The battle ended, but the smell of blood clung to the village long after the shouts had faded. Smoke curled above the palisade where torches still burned, their light meant to chase away the night. The villagers celebrated with shaking hands, their voices loud but thin, as if speaking too softly might bring the raiders back.
Kael walked among them unseen, slipping between groups that laughed too loudly, cried too quickly, or argued over who had struck the final blow. He saw the way men who claimed bravery now trembled as they set down their spears. He heard women thanking the ancestors, though their eyes darted to the treeline as if expecting shadows to break free again.
The dead were carried to the edge of the camp and left for the flames. Kael stood at a distance, the heat of the pyre brushing his face. The villagers wept, prayed, and cheered all at once. To them, survival was proof that the ancestors had fought beside them. To Kael, it was proof that panic could be turned into victory if one knew where to place the pieces.
When the crowd thinned, he slipped to the places where bodies had fallen. He knelt in the dirt, studying the ground where blood had soaked into roots and rocks. Some of the plants around the stains looked different, their leaves curled or glistening in ways they had not before. He plucked a few carefully, storing them in a pouch.
At the river's edge, he found more. A reed bent low where it had touched the water darkened by blood. He scraped a length of it into his hand and watched a sticky sap bead at its cut end.
He touched it to his skin, and after a moment his finger tingled. He smiled faintly, though the expression never reached his eyes.
By morning, the tribe whispered.
"The orphan lingers where the blood fell," one woman said, clutching her child closer.
"He picks at herbs like a crow at carrion," another muttered.
"He is unnatural. The ancestors will not forgive it."
The words carried from mouth to mouth until they reached the elders. None confronted Kael directly, but their glances grew sharper, longer. The boys who hated him most began to spit at his feet when they passed, emboldened by the fear of others.
Kael paid them no attention. He found a hollow behind the storage huts where smoke from the cookfires drifted low. There he built a small pit of coals, hidden from sight, and began to test what he had gathered.
He crushed leaves between stones, smelling the sharp oil that leaked out. Some herbs burned with a bitter scent that stung his eyes. Others blackened and left behind a resin that clung to his fingers. He touched one to a scratch on his arm; the sting faded, and the skin numbed. Another he dabbed carelessly, and his fingertip blistered red until he scraped it clean against the dirt.
Kael worked slowly, recording each reaction in silence, his mind arranging what healed and what harmed, what cleansed and what burned. He was patient, careful, never taking more than he could test.
When he left the pit that night, his pouch held only a few scraps of herbs and powders, but his eyes were calm. He had found the first line of a path no one in the tribe could see.
The next day, a child's wound festered after a hunting accident. The family prayed at the totem, offered food to the elders, but the boy's fever only rose. Kael stood nearby, listening, and when no one looked he brushed a smear of his salve across the inflamed skin. The redness dulled. By morning the boy's fever had broken.
No one gave Kael credit. The family claimed the ancestors had answered their prayers. The whispers that followed did not praise him, they condemned him.
"The orphan meddles with things best left untouched," the villagers said.
"He twists herbs into curses."
Kael heard them, but his expression never changed. He slipped once more to the hollow behind the huts, his pouch heavier than before.
He had learned something vital: knowledge could heal, knowledge could kill, and both could be turned into weapons.