that moved like breath. Every ringed warrior stepped forward. Civilians with marks but no rings scrambled to drag the bisected beast from the ice.
Then the ice shifted again.
From opposite sides of the breach, two more beasts lunged—silent, scaled, faster than any man could think.
But the Ikanbi did not run.
They held.
Just as they had once done when Twa Milhoms had brought them to the beast world—forced them to stand before monsters that tore apart memory and form—when he told them:
"Hold the line."
And they did.
Spears shot forward.
Obsidian blades flashed.
The front rank absorbed the charge, ducking under flailing limbs and answering with sharpened stone.
Kael spun beneath the swipe of one creature's tail, landing a blow that severed its eye.
Enru leapt from a crouch, driving his blade into soft flesh behind a fin.
Mala parried with a bone axe, splitting cartilage as she shouted orders between strikes.
Jaron stood unmoving, carving wide arcs in the snow with every precision cut.
Ben didn't step forward. He didn't need to.
He watched.
And they fought.
Three beasts fell that day.
All dragged from the ice by marked civilians, hauled to the edge of the lake with blood-slick ropes.
Boji stood stunned beside one of the corpses, mouth parted in disbelief, breath fogging slowly.
Mia and the other Duru stood near the slope, unable to look away.
They had never seen warriors move like that.
Not desperate. Not chaotic.
Just prepared.
Disciplined.
Deadly.
When the final carcass hit the shore, Ben gave a single nod.
"Seal it."
The breach was packed with stone, hide, and snow. Layer after layer until not even steam rose from the surface.
No one cheered.
No one spoke of bravery.
Only survival.
By the time the sun set, the tribe marched back with sleds full of fish—and something deeper in their blood.
The Red Clawed prisoners remained silent, staring at the frost-bitten remains of monsters that had once ruled the lake.
That night, no music played.
Around the divine fire pits, the only story whispered was this:
They had faced the lake.
And they had not broken.
The stars had not yet fully claimed the sky, but the fires around the Ikanbi camp already burned warm and steady.
Inside the wide shelter designated for the Red Clawed captives, bowls of hot fish stew were passed out—generous portions, steaming from polished stoneware, thick with meat and bone marrow. A marked Ikanbi woman, no older than twenty, moved from one prisoner to the next, handing out bowls with the same respect she offered her own people.
The prisoners sat in silence.
They expected punishment. Deprivation. Hunger.
Instead, they were fed.
One of them, a burly two-ring warrior who once charged the Ikanbi lines with blind fury, looked down at the full bowl in his hands.
He had helped drag the beasts from the ice. Not willingly—but he had done it. The reward was not chains or cold.
It was food.
And no one questioned it.
Across the snowbank, in the smaller shelter where the Duru survivors had been housed, quiet murmurs filled the air.
"They eat like they've known no hunger," whispered one girl.
"They eat like gods," muttered another.
Mia stood slightly apart from them, arms crossed. Her eyes scanned the fires, the warriors, the civilians laughing gently, some feeding elders, others helping the marked and frail settle for the night.
What troubled her wasn't the power of the Ikanbi.
It was their order.
Their peace.
There was no shouting about portions. No fights over the size of a cut. No warriors demanding the choicest pieces of the hunt. No silent threat from strong to weak.
Food was laid out. Those who helped received. Those who didn't were still not forgotten.
And when the militia—Kael, Mala, Jaron, Enru, and their warriors—finished their silent patrols around the camp, they approached the main fire, took bowls, and walked away with quiet nods.
No one asked if they had earned more.
No one questioned what they were given.
They simply ate. Then rested. Or resumed watch.
Mia's lips pressed into a tight line.
She had been taught that warriors were greedy. That men took and hoarded, that strength meant entitlement. That weakness meant starvation.
But here, that story didn't fit.
And for the first time, she had no answer to give the wide-eyed girls behind her when they asked, "Why aren't they like us?"
Because they weren't.
And she didn't know what to make of it.
The snow softened under the lengthening light, no longer falling in walls of white, but drifting in lazy, half-hearted flakes. Patches of earth began to peek through—brown and stubborn. The trees, once weighed with frost, now stood bare and dripping.
Movement returned to Ikanbi.
Children were seen again, helping with wood collection. Elders gathered near the divine fire pits. Even laughter, long buried beneath survival, had begun to crack the silence.
It was time.
Ben stood in the central clearing. The militia had formed a loose circle around him—watchful but at ease. Behind them, civilians paused in their daily tasks, curious.
The Red Clawed prisoners were brought out under guard, but not with chains. The Duru refugees followed behind, nervous and quiet.
Ben waited until all had gathered.
Then he spoke, his voice low and steady, carrying through the melting quiet.
"The worst of winter has passed," he said. "We lived. You lived. You've eaten our food. Slept beneath our roofs. Stood by our fires."
He looked out at them all—the ragged remnants of tribes that had once raised arms against Ikanbi or lived in darkness beneath it.
"Now you choose," Ben said. "Stay—or leave."
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
"If you leave," he continued, "you take only what you carried in. We won't chase you. We won't feed you again. The forest beyond is yours to gamble with."
"And if we stay?" one of the Red Clawed men asked.
Ben nodded toward Sema, who stepped forward—shoulders square, eyes direct. She was a two-ring civilian, a former stoneworker turned quartermaster.
"You follow Ikanbi law," she said. "That means: no taking by force. No hoarding. You eat what you earn. You protect who you stand beside. And you answer to your actions."
The Red Clawed captives looked to one another. Most bore the expressions of cautious men—hungry, tired, unsure.
Then Mia stepped forward without hesitation.
"We will stay," she said.
Her voice was firm. She didn't look at Ben. She didn't need to.
The girls behind her nodded. The one mother clutched her child tighter but said nothing.
Ben turned to the Red Clawed.
"No one here will force you," he said. "But if you choose to stay—you become ours. Not our prisoners. Our people. You break that trust, and there will be no second choice."
There was a long silence.
Then, one by one, the Red Clawed captives began to nod.
Quietly. Some reluctantly. But with the weight of survival behind their choice.
Ben looked to Sema.
"Record their names," he said. "And make sure they understand what they've agreed to."
Sema bowed her head and began.
The clearing slowly emptied.
No one clapped. No songs were sung.
But something deeper than celebration passed through Ikanbi that day.
It was not victory.
It was growth.
And as the ice melted around them, so too did the walls between enemy and kin.