The pyres had long since burned out, but the smoke still clung to Ikanbi like a wound that wouldn't close. Twelve warriors had died—twelve Ikanbi sons and daughters who had stood where others had fled. Their bodies were returned wrapped in cloth, marked with blood and ash, laid in the earth beneath heavy stones.
A cemetery had been carved into the hill just beyond the main camp. For the first time, Ikanbi mourned.
No one spoke much during the burial. The cries of loved ones, the distant crack of forging hammers, and the silence of a god watching his people were all the sound that remained. When the last stone was placed, Ben stood above the graves, eyes heavy but dry. He did not make a speech. He did not raise a fist. He only whispered:
"We kill… or we die."
Then he turned to the Shadow Blades.
"I want a map," Ben ordered. "Every large, medium, and small tribe near Ikanbi. Find them. Study them. Report to me."
The Shadow Blades vanished like ghosts before the sentence was done.
Back in the camps, the militia had changed. Where once there had been discipline and fire, now there was rage and iron. All four units—Stone Fang, Ash Wind, Blood Root, and Iron Sky—trained with sharpened weapons and sharper minds. The commanders had changed too.
Kael and Mala no longer sparred with practice spears. They clashed with iron blades, their swings heavy enough to crack bone. Enru ran his troops through formations in the mud, forcing them to march with bloodied feet. Jaron pushed his unit harder than ever, drilling into them that Ikanbi had no room for softness. Each unit now trained with a new weight of grief and fury. Their drills were no longer about readiness—they were about retribution.
Ben returned to the forge. His hands, still blistered, gripped iron and hammer. The first batch of metal weapons had been handed to the commanders and their five-ring warriors. Swords, axes, spears—nothing elegant, but solid, brutal things. Things meant to kill and last.
But it wasn't enough.
He wanted more weapons. More tools. More armor. Ikanbi had shown the world it would not kneel, and now the world was watching. So Ben kept forging. And when his hands ached too much to swing the hammer, he studied metal, listened to the rhythm of the flames, and thought about what came next.
Beyond the village, the world stirred.
Tribes spoke in hushed tones about the one they now called The Iron People—a strange tribe where warriors were separated from civilians, where iron flowed, and discipline reigned. They were not yet afraid.
But they would be.
Because Ikanbi had buried its dead—and it was still standing.
And now, it was watching everything.
The world beyond Ikanbi stirred like a cornered beast.
In the thick-barked woods where even the sun dared not settle, under roots twisted like trapped serpents, and behind jagged cliffs where old bones slept, they moved. The Shadow Blades—silent hunters clad in hides, their faces smeared with soot and crushed ash fruit to blind the scent of beasts and men. They carried no fire, no chatter, only sharpened flint, iron nails tied to rawhide straps, and commands etched into the dirt.
They stalked the land as the gods taught them—wordless, ruthless, unseen.
Each of the twenty-five had a task: trace the paths of smoke; measure the size of footprints in dried mud; count bone piles near tribes; mark the rhythm of drums in the distance. They learned not just where the tribes were—but what they feared.
To the west, the Bone Palm Tribe covered their dwellings in blood-stained bark, planting human jawbones in their soil to ward off spirits. Their children carried bone knives strapped to their ankles. One Shadow Blade watched a chieftain rip open a goat and read its guts—his hands trembled when he pulled a bone carved with a single mark: flame.
In the east, the Graveltooth Clan taught toddlers to gut carrion birds with sharpened reeds. Their warriors wore animal skulls as helms. Shadow Blade Kaeru, belly pressed to the dirt, watched one of them spit into a fire and whisper, "They are not men… they are stone spirits."
Southward, beneath the crooked hills, the Broken Antler Confederacy dug shallow burrows to hide their women and young. They whispered of how Ikanbi's warriors walked with fire in their hands and ate through villages like rot through wood.
But it was in the north where the signs became strange.
A Shadow Blade, teeth blackened with berry dye to blend into the trees, followed a path of cracked skulls hung like fruit from branches. There, he saw warriors who drank from skull bowls, whose spears dripped not with sap, but dry blood. They were not hiding.
They were marching. Toward Ikanbi.
Ben stood on a cliff of weathered stone, the bone handle of his hammer resting against his shoulder. His torso was bare, smeared in ash and sweat, eyes watching the valley below where the forests moved—not from wind—but from things walking within them.
Khol crouched at his side, a strip of dried meat in hand, his voice low.
"They fear us… but not all of them."
Ben's jaw tightened. "Some things only understand pain."
He turned and walked away. Behind him, the forge hissed with fire. Iron spat sparks. Stone molds lay ready for more weapons.
The forest watched.
And far below, in Ikanbi, the flames in the warrior pits burned without smoke. A people sharpened not by peace—but by necessity.
The forest beyond Ikanbi breathed with unease. In the cover of night, the Shadow Blades moved—barefoot, unarmed by appearance, yet cloaked in death. Their paths were never straight. They wove through thick brush and vine, crawling through mud, scaling rock faces, and swimming across slow, silent rivers. They watched, listened, and left no trace.
They found signs of movement—bones picked clean, camps left in haste, strange carvings drawn on tree bark in blood and soot. Not symbols of prayer… but warnings. Warnings from tribes unfamiliar to Ikanbi. Tribes whose language was spit and guttural breath, whose unity was born not from belief—but fear.
These were not alliances like Ikanbi. These were survival confederacies. Primitive, desperate groups pulled together by the threat of being consumed. No structure. No true loyalty. Just packs of wild people circling together like jackals waiting for the strongest one to bleed.
From the high ridges, one Shadow Blade observed a fireless village where children sharpened sticks, and old warriors practiced their spear throws by hurling into carcasses hung from trees. Another witnessed three tribes convening—an unholy gathering beneath a blood-smeared totem pole—fighting one another to see who would lead.
The world outside Ikanbi was unraveling into chaos.
Back in Ikanbi, the Shadow Blades reported in silence. They carved symbols onto flat stones and left them in the hidden cave behind Ben's forge. Symbols of tribes gathering, of weapons made from bone, wood, and teeth. Symbols of eyes watching from across riverbanks, of entire forests that grew too quiet at night.
Ben studied each stone by firelight. Around him, metal clanged. Sparks flew. The forge roared like an angry god.
He said nothing.
But the killing intent growing behind his eyes whispered everything: they were coming.
And Ikanbi would be ready.