Kael sat outside on the packed earth while murmurs leaked from the doorway and faded again. He did not leave. Twice he slipped in to rinse the salve and lay fresh. Twice he slipped out without a word.
Somewhere near midnight, Toma's breathing deepened. The tightness in his face eased. The heat fell out of his skin like a leaving tide. Mira emerged once and met Kael's eyes but said nothing. Her gaze slid away, and she pressed her palms together in gratitude toward the totem that could not answer her.
Haron came last, when the village had softened into worn silence. He sat on the step beside Kael and set a strip of dried meat on the boy's knee. They ate without looking at each other, slow and plain.
"You have quick hands," Haron said after a while. "Quicker thoughts."
Kael wiped his fingers on the hem of his shirt. "There was time to learn," he said. The words were simple and true.
Haron's mouth tilted at one corner, neither smile nor frown. "Seris will not change her mind. Fear does not like to be proven wrong."
Kael's gaze turned toward the dark line of the trees. Stars had shaken free of the clouds and stood clear above the valley. For a heartbeat he felt that same far thrum under his ribs, then it was gone. "It does not matter," he said. He sounded as if he were measuring the distance between two stones in a shallow stream.
Haron rose. "It will matter one day." He rested the spear against his shoulder. "When it does, choose where you stand before others choose for you."
He went back to the watch line, a patient shape against the paling sky.
Kael remained on the step until the first birds began to argue with the dawn. He cleaned the last of the salve from his hands and pressed his palms together, feeling the small tremor of tired muscles, the warmth that still clung to his skin. Inside the hut, Toma slept. Dagan kept vigil with a face hollowed by relief he would refuse to confess.
By morning the story had already changed. Seris told the circle that the ancestors had spared the boy. The women repeated it with tears and smiles, and the men nodded because the nodding made their fear quiet. No one spoke of a paste with the smell of resin and smoke. No one spoke of a boy who had come and gone like a shadow.
Haron knew. He kept his knowing where it would not be used against the one who had earned it.
Kael passed the totem on his way to fetch water. The carvings were dull in the early light, mere grooves cut long ago, and yet the skin along his forearms prickled. He did not touch the wood. He did not need to. The path ahead of him was not carved there. It ran through small fires and patient tests, through a village that would not name what it feared, and through a sky that watched without blinking.
He went to work. The day had a way of revealing itself to those who watched.