The morning opened on a brittle silver, the kind of light that makes every shadow look like a promise. Ethan woke with the taste of smoke and rosemary in his mouth and the quiet weight of the panel under his sleeve. It was a private hum now—familiar as the beat of his own pulse—and it gave him a small, steady advantage that no one in the pack suspected.
They left the cabin in groups. Ari led a larger patrol this time: three scouts for perimeter checks, two to check the river crossings, and Ethan with Riley and Maya to sweep the low ridge where tracks had been seen the day before. The work felt purposeful; each step had a reason, each pause held the memory of what could go wrong. Training had made them careful, not bolder. That restraint was a lesson Ethan was still learning to practice on its own.
"Eyes forward," Ari said as they split. "Keep your interval. If something's out there, we don't want to bunch up."
Ethan slid into the rhythm they'd created — a step for the silence, quiet breath between strides. He kept his hand where it had become instinctively placed, over the panel, feeling its private glow like a secret coin in his palm. The ledger in his head scrolled: extractions available, PP waiting like water in a cistern. He had already spent discreetly — tracking modules, combat refinements — but the balance still read absurd. It felt wrong and comforting at the same time.
They found the tracks less than an hour later: broader than the Omegas, deeper, the toe marks set like punctuation. Someone had been moving fast and with purpose. Riley crouched, head near the ground, and let the wind tell her what it knew.
"Fresh," she said. "Three hours, maybe less. Heading north-east. Not one of ours."
Ari's jaw tightened. "Evan's lot have been pushing farther out. Or a new skulk. Either way, someone's testing boundaries."
Ethan felt it in the panel's thin voice: a prompt for diplomacy, an extraction suggestion blinking like an unobtrusive star.
Extractable: Pack Diplomacy Template — Cost: 60 PP.
(Helps frame negotiation terms, identifies likely concessions and red lines; gives +10 efficacy to persuasion attempts when used privately.)
He imagined the template as a neat paper he could take out, read, and hand the pack a script that would make hostile meetings fizz into talks. Sixty PP was nothing to him now. Still, the principle mattered. He did not want to manufacture consent out of a menu. He wanted to be seen as someone who could think, not as a man who bought his way out of trouble.
He kept his thumb pressed to the leather of his sleeve but did not open the menu. Instead, he watched Ari and Riley exchange looks — language without words — and chose to propose a slower path.
"We should map the crossings," he said, letting the suggestion sit between them. "Then we can set obvious and obvious-looking boundaries. Let them cross, but only where we can watch. It shows a line without calling for blood."
Riley considered him. "You want diplomacy, then set the trap."
"Not a trap," Ethan corrected. "A schedule. A route. A way out if they test us. We force a conversation that doesn't have to go violent."
Ari's mouth pressed into a thin line. He liked strength, but he respected good planning. "Work. Prepare. Leave a message. We can do that."
They set the bounds: a small cairn at the old oak, a scraped mark on a boulder, three stones in a triangle at the crossing. It was the kind of signage that looked like habit and not strategy, which would make any passing pack think twice. They assigned a rotation to watch those points: non-lethal deterrence, nets, a couple of hidden lights that would make a night crossing visible from a mile off.
That afternoon, while the younger scouts practiced silent recovery drills, Ethan sat with the panel hidden on his lap and considered a different expenditure. One of the scouts — young Tomas — had taken a brave tumble the day before and was still favoring a wrist. He'd been quiet about it, as scouts were, but Ari had sighed and rubbed his own knuckles the way old men do when they think about young ones being reckless.
Minor Healing Capsule — Cost: 30 PP.
(Speeds recovery of soft-tissue injuries, palpable but modest.)
Ethan tapped the extraction and then tucked the capsule into his satchel without fanfare. At supper he sat beside Tomas and, with practiced calm and a few words Riley had taught him about not dramatizing help, bound the boy's wrist, applied the capsule, and showed him how to tape it up so it wouldn't snag.
"Feels a bit warmer already," Tomas said, surprised.
"Good," Ethan replied. "Take it easy for a day."
There was no ceremony, no panel-as-miracle. Tomas left the meal with a mortified grin and a promise to keep from overdoing it. Small kindnesses were best that way — invisible miracles disguised as competence.
The first real test came at dusk. A group of three travelers appeared on the ridge, their shapes backlit by the lowering sun. They carried no banners; they moved like people trying to be unremarked. Ari's patrol line tightened. "Halt," he called in the firm voice of someone who could pronounce consequences.
The travelers stopped and raised their hands in the old, non-threatening gesture. They were human, no obvious shifting. Their leader was an older man with a face like weathered wood and eyes that watched as if cataloguing. He spoke in calm tones.
"We come to walk the river, not to cross through your dens. We found an animal in our store and meant no troubles," he said, voice steady. "If there is a fee, we will pay. We do not want blood."
The panel nudged at Ethan's sleeve — a tiny, private suggestion: use diplomacy template now for maximal effect.
Ethan could see the negotiation as victory if handled well. If the old man was telling the truth, a clear set of boundaries and a small, symbolic concession could prevent a scrap that might draw Evan's ire the next day. Sixty PP would make the phrasing easy in his head: how to ask for names, what to offer, how to present a route that seemed like courtesy rather than control.
He opened the menu only in his head, the Panel's text visible to him alone.
Pack Diplomacy Template applied.
Suggested phrases: "We share the river by habit. If you need passage, tell us why and when; we'll mark a route and ask a small token in exchange — grain, a tool, work. We don't ask blood. We ask for respect."
Ethan stepped forward. No one stepped back. He spoke without the Panel's voice audible to anyone else; he used its structure but let the words come from his own chest.
"We don't have an army," he said. "We have lines, and we keep them because it keeps us all alive. You can cross in the area we'll mark if you agree to a small contribution and to call ahead when you come again. It avoids accidents. It avoids grief."
The old man listened, eyes narrowing slightly, then giving a small, almost imperceptible nod. "We can do that. We have oats and a hand-mill. We can leave those at the oak. We'll honor an arrangement."
Ari watched them. Something like approval flickered in his face; he did not know the words Ethan relied on, but he felt the result — a conversation, not a fight. Riley's hand found Ethan's wrist briefly, a quick, approving squeeze that felt more binding than any public salute.
They marked the route as they had planned and accepted a small offering: a sack of grain and a worn but serviceable tool. It was nothing to Ethan's panel balance, but everything to the people on the ridge. The travelers thanked them and left at a steady pace, no one looking back.
That night by the fire, Ari gave Ethan a look that carried weight without praise. "You handled that well," he said. "Not all outsiders would think to talk first."
Ethan only nodded. The secret ledger under his sleeve remained exactly that: secret. He had used the Panel's template to shape language and timing, but the act itself — the choice to speak and to listen — was his. He had not bought the peace; he'd brokered it.
Riley leaned toward him and whispered, "You did good."
And underneath it all, the panel pulsed like a private heartbeat and the world turned on the small bargains they had made. Ethan felt, for the first time, how power could be used to make room for ordinary lives rather than erase them. Only he knew the exact calculus. Only he held the numbers.
That knowledge felt heavy and right.