The battle had ended, but the silence that followed was not peace—it was exhaustion.
The fields were littered with corpses, the broken remnants of once-proud warriors from the confederate tribes who had dared challenge Ikanbi. Iron split bone. Blood slicked the earth. Spears, broken in half, jutted from the soil like dying trees. No songs were sung. No cheers rose. Only the sound of wind moving through the aftermath, and the quiet breath of those still standing.
Ikanbi had won. And not a single warrior was lost.
But they had bled.
Kael stood at the edge of the battlefield, arms folded, his chest still rising and falling from the exertion. His warriors—Stone Fang—were battered. Many leaned on their blades like canes. One sat beneath a tree, eyes wide, hands trembling. Still, he was alive. And so were all the others.
Mala walked silently among Ash Wind's ranks. She found a young girl crouched beside a fallen enemy, her hand locked around the hilt of an iron blade still embedded in the man's chest. Mala knelt beside her. The girl was shaking, blood on her face and hands. Mala said nothing. She simply touched the girl's shoulder. That was enough. The girl blinked back tears and let go of the hilt.
On the riverbank, Jaron sat in silence with Blood Root. His warriors moved in silence, dragging bodies into heaps, collecting discarded weapons, stacking shields. There was no celebration. Only a quiet counting.
"Fifty-two," one whispered.
"I counted sixty," another muttered.
"I thought I was at forty-nine, then I saw a runner…"
"Sixty-three for me. Barely."
They whispered numbers to each other. Confirming, comparing. Relief passed between them like a second wind. Not because they had survived—but because they would not return to that chamber.
Not again.
Farther out, atop the ridgeline, Enru stood like a statue. Iron Sky had taken the worst of it—charging down upon a field full of spears—but even then, they had suffered no deaths. Cuts, bruises, fractured limbs. Yes. But they endured. The five-ring warriors who had led the charges were covered in blood—some theirs, most not.
And still, they stood.
Back near the treeline, the Shadow Blades emerged, silent as ever. They had not fought—but they had watched. And the message was clear: The god's warriors had changed.
They were not a militia. They were not soldiers. They were death given form. And now, the surrounding tribes knew it.
A single enemy scout, wounded and half-dead, dragged himself through the underbrush. His leg was broken. Blood dripped from his mouth.
"I saw them…" he gasped to no one. "No drums. No war cry. They just… came."
He would never make it home. But his whisper might.
The sun dipped low. The sky burned orange behind the jungle canopy. The four militia units returned along the paths carved days before.
No victory cries. No trophies. No prisoners.
Just warriors—some limping, some bleeding—walking side by side. Iron weapons strapped to their backs. Eyes hollow. Shoulders hunched from weight not physical, but mental.
Ben waited near the outer rim of the tribe. Alone.
He said nothing as the warriors returned.
Kael nodded to him. Jaron offered a glance. Mala tilted her head. Enru gave a brief hand signal.
Ben met each with a wordless nod of his own.
Then he looked at the rest. The tired. The bruised. The changed.
"You've done what was needed," he said quietly. "Rest. Eat. The world will move again tomorrow."
One warrior dropped his sword and fell to his knees, laughing breathlessly. "Fifty," he said, shaking his head. "I hit fifty exactly."
Another sat down right where he stood. "Fifty-three," he whispered.
A third exhaled slowly. "I didn't want to go back. I really didn't want to go back."
And for the first time in weeks, they smiled.
Not because they were proud.
But because they were still here.
Because they would not return to the chamber.
Not yet.
The battlefield was still.
Ashes drifted through the jungle air like falling snow. Blood soaked the roots of trees. Ikanbi warriors leaned on one another—not from defeat, but from exhaustion. Their bodies trembled with pain and effort, but their eyes remained sharp, clear.
They had survived.
They had reached their quota.
They would not return to the chamber.
Some wept—not from fear or grief, but relief. Relief that their bones would not tremble again under the weight of a god's killing intent. Not yet.
But the war was not truly over.
The enemy tribes had been broken, yes. Their warriors slain. Their homes turned to scorched ground. But the gods they called upon—those hungry, whispering things that watched from the void—still lived.
And so Twa Milhoms moved.
Not from the sky.
Not from fire.
But from silence.
He stepped forward into the fading smoke. The earth didn't quake. The winds didn't howl. But every tree, every beast, every speck of life that still breathed—stopped.
The gods of the enemy tribes stirred beyond the veil, feeling something ancient. Something cold. Something that had never spoken a promise to mortals.
Twa Milhoms had watched Ayesha for eons.
Watched gods devour each other in a cycle of false hope and bloody faith.
He had never cared.
Until Ben.
Now he acted.
With no warning, Twa Milhoms tore the veil.
From the smoke above the ruined camps, the enemy gods were dragged—screaming, resisting, eyes wide with the terror only gods knew.
One was wreathed in flesh and bone.
One spoke only in hunger.
Another wept and offered sacrifices already dead.
But it did not matter.
Twa Milhoms raised no hand. Spoke no command. He simply looked.
And they began to wither.
Their essence collapsed. Their pride twisted into raw, gnawing fear. The dream of consuming Ikanbi shattered like brittle bone underfoot. No last strike. No divine duel.
Only execution.
They were slain in silence.
The jungle bore witness. And the tribe of Ikanbi, kneeling among the dead, heard nothing—only the wind returning.
The smoke had cleared, but the fear lingered.
The six tribes lay broken—villages turned to cinders, gods devoured, and warriors cut down before their blood could cool. The victorious did not cheer. The warriors of Ikanbi returned to the ruins not as looters, but as sentinels—iron weapons in hand, silence stitched into their breath, and the lingering scent of death clinging to their skin like oil.
Ben stood at the center of the ash fields, his cloak torn, blood drying at his wrists, and his eyes steady. Around him, the defeated—men, women, and children—were huddled, unsure if they were still alive or simply awaiting death delayed.
Behind Ben, the militia waited.
They did not leer.
They did not gloat.
But their killing intent, still half-awake, made even the strongest survivors flinch. Some covered their heads when an Ikanbi warrior walked too close. Others whispered prayers to absent gods. A single glare from a five-ringed warrior was enough to make seasoned enemy fighters avert their eyes and shrink back in terror.
Kael and Mala stood at Ben's flanks. Enru and Jaron completed the circle. Their armor still bore the marks of battle. Their hands rested on the hilts of iron.
"We've ended the threat," Jaron said, his voice calm but heavy. "But what do we do with the rot left behind?"
Ben didn't answer immediately. His gaze swept over the defeated. Not a single Ikanbi warrior had laid a cruel hand on them. No one had stolen, violated, or mocked. That was not the Ikanbi way. But neither would they embrace them blindly.
"We don't make slaves," Ben said, voice sharp enough to cut the silence.
"But we don't make family either," Mala added, arms folded.
"Not until they earn it," Ben agreed. "They will not walk our grounds freely. They will not eat from our stores unless they work. They will not speak our name unless they can carry it with strength."
The warriors understood.
These were not guests.
They were remnants.
And remnants had to prove their worth.
Ben raised his hand and pointed to a stretch of land at the edge of the former battlefield—scarred, blackened, but still fertile.
"They'll build there. Under watch. Under order. If they fail to follow… they return to ash."
The Ikanbi militia moved like a tide—silent, organized, lethal. They escorted the survivors to the new ground. There were no lashes. No beatings. But each step was taken under the shadow of a tribe that did not forget the price of weakness.
As the sun began to set, the defeated began their work—digging, lifting, carrying stones with shaking hands.
And though no words were spoken, they understood one truth: they were still alive only because mercy had a new face. It was not soft. It was not warm.
It wore iron.
And it smelled of blood.