The longhouse held its breath the way a snared deer does, not yet bleeding, not yet screaming. Smoke twisted in the rafters, painted with ochre hum of pipes and the musk of damp bark. Council drums lay idle near the door, their skins slack in the humidity. No rhythm. Only voices—those had become the drumbeats now.
"They cut our paths through the cedar grove." The Wolf chief, Stone-Among-Roots, spoke without standing, as if standing would grant legitimacy to the offense. "The Turtle clan claims the river, yet their hunters trample wolf traps set along the ridge. Will you deny that, Shell-Maker?"
The Turtle elder's mouth folded on itself like a closed clamshell. "We claim stewardship, not ownership." Shell-Maker's blind eye reflected the fire. "The river named us; we name those who move upon it. Your traps were set west of the turtle stones—Wolf land becomes greed when it forgets boundary songs."
A murmur rolled through the gathered leaders. Bear men leaned on their hafted clubs. Crane women sat with their heads wrapped in mourning white, still grieving a summer fever.
Sky-Torn sat in shadow where the old smoke-darkened masks stared. He did not raise his voice. He traced the puckered scar on his left palm with his right thumb—an ink-black crescent cut by obsidian and ash weeks ago when the Villain System had claimed him and tied knotted cords around his life. It hummed now, a weight behind his ribs.
Ding.
Villain Points +3: You allowed grievance to gather like lightning without a thunder path. Silence sharpens conflict.
He breathed the point into his chest. Each point was a dark bead hung on the thread of his fate. Beads could become a necklace. Necklaces could become chains.
"The traps were found beside turtle stones because the stones keep moving," Stone-Among-Roots insisted. "Turtle sets markers when it pleases them, and the river carries their words farther than ours. I say we shift the trade rite to the Wolf grove. There, the cedar does not wander."
"The cedar wanders in the ax," someone muttered, and laughter cracked, brittle.
Sky-Torn watched the laughter flit like a hawk shadow across the floor. His old teacher would have spoken then, soft and slow, guiding the fire to banked embers. But his old teacher was buried, and his bones had given Sky-Torn their last dream. Those dreams had awakened the System.
Ding.
Optional Prompt Available: [Whispered Thread]: Suggest an omen that binds two enemies to a common fear. Cost: 5 Villain Points. Reward: Council Stability (Temporary), Hidden Debts.
He could almost see the prompt text as a pale bead bobbing above the coals. He let it hover. Spending points to keep the council stable would be like drinking river water upstream of a slaughter. Better than downstream. Still poisoned.
The Bear chief, Moss-on-Stone, pushed himself up with a grunt, broad as a doorframe, face painted with ash. "While you argue stones and cedars," he rumbled, "our aunties cough. The fever took more in the night. The Crane women are right to wear white. The trade rite shifts nowhere. The rite comes late if the spirits are not heeded."
Shell-Maker's foggy eye swiveled. "The spirits are heeded when we spill corn for them, not when we count traps."
Stone-Among-Roots snapped, "The Wolf clan spilled corn until our bags were bare the winter the river froze. Where was Turtle then? Counting reeds?"
"You speak as if only wolves bleed in snow."
Voices ricocheted.
Sky-Torn tilted his head, listened for something else. The old songs said that power came when listening became widening. He widened. The fire crackled. Someone's child coughed behind the reed screen. Rain whispered against the bark roof. Beneath it, a deeper sound—thudding feet, small, frantic.
The reed screen slapped back. Two boys tumbled in, hair wet with rain, eyes wide and whites showing. The younger one, Little-Reed, nearly collided with the fire and leaped sideways, panting.
"Out," snapped a guard, but Sky-Torn raised his hand, and the guard stilled.
The older boy, Swift-Fish, blurted, "They are at the river mouth."
Silence broke open, a fruit cut cleanly. Even the pipe smoke seemed to pause.
"Who?" asked Moss-on-Stone, not moving.
"Ghost-men," Little-Reed said, shuddering with the joy and terror of the word. "Skin like overcooked dough. Hair like corn silk. They wear shining skins that throw rain and mud to the side. And their sticks—" He spread his fingers. "Their sticks spit thunder."
"Spit…?"
"The sticks sound like a storm hitting rock," Swift-Fish said, choosing the careful voice he used to recite his mother's burial songs. "A deer leaped and fell like a doll struck by a careless hand."
The longhouse absorbed the words. Someone crossed themselves with their clan sign. Others muttered protective charms. There had always been stories, the way there were always stories about winter wolves with human eyes and lakes that could steal your voice. But stories did not leave snapping sap behind. Stories did not make a boy's pupils pin needles.
Shell-Maker was the first to break. "You exaggerate."
"They took three trees," Swift-Fish said, voice cracking. "They're making a… a nest from them. On stilts. In the reeds. And they cut without asking. Without smoke. Without song."
The Villain System stirred like a turtle beneath mud, patient and heavy.
Ding.
New Quest Triggered: "First Glimpse of the Pale Ones."
— Investigate the strangers.
— Manipulate the council's reaction to shape alliances.
— Reward: Villain Points (variable); Unlock: Forbidden Skill—Tongue of the Interloper (Rank I).
Sky-Torn stood, and the room's attention snapped to him like dew to spider silk. Even those who mistrusted him for the hard way he had sung the death-song of the plague that took his sister listened now. Death had given him a new voice. The System had taught him how to wield it.
"Let the boys be fed," he said. The simple command carried into the reed-dark, where an auntie's bracelets chimed as she moved.
Moss-on-Stone's brow furrowed. "You believe them so quickly?"
"I do." Sky-Torn did not say because their fear smells like truth, and the System hums along that scent. He said, "The river has been giving omens since the flood that exposed the old turtle stones. The gulls came early this year. Fish bellies up with worms like white hairs inside. Portents gather before a tearing."
"You always find omens for what you want," Stone-Among-Roots accused.
Sky-Torn let the accusation be a garment and wore it. "The omens are needles. I am a hand that sews."
He stepped closer to the fire, watched the council's faces flicker. He thought of the Optional Prompt. Five points to weave a story of unity. He could speak of a dream where the Thunderbird struck a long, white log, and the clans only survived by circling together under the Serpent's arch. He could purchase a day of cooperation and owe a debt that would come due in a darker hour.
He was tempted. He was always tempted now. Power was a sweet paste pressed against his gums and tongue.
Ding.
Choice Available: [Omen of Binding] (Cost: 5 VP) vs. [Scales on the Eyes] (Cost: 0 VP).
— Omen of Binding: Fabricate a unifying omen; immediate Council Cohesion +30; Hidden Debt (Spirit Claim) applied.
— Scales on the Eyes: Expose duplicities within the council, increasing distrust; Council Cohesion -20; +7–12 Villain Points; Faction Seeds unlocked.
He exhaled, watching two paths unscroll like braided river channels. One narrow and choked with reeds, safe for children. The other swift and dangerous, where logs spun and smashed, carving new banks.
"Tell us what you think," Shell-Maker pressed, his blind eye gleaming.
He could choose the narrow path, but narrow rivers become stagnant. Stagnation would not prepare them for the thunder-sticks. They needed to harden. To harden, they had to crack.
Sky-Torn let the sweetness of the unifying lie dissolve. He chose the river's force.
Ding.
Path Selected: Scales on the Eyes.
Villain Points +9.
Faction Seeds Unlocked: Wolf-Bear War Bloc (Dormant), Turtle-Crane Trade Bloc (Dormant), Shaman's Liminal Circle (Active: 1/5).
He straightened. "You want me to plead for unity," he said. "But unity built in a moment fades in the next. If we are to stand against spirits of thunder who cut wood without song, we must know which of us would sell their uncle for a knife."
The room rustled with offense. Good. Offense pulled hidden knives into sight.
He pointed—open hand, respectful as custom required, yet sharp. "Stone-Among-Roots. Your nephew trades with reed-island smugglers. I have watched him carry Wolf cedar to Turtle fishermen without the crane tally-women's markings. The price of such trade is the softening of borders. Would you argue stones and cede a river to unmarked hands?"
Stone-Among-Roots shifted, teeth bared. "You listen where you have no right to walk."
"Shell-Maker," Sky-Torn went on, voice like a thin blade slicing reeds. "Your daughter stores wolf-bone charms in her rope baskets, rumor says, to charm a Wolf husband. You will make an alliance in the night and call it tradition."
Shell-Maker set his jaw. His blind eye watered. The tension buzzed like hornets in a hollow log.
Moss-on-Stone grunted, wary. "And what do you say of me?"
"You bleed for the people," Sky-Torn said, sincere as summer thunder. "But your sister leads the mourning women; she will press you to refuse any pact that shames the dead." He let the words hang, heavy enough to bow the Bear chief's head.
The longhouse shifted. Distrust was a smell, rank and old. He had woken it. He felt the System purr, as if a hidden cat had found the meat he offered.
Ding.
Villain Points +3.
Status Effect Applied: Council Cohesion -20 (2 days).
Hidden Map Revealed: Faction Tendrils: 15% traced.
"Enough," Shell-Maker snarled, then coughed, and it sounded like stones in a flooded gully. He put a hand to his chest. The fever had touched him too. "You speak like a snake."
"I speak like someone who has seen plague and winter," Sky-Torn answered. "And who hears boys whisper thunder at the river mouth."
He raised his hand again, and the longhouse slowly recognized a shape in his posture—the ritual posture of a Listener: palms open, shoulders level, chin tucked, inviting a vision. You did not mock that posture. You did not interrupt it.
"I will go," he said. "I will see the strangers. I will learn the shape of their thunder. Those who wish to come must obey my words while we watch them. We will not engage. We will not shoot arrows or sling stones. We will become reeds."
"The river does not protect reeds from fire," Stone-Among-Roots said flatly.
"No," Sky-Torn said. "But reeds hear the fire's language."
From the corner, a Crane woman—White-Feather, whose songs had soothed the dead this summer—lifted her chin. "Who goes with you?"
"Two Wolf scouts," Sky-Torn said. "One Bear, to cut paths if we must retreat. One Turtle, because they know the river's breath better than anyone. And one grief-singer." He looked at White-Feather. "To hold words if men begin to lose them."
Moss-on-Stone grunted assent. "My nephew, Tall-Reed, will go. He climbs like ivy." Stone-Among-Roots set his jaw and nodded once. "Grey-Ear and Spotted-Fawn," he said. "They can move without a pine needle knowing." Shell-Maker sighed and made a sign with his good eye. "Stream-Under-Silt will guide."
White-Feather pressed her palms together in acceptance. "If the river steals a voice," she said, "I will lend a song."
Sky-Torn felt something unwind in his chest, not trust, but utility. He needed utility more than trust. Trust had failed his sister. Trust had let the fever walk through the smoke hole and lie down in her lungs.
Ding.
Quest Updated: "First Glimpse of the Pale Ones."
— Gather scouting party.
— Scout to river mouth undetected.
— Observe, interpret, and return.
— Optional: Steal an object for study (High Risk).
— Bonus Reward: +5 VP; Partial Unlock—Tongue of the Interloper (Phoneme Drift).
They moved before the council could break into more arguing. The rain had become a thin thread falling through leaves. Sky-Torn stepped beneath it and let it cool his eyelids. The others appeared, one by one—Grey-Ear, whose right ear bore a nick from a jealous wife's knife. Spotted-Fawn, slight and silent. Tall-Reed, whose hands could find bark holds like an osprey's talons. Stream-Under-Silt, hair bound tight, eyes quick. White-Feather, pale ash streaked over her brow, voice soft as a hand smoothing a child's hair.
"Do not be seen," Sky-Torn said. "Do not leave tracks."
Grey-Ear flashed a quick grin with no teeth in it. "We will be dreams."
They moved through deer runs and fox holes, past elderberry thickets and moss-slick logs. The forest was full of old gossip. Sky-Torn swallowed it; the System liked it when he listened. It fed him small, precise details—here a broken fern frond, there a chip of unfamiliar metal dull in the mud. He crouched and touched the chip. It was heavier than it should have been, the way guilt is heavier than a deed.
Ding.
Item Acquired: Sliver of Worked Iron (Foreign).
— Analysis Pending (Requires Forbidden Skill—Tongue of the Interloper, Rank I).
— Villain Points +1 (Curiosity Tax).
He tucked it into his medicine pouch. The river smell pressed in—wet reeds, fish rot, the clean bite of clay. Then, above that, a new smell: pitch, unfamiliar oils, a strange spice like sun-baked rope.
They reached the rise that overlooked the river mouth. Sky-Torn flattened behind a wind-felled pine and peered through its spearing roots.
The strangers had indeed built a nest of stilts. Logs laid crosswise, lashed with fiber and something else that glinted pale—iron spikes. A platform rose shoulder-high above the reeds, and on it men in layered fabrics and hammered plates stood, faces raw with wind and salt. They had erected a square cloth between poles, marked with a sign Sky-Torn did not know—a red cross thick as blood laid over white.
One man struck flint into a long stick, and fire bloomed in its mouth. He touched it to the lip of a hollow-shouldered tube. The thunder-stick went BOOM, a sound like the earth swallowing itself. Birds crushed the sky with their rising. Reed heads snapped as if someone had cut them with invisible knives. A deer at the far edge of the flats gave a small, shocked leap and fell as if the ground had pulled it down by the ankles.
White-Feather's hand found Sky-Torn's arm. Her finger bones were small as fish spines. He shook his head once. Hold.
Stream-Under-Silt breathed a curse. Tall-Reed's eyes went as round as turtle eggs. Even Grey-Ear, who had survived two winters alone after getting lost during a hunt, swallowed hard.
The men laughed. The sound was choppy and quick, like knives tapping wood.
Another man, taller, bearded, in a coat cut with angles that offended Sky-Torn's love of curves, raised his hands and spoke. The words stumbled and spun. They did not fit in his ear. They slid off like eels.
The Villain System nudged. Words were a power the System wanted.
Ding.
Unlocked: Forbidden Skill—Tongue of the Interloper (Rank I).
— Effect: You may map foreign phonemes onto nearby sounds. Sentences become bruised meaning.
— Cost: -4 Villain Points (Blood of Tongue).
— Side Effect: Taste of iron; dreams of drowning.
Sky-Torn hesitated, feeling again the bead-string tug of points. He could save them for later. He could also come back with only the shape of menace and none of its grammar. Grammar was control.
He burned the points.
Ding.
Villain Points -4.
Tongue of the Interloper (Rank I) Active (Short Duration).
The tall man's words shuddered into forms. Not full meaning, but ghosts of meaning. "—Measure—soundings—claim—by grace—Crown—" The names were stones he could not lift. The hum around them—the intent—was clear enough: claim, stake, possess. The man pointed at the platform, then at the river, then unrolled a paper and smoothed it with his hand.
Another man knelt and drove a metal spike into the mud. He hammered with a short, square-headed tool. With each strike, Sky-Torn felt the earth flinch.
Stream-Under-Silt whispered, "They're binding the river."
Sky-Torn nodded. "We bind with songs. They bind with iron."
Ding.
Insight Gained: Colonizers mark territory with artifacts (stakes, cloth signs, maps). Counter-rituals may disrupt claims.
Quest Branch Unlocked: "Break the First Stake" (Optional).
The men brought out objects—beads that flashed like rain, knives that did not chip, animal skins pale as clouds. One of them bent and hammered patterns into a circle of metal, then held it to the light like a sun.
White-Feather's breath was warm on Sky-Torn's wrist. "What do we take?"
He had not spoken the word take aloud, but the thought had been there, a fish flicking under dark water. To study the thunder-stick? Impossible without engaging. To steal something softer—beads, cloth, a tool—and learn its spirit? Possible.
Ding.
Optional Objective: Steal a Token.
— Difficulty: Medium (Reed cover).
— Reward: +5 VP; Tongue of the Interloper—Token Lexicon (Nouns).
— Failure: Wound; Enemy Alertness +20 for 7 days; Council Blame +15 (Sky-Torn).
He could also retreat and bring the taste of foreign words back to the council like a fish tasted with a fingertip before drying. To retreat was to gain safety and lose leverage. The council was a field of blades; better to walk through it carrying iron than empty-handed.
"Grey-Ear," he said softly. "Your teeth smiled today. Do they want work?"
Grey-Ear's grin flashed again and vanished. He was already sliding into the reeds, belly to muck. Spotted-Fawn followed, weight a whisper. Stream-Under-Silt placed a palm on the water, feeling current like a lover's pulse, and indicated a gentle spiral path: down a narrow channel, up behind a broken log, under the platform's shadow.
Sky-Torn touched the sliver of iron in his pouch. The System throbbed.
Ding.
Temporary Buff: Shadowed Intent (+10 to stealth within reed cover).
Curse Meter: 2/10 (Tongue of the Interloper dream-debt).
Minutes elongated into threads. Men laughed. Gull feathers drifted. A frog spoke a sentence and paused for an answer that did not come. Grey-Ear reached the broken log and stilled. Spotted-Fawn's braid lay like a wet snake against her spine. The tall man on the platform turned, his eyes scanning the reeds. He had the look of someone used to finding deer from the corner of an eye.
Sky-Torn tasted iron as if he had bitten his own mouth. Tongue of the Interloper whispered scraps: "—watch—Indians—savages—" The word slithered wrong in his ear. Not a clan sign. A lump. A lump that would be rolled into many shapes.
The man on the platform lifted a hollow tube that was not a thunder-stick. He put it to his eye. Sky-Torn's heart stumbled. The tube swallowed distance. The man's other eye narrowed. His mouth twitched.
Ding.
Hazard Detected: Field Glass (Distance-Eater).
— Effect: Enemy Perception +20 beyond reed line.
Sky-Torn's hand tightened. "Down," he breathed, though his scouts were already down, flat as selkie skins.
The man swept the tube left, then right, paused, frowned, and lowered it. He spoke, and the words bumped into meaning, ugly and half-born. "—No movement—too wet—later."
Grey-Ear slid under the platform and reached up, fingers gentle as spiders. He found a dangling length of rope. At its end—a charm, perhaps, or a simple knot? No. A metal disk the size of a turtle hatchling, stamped with a profile—a face looking aside, disinterested. Grey-Ear wiggled the disk free with slow, reverent movements, as if easing a thorn from a child's foot. He tucked it into his mouth and flattened again.
Spotted-Fawn had crawled near a pile of sacks. She cut a seam with a fishbone and whispered delight. The sack held small beads like single drops of sky. She took one, then two, then—Sky-Torn's breath iced—three. Her greed, small as it was, was still greed.
Ding.
Greed Check: Party Member—Spotted-Fawn (Low). Chance of Complication: 28%
— Advisory: Issue correction now (Gesture), or accept risk for +1 VP.
He flicked two fingers, a hawk's beak. Spotted-Fawn sighed, stilled, and took no more. It would be a story later, how she put the beads back. Stories mattered. He did not want her to taste the System's sweetness the way he did.
Grey-Ear slid like muck's own shadow to the water's edge. A man turned. Another reached for the thunder-stick. A third sneezed—a big, honest sneeze that cracked the moment like a branch. Grey-Ear froze. The tall man chuckled and slapped the sneezer's shoulder. The laughter roiled like minnows and then smoothed.
Grey-Ear's face breached the surface near Sky-Torn's elbow, dragonfly-quiet. He spat the metal disk into Sky-Torn's palm. It was cold in a way the river was not: cold like a promise made without a fire.
Ding.
Item Acquired: Round Token (Stamped Face).
— Effect: Token Lexicon—unlocked (Nouns).
— Villain Points +5.
Words crawled over his tongue, brightening. "—coin—King—mark—"
They had a King. He had a coin. The coin was a mark. The mark said the river had a new name, a name spoken by a man who had never knelt to hear it.
He wanted to bite the coin until it bent. He wanted to cast it into the mud and chant over it until iron remembered that it had once been red earth.
White-Feather's hand pressed his wrist. Simpler. "We go," she breathed.
They slipped back through grass and rain, water licking their shins like a patient dog. Sky-Torn did not hurry them. Hurrying split moments. Split moments made noise. Noise fed thunder-sticks.
Behind them, the platform creaked, men's voices rose—songs or curses he did not know. The cloth with the blood-cross slapped the wind.
When at last the forest closed in and the river's breath quieted, the scouts let out their air. Tall-Reed laughed softly, the brittle laughter of someone whose ribs had been held too tightly for too long. Stream-Under-Silt touched the coin with two fingers and pulled back, as if it had stung.
"What do we tell them?" Grey-Ear asked, meaning the council, meaning the knives hidden in every man's tongue.
"We tell them about thunder and iron," Sky-Torn said. "We tell them the strangers bind the river with their own songs—metal and paper. We tell them they name the river without asking it. Then we let them argue until their blood remembers itself."
"You will set them against each other again," White-Feather observed. Not accusation. Observation. She had sung for too many dead to waste breath on scolding.
"I will set them as heat and cold," Sky-Torn said. "Hard things are forged when iron knows both."
She studied him with eyes that had watched ash settle on children's cheeks. "And who forges you?"
The Villain System answered before he could. It did not speak in a voice. It spoke in ledger lines.
Ding.
Reputation Shift: Shaman—Feared +10; Trusted -5; Necessary +8.
Skill Progress: Tongue of the Interloper—Token Lexicon 1/3 (Nouns).
They returned to the longhouse as the rain thickened. Voices seethed again even before they stepped fully inside. Word had outraced them, as it always did. Stone-Among-Roots paced like a caged wolf. Shell-Maker clutched a cup he did not drink from. Moss-on-Stone sat very still, fists on his knees.
Sky-Torn raised the coin so all could see the face stamped on it, a stranger's profile, mouth set in a line that had never spoken their tongue.
"This," he said, "is the shape of their promise. They promise to name what they see. They promise to count what they name. They promise, with thunder, to make counting the same as owning."
Murmurs ruptured, then tightened. He felt hatred flare in the room—not focused, not formed, but hot. Hatred could be poured into dangerous molds.
"Then we kill them," Stone-Among-Roots snapped. "We strike at night. We burn their nest."
"And bring thunder to our door," Moss-on-Stone cautioned.
"And what do we gain by waiting?" Shell-Maker rasped. "We give them time to call more nests downriver."
Sky-Torn opened his palm. The coin caught firelight like a small, cold sun.
He could throw the coin into the coals and declare a ritual—the Coin-Burning—insist that each clan cast an offering and bind the river back with words and ash. He could feed unity with symbol. The Optional Prompt flickered back, tempting, different now that he held iron proof.
Ding.
New Option: The Coin-Burning Rite (Cost: 6 VP; Spirit Claim—River Witness).
— Effect: Council Cohesion +40 (5 days); River's Favor +10; Faction Seeds remain.
— Side Effects: Debts with Old Turtle awakened; Villain Points gain reduced by 20% while Rite's smoke lingers.
Or he could press the blade he had sharpened earlier, drive the factions to take distinct, irreversible stances—Wolf-Bear to war, Turtle-Crane to trade, and himself to the threshold between. Then he could steer the moment of first blood for maximum leverage when the thunder finally cracked where their children slept.
Ding.
Alternative: Draw the Lines (Cost: 0 VP; Council Cohesion -30; Faction Seeds Germinate).
— Effect: Immediate splits; Villain Points gain +25% for Conflict Actions for 7 days.
— Risk: Permanent scars; Ancestor Disapproval +10.
He looked at White-Feather. She had taken a place near the entrance, where the soul of the wind comes and goes. Her face said nothing. Her hands, open on her knees, held the weight of too many songs.
He looked at the coin again. He saw not only the stranger's profile but his own reflection beside it, warped, stretched by the curve. Villain. He would become that, history would make him that; he saw it clearer now in the tightness of men's mouths around him. But he would also be necessary. Necessary like a bitter root in a healing broth.
He breathed in the smoke of his people, the damp bark of his land, the bitter iron of the coin. His choice would fix itself in the next heartbeat, and the heartbeat after that. Threads, once knotted, held.
He closed his fist.
Ding.
Decision Point: Choose Now.
— [Perform the Coin-Burning Rite]
— [Draw the Lines]
Sky-Torn lifted his hand, and the council leaned forward as one body.
The coin gleamed once—river-light in fire—and the chapter's breath hitched, waiting to see into which fire he would throw it.