The wind shifted, carrying the scent of wet earth and fresh growth. The snow had melted. The cold had passed. And with its passing, the Ikanbi did not rest—they expanded.
At the edge of the main settlement, four camps had risen like teeth in the dirt. Each was crude but sturdy: bamboo ribbed the frames, stones held the walls steady, and hides patched openings where cold winds might once have crept through. Smoke rose from each site, and the sound of hammering, digging, and shouted orders echoed through the reclaimed land.
Kael, Mala, Jaron, and Enru stood at the center of it all, not as warriors alone—but as leaders of something new.
Ben walked between them silently, his steps heavy, his face unreadable. Twa Milhoms walked with him.
Behind them, the tribe watched from a respectful distance.
When Ben reached the center of the four, he raised a hand, and all activity stopped.
"Today," Ben said, voice steady and without grandeur, "we name the four fangs of Ikanbi."
He turned to Kael first. "Stone Fang," he said. "Enduring and sharp. Let no blow break your bite."
Then Mala. "Ash Wind. Swift and devastating. Let your strike fall before the enemy knows fear."
Then Jaron. "Blood Root. Let your roots drink deeply of hardship and never fall."
Finally, Enru. "Iron Sky. Hold the high ground. Let your presence thunder above all else."
Twa Milhoms raised a hand then, not in spectacle but in simple recognition. He touched each commander lightly on the chest.
And in that moment—each stepped into the sixth ring.
Their bodies pulsed faintly with strength. Their eyes steadied. They were no longer five-ring commanders. They stood now as the pillars of the tribe—equal in level to Ben, who watched without comment.
While the four began setting up their camps, a different kind of fire was being born in the center of Ikanbi.
Ben sat crouched near a wide, shallow pit lined with stone. Beside him, Duru miners stacked raw iron ore in neat piles. Children and civilians watched from behind as he placed a jagged piece of ore into a handmade crucible.
Boji arrived with thick bellows made from stretched hide. Sema helped seal the mouth of the furnace with clay and broken bricks. The heat rose.
It was primitive. Brutal. And exactly what they needed.
With each hiss of steam and flicker of glowing orange, Ben imagined not just tools—but blades. Not just bowls—but armor. He imagined spears that pierced bone, and hammers that shaped futures.
"We will fail a few times," Ben muttered. "Then less. Then not at all."
Across the territory, the reclamation was in full swing. Former Red Claw prisoners hauled bamboo, while Ikanbi civilians carried water and stone. Duru miners dug trenches for water flow. Children helped bind joints with vine fiber.
All of Ikanbi was working.
And something strange happened—no one asked for more. Warriors didn't ask for bigger shares. Elders didn't ask for rest first. Everyone just worked.
The four militia camps rose steadily, not as monuments—but as forward teeth, planted far from the heart of the tribe. They would be the first to meet the world—and the last to fall.
That night, Ben stood alone near the furnace, hands blackened with soot, eyes watching the fire dance over half-melted iron.
Twa Milhoms stood behind him in silence for a while.
Then, like two old friends sitting beneath stars, the god said, "You're not trying to forge weapons."
Ben raised an eyebrow. "No?"
"You're trying to forge time. Future. That's harder than steel."
Ben smiled faintly. "Then I'll burn longer."
No riddles. No lessons. Just truth between two who carried the weight of a tribe.
The flames roared higher, and the metal wept its first drops.
Beneath the sweltering sun of Ikanbi's first true summer, the sound of stone striking stone echoed across the forge Ben had carved out of the earth itself. Sweat clung to his brow as he pounded a heated lump of iron against a wide anvil-shaped boulder. Each strike was slow, methodical—more testing than shaping. The red-hot metal hissed and sang with each blow. Behind him, Druel quietly stacked the ingots the Duru miners had brought from the depths.
"This one has more give," Ben muttered, eyeing the color. "It might not snap if shaped right."
Druel nodded, watching closely. "We'll learn with the metal. Same as we did with stone."
Ben dipped the metal in a trough and studied the way it cooled. Then he began the cycle again. No flames leapt unnaturally. No godly power surged. Only work. Heat. Pressure. Sweat. This was how Ikanbi would evolve—by hands, not by miracles.
—
Across the village's southern edge, Mia hunched over a bundle of shredded bark and soaked fibers. Her fingers, blistered and raw, worked the strands over and over, drawing them long and even.
"This batch's stronger," she said aloud, though only her small group of Duru women stood nearby.
They nodded. Some spun twine. Others prepared dye from berry paste. It had taken weeks, but they had made thread. Real thread. Woven from the fibers of a tree Mia had described—found by a Shadow Blade deep in the southern forest. Now, they had their first samples of cloth. Rough, uneven… but strong.
Mia exhaled slowly, then glanced toward Ben's forge in the distance. She said nothing, only nodded to herself and kept weaving.
—
Beyond the central camp, Ikanbi's edge swelled with the sound of work. The four militia units, each named and newly led by a six-ring commander, spearheaded the greatest expansion yet.
Stone Fang, under Kael, built straight lines of bamboo-reinforced stone homes. They believed in clean design and watchtower spacing.
Ash Wind, led by Mala, moved quickly—establishing a more spread-out structure, focusing on mobility and defense. Their camps curved like wind around obstacles, with clever traps and entry channels.
Blood Root, under Jaron, dug deep into the soil. Their shelters were half-submerged, naturally insulated and fortified. Their scouts marked the land like roots—hard to track, impossible to fully remove.
Iron Sky, Enru's command, stretched toward the hills. They built upward when they could, carving paths between outcrops and establishing lines of sight from all directions.
Each base grew like a limb of the same body. Far enough to defend separately—close enough to reinforce as one.
Ikanbi was changing.
And it was not just surviving anymore.
It was building something no one in the world had yet imagined.