The sun slipped low, a red smear on the teeth of the mountains. The people gathered in a wide ring, their breath making clouds in the cold air, their silence heavier than any drum. The duel ground had been swept clean and ringed with cedar boughs so the spirits might sit close. Beyond the boughs, snow crouched like animals at the edge of firelight, waiting.
Sky-Torn stood bare to the waist, body painted in ash spirals. His staff lay on the ground behind him; ritual combat demanded equal arms. Each man carried only a spear, a knife, and his own will. His burned palms still throbbed from the cord-ritual. Let the pain be a tutor. He had already bent fate once. He would again if the spirits tolerated it.
Wounded Bear waited across the ring, spear tipped with obsidian, chest broad as a shield. He bowed to the council, to the people, and finally to Sky-Torn. "No trick of smoke. No whisper of lies," he said. "Only blood will speak."
The council's eldest, Broken Antler, raised her staff. "Let the duel be fought. The ancestors watch. The smoke remembers."
A single exhale moved through the tribe.
The System pulsed like cold metal in Sky-Torn's skull.
Quest Active: Duel of Oaths (Major).
Victory: +250 Villain Points. Unlock: Oath-Engine (Tier II). Reputation: +Fear, +Authority.
Failure: Death or Exile.
Warnings: Ritual interference increases backlash probability.
Sky-Torn rolled his shoulders, spun the spear once. The ash on his skin flaked like winter bark. He had no wish to kill Wounded Bear—only to shut the mouths that said the spirits had turned away from him. But the System murmured: mercy is a blade without a handle.
Drums? None. The duel was older than drums. Wind counted beats instead, rustling cedar. Children perched in the rafters of the lodge entrance. Night-Runner stood at the front of the ring, jaw clenched hard enough to crack.
Wounded Bear moved first, a sudden flood. His spear drove low. Sky-Torn slipped left and the obsidian sliced empty air. He answered with a cut that nicked shoulder rather than heart. Sparks leapt where bone and stone kissed.
They circled. Wounded Bear stepped heavy and honest, a storm walking on two legs. Sky-Torn stepped light and crooked, wind made person. He marked where the earth swelled beneath the packed dirt, remembered the root that slept there like a snake.
Again the charge. Again the slip. His mind spoke the tiniest chant, not so loud that the ancestors must hear it, only a thread tugged in a crowded loom.
Destiny Twist (Minor) applied.
Probability warp: 8%.
Backlash risk: Low (accumulating).
Wounded Bear's toe snagged where Sky-Torn knew it would. The stumble lasted a blink, but blinks are doors. Sky-Torn's spear bit under the ribs, not deep, a red signature across muscle. First blood. A hiss from the ring—the sound of pride and dread having a child.
"Trickster," Wounded Bear growled, breath fogging. He tasted his own blood and grinned through it. "You bend even ground."
"I bend what I must, so the people live," Sky-Torn said, and was surprised his voice did not tremble.
They met again—hard, close, elbows and knife-hilts. Wounded Bear fought like a law; every movement said this is how a man stands. Sky-Torn fought like a question; every angle asked what if the river runs uphill. Knife caught wrist. Spear shaft cracked against shin. Teeth clicked. Someone in the crowd sobbed like a child and then swallowed it whole.
A feint—Wounded Bear pivoted faster than a man his size should, and the spearhead ripped Sky-Torn's thigh. Heat flamed down his leg. His knee quivered.
Status: Wound (Thigh), –15% mobility.
Recommendation: Oath-Engine exploit available (medium risk).
He felt the cord-words still hanging in the world like cobweb. Wounded Bear had sworn before all to expose rot and turn the people from it—even if it broke his back. Oaths are nets. Nets can be tugged.
Sky-Torn smeared his own blood on his fingers and traced a circle at his hip bone, where fate's thread runs hottest. His whisper slid under the noise.
Oath-Engine (Minor) activated.
Target: Wounded Bear.
Parameter: "Expose rot" reflects upon the speaker if he falters in purity during the duel (doubt, fear, pity).
Backlash chance: Moderate.
The air shivered. Cedar boughs tapped one another in a wind that hadn't been there. Wounded Bear's eyes flickered just enough to show he felt it too: a weight across the shoulders that wasn't spear or expectation.
He roared and came in anyway. His spear met Sky-Torn's with a ringing thunk that numbed fingers to the elbow. Knife to knife, breath to breath, they fought into each other's eyes. For a half-heartbeat Wounded Bear saw not an enemy but the boy who had once carried water to the old lodge; for a half-heartbeat Sky-Torn saw not a rival but the man who had taught boys to hold a spear without hurting their own toes. Pity is a wolf: small, and then it isn't.
The wolf's shadow crossed Wounded Bear's face. The oath-string tightened around his throat.
He hesitated.
Sky-Torn's spear-butt cracked against jaw; his knee smashed shin; his knife etched a burning line across chest. Wounded Bear staggered to one knee in the blood-webbing dust. The ring exhaled as if a great bird beat its wings once above their heads.
"Kill me, then," Wounded Bear rasped, spitting red. "If your path is blessed, let it drink."
Sky-Torn's pulse banged against his teeth. The System unfolded options like knives laid on a cloth.
Choice Node — Resolution Style:
— Mercy: Bind Wounded Bear by vow to your council. Gain +Authority (Minor), –Fear. Unlock: Dream Influence (Expanded). Future risk: factional splintering.
— Execution: End the duel decisively. Gain +300 Villain Points. Unlock: Destiny Warp (Major). Reputation set: +Villainy. Future risk: martyrdom backlash.
Children peered through fingers. Broken Antler did not blink. Night-Runner's mouth formed don't, whether to Sky-Torn or fate even he did not know.
Sky-Torn lifted the knife and in its polished curve saw three faces stacked: shaman, savior, villain. He wanted to choose the first two. The third had already chosen him.
He struck.
The cut was clean because cruelty done slowly curdles everything. Blood leapt strong then dwindled. Wounded Bear went forward like a tree tired of standing. Cedar boughs drank. The earth, which remembers all things whether asked or not, remembered this too.
No one spoke. The sound of blood pattering on dirt is very small and very loud.
Quest Complete: Duel of Oaths.
Villain Points: +300.
Skill Unlocked: Destiny Warp (Major).
Effect: Bend small events to favor chosen outcomes (limited daily charges). Side effect: Fate Tension (builds with repeated use).
The System purred like something sated. Sky-Torn stood in the echo and hated how the glow felt like a hand on his back.
Broken Antler rose. "The smoke has remembered. The ancestors have seen. The shaman stands. Wounded Bear lies." She said no praise, no curse. The law prefers declaratives.
Sound came back in pieces: a keening that bit bone—Two-Reeds's mother, maybe; a clatter of someone dropping a charm; Night-Runner vomiting into his hands and then smearing it away like shame. Some knelt and pressed their foreheads to the dirt in front of Sky-Torn. Others turned their backs and had to be led because where else could they look but away.
Sky-Torn raised the knife because leadership is theater in a burning world. "Hear me. The pale-faces build walls. Their thunder-guns arrive on wheels. If we do not fight, we are ash; if we do, we are blood. Choose which stain you prefer." He let the knife drip as punctuation. The crowd flinched as one body.
Reputation Update: Fear +, Authority +, Trust ––.
Trait Advanced: Villain's Mantle (II). Your presence compels decision; neutrality decays near you.
From the circle's far side, Slow Mink found his voice. "You make widows so we can wear hero masks! The envoy promised blankets. Iron. Food—"
"Food bought with children," Night-Runner snarled, wiping his mouth. "Go sleep with your beads."
"Enough," Broken Antler snapped. Her staff struck stone; sparks ran. "Grief first, then war-speech."
Wounded Bear's sister walked through the ring with a calm like winter water. She knelt by him, closed his eyes with two fingers, and hummed the tune mothers use when babies will not sleep. When she finished, she stood and looked at Sky-Torn the way you look at a storm that will not stop. "You have the tribe," she said. "See that it is worth it."
Sky-Torn bowed because she deserved a bow from the man who had taken her brother's breath.
The wind changed. From the valley came the faint cough of a long gun being tested—no ball in it, perhaps, only powder, but the sound carried like a promise anyway. People jerked as if struck. Children cried. The world reminded itself of the other ring where men fought: square, palisaded, iron-nailed.
The System slid a new slate across his mind.
Major Questline: Arc 1 — "First Clash" Finalization.
Condition: Strike fort supply before moon-fat; host Smoke-Locked Oath to purge mercantile rot.
Arc Reward (on success): +400 Villain Points. Unlock: Destiny Warp (Daily +1), Oath-Engine (Tier II), Passive — Enemy Doubt (Minor).
Broken Antler's voice carried again. "Rites now. At dawn, council. At dusk, we choose which of two hungers we feed first: the fort's belly or our own quarrels." It was almost humor, then it wasn't.
They bore Wounded Bear away on cedar poles. Men who had fought him shouldered the weight because the old law says you carry what you cut. Snow accepted drops of blood and did not give them back. Women began low songs that walk the dead to the river-bend where another world starts. The children learned a new silence.
Sky-Torn did not follow the bier. He turned toward the grove.
—
The burial grove crouched under a sky as thin as hammered tin. Smoke-threaded prayers hung between the trees like spider silk. Two-Reeds lay beneath new earth, offerings of cornmeal and bead loops set neat as a doorway. Not far away, a place had already been cleared. Cedar creaked as if it knew for whom.
Sky-Torn knelt and pressed his burned palm to cold soil. Not a petition this time. A confession. "I took him," he said to the dark. "And I took the other. I will take more."
The System slid the old temptation forward like a bowl at a starving man.
Optional Rite: Blood Price.
Convert communal grief into power.
Reward: +200 Villain Points. Unlock: Curseweave (Minor).
Risk: Severe reputation collapse on discovery; personal empathy erosion.
He could feel how easy it would be: a cut, a chant, grief turned coin. He withdrew his hand. "Not this way," he told the unseen. "Not yet."
Audacity Check: Restraint recorded. +10 Villain Points (Self-Denial).
The points felt sour. He stood, legs humming with duel-pain, and limped toward the river. The breath there tasted of iron shavings. Down-valley, the fort raised a skeleton of logs. Men with pale faces hoisted the long guns while others laughed at jokes the tribe would never understand.
—
Night crept up on elk's hooves. The council fire painted faces in red and shadow. Broken Antler spoke first, not because she wanted to but because you do not live to her age by loving comfort.
"Two roads," she said. "One into their camp, to starve their wall; one into ourselves, to starve the rot that calls trade by the name of peace. We cannot feast both hungers at once without choking."
Sky-Torn lifted a palm. "Then we chew fast. Six nights. When the moon is a bitten apple we cut their wagons, poison their flour, soak their powder. Between now and then, we hold the Smoke-Locked Oath and bind any man who sells secrets for beads."
"So we become judges and thieves in one week," Swift-Deer muttered, half admiring, half afraid.
"Better judges and thieves than slaves and ghosts," Otter-Smile said.
Slow Mink raised his chin. "You will bind my tongue because I prefer blankets to graves? This is not law. This is your fear made rope."
"Fear makes good rope," Broken Antler said, tired. "It is hope that slips."
A rumble of bleak laughter rolled and died.
The System ticked boxes.
Sub-Quest: Starve the Fort (1/3 raids complete).
Sub-Quest: Smoke-Locked Oath (Unbegun).
Synchronization Bonus on completion: +50 Villain Points.
Sky-Torn spoke to the practicalities. "Night-Runner, choose runners. Flint-in-Ribs, gather pitch, soot, and the bitter seed that spoils flour. Otter-Smile, mark the paths. No fire in their camp unless we can carry it like a candle—quick, quiet, gone. We bleed on the road, not in their walls."
Night-Runner nodded once, rigid with a new kind of faith—the kind that grows in the shadow of a man you both fear and need. Flint-in-Ribs grinned like a boy who had found a lost knife.
Broken Antler lifted her staff a last time. "So named. So done at dawn. Pray, if you still know how."
—
Before sleep, Sky-Torn sat in his lodge and let pain talk. The cut in his thigh sang soft. His palms throbbed. He laid the knife across his knees. The blade reflected his face as a smear of shadow. He could not tell whether the eyes in the steel were kinder than the eyes in his own skull.
The System warmed. Destiny Warp (Major) available: 1 charge.
Suggestion: Reserve for raid or oath rite; duel aftermath stable.
He snorted. "Stable" like a raft made of cats.
He slept. The dream came on its black feet.
He stood in the cleared ring again, but the cedar boughs were iron bars. Wounded Bear hung in them like a banner, eyes open and bright. Two-Reeds sat below, plucking a drum made from his own ribs. The envoy of iron smiled from the opposite edge, raising a cup that spilled beads which crawled like beetles.
A stag walked out of the fire. Its antlers were map-lines of all the valleys of his people. Where Sky-Torn had made the smoke bend, the antlers bent wrong. A crack split one tine. Blood—no, tar—dripped.
History writes while you sleep, the System sang. Do you want to hold the pen?
"Pens write what hands tell them," Sky-Torn said. "Whose hand am I?"
The envoy answered in his own voice and also not: Mine, perhaps. Or theirs. Or the storm's. Men are handles. Blades choose their own work.
Sky-Torn seized the antlers. They were hot. The crack widened. Through it he saw a hundred tomorrows: children learning to count in a language not their own; a council house with a shingle roof; iron nails in bones on a hill. He saw also wagons burned to axles, a fort starving, a confederacy of clans that could raise ten thousand spears if they would ever stop arguing about whose river was older.
He woke with his hands aching as if he had held weight that wasn't there.
Outside, frost had stitched every grass blade into a white net. Dawn yawned blue. The fort's smoke rose in domesticated rings.
—
The Smoke-Locked Oath rite began at first light. The lodge roof-hole funneled voices into the sky. Those accused of soft-mouth with the envoy stood in a half-circle: Slow Mink pale, two young men shifting like guilty dogs, one old woman who scowled as if daring anyone to move her. Sky-Torn's burned hands held the cord gently, as if it might bite.
He did not twist the omen. He did not need to. The tribe had enough fear to do the work. "Speak your bargains," he said, voice low. "Or swear you have none."
Slow Mink lifted his chin. "I swore nothing to pale men. I said what I thought: iron keeps soup hot. The dead do not eat soup."
"Then swear you will never speak with the envoy again without the council at your side," Broken Antler said.
Slow Mink's mouth opened. Closed. He was not a fool. He tied himself to the post of the living. "I swear," he said.
The cord warmed. It did not choke him. A few in the crowd looked disappointed.
One of the young men began a lie and coughed blood. The cord lashed him as if a snake. He fell to his knees, shame flushing him to the ear-tips. Sky-Torn laid the cord against his brow and said release and the boy vomited the rest of the lie onto the floor. His father hauled him up and hugged him so hard it cracked ribs. Law is sharp but sometimes it hugs.
Sub-Quest: Smoke-Locked Oath — success.
+120 Villain Points. Passive gained: Enemy Doubt (Minor) — envoys and traders suffer –small persuasion chance near you.
The rite's smoke climbed thin. The sky took it. The day sharpened.
—
They moved by twilight—Sky-Torn, Night-Runner, Flint-in-Ribs, Otter-Smile, Willow-Knee with his bandaged leg, and six others who knew how to step where a branch will not snap. Frost squeaked under moccasins until the chant he murmured blunted sound. Stars watched with the patient rudeness of stars.
They crossed the beaver run and the long bog. They reached the rise from which the fort crouched like a square animal chewing riverbank. Smells: tar, salt meat, damp wool, men. Sounds: a saw's complaint, a low song in another tongue, the fussy cluck of a sentry turning in his coat.
"Powder tent there," Otter-Smile breathed, mouth against Sky-Torn's ear. "Wagon-yard beyond."
Sky-Torn touched his thigh; pain answered; good. He took from Flint-in-Ribs the little gourd of bitter seed, from Willow-Knee the pouch of soot. He laid a palm against the earth. "Listen," he told it. "We are taking back what you gave."
Destiny Warp (Major) available: 1 charge.
Use now: increase chance sentry turns away; lantern gutters; dog sleeps.
Fate Tension (low).
He pressed the warp like a thumb on a bruise. A tent flap slapped. The sentry turned to see what the sound was behind him—the sound wasn't behind him. A dog shuddered, sneezed, and thrust its nose under its own tail. A lantern snuffed itself, embarrassed.
They slipped along the wall. Powder tent ropes wore a simple knot. Otter-Smile's fingers were ten little snakes. The flap opened. Barrels gloomed like fat shadows. The soot went into the seams. The bitter seed dusted the meal sacks at the wagon-yard. A whisper at the crate of mirrors turned silver to spiderweb. Wither-Touch is a petty magic; petty magics become grand when they meet supply lines.
A footstep. Too close. Night-Runner's eyes went wide. Sky-Torn raised two fingers and sliced them sideways. Silence fell like fur. The soldier passed so near Sky-Torn could have counted the stitches on his coat. He smelled like stale apples and a river far away from here.
They left when the warp's heat cooled on his tongue. They left like ghosts who had taken a purse and also the purse's shadow.
At the rise again, they looked back. The fort huddled, unaware that its breakfast and thunder were now treacherous.
Sub-Quest: Starve the Fort — 2/3 complete.
+150 Villain Points. Synchronization Bonus pending.
Sky-Torn let breath out slowly. "We finish it before moon-fat," he said. "One more cut."
Night-Runner laughed without humor. "We will starve their wall and our doubts in one winter."
"Doubts don't starve," Willow-Knee said mildly. "They hibernate."
"Then we hunt them in their holes," Sky-Torn said, and tasted that it was a villain's line. He swallowed it anyway.
They moved through the trees toward home, carrying darkness like a prize.
—
The ring where Wounded Bear fell was a plain of trampled earth and ash by the time they returned. Cedar boughs lay flattened, their scent crushed into the dirt. A new post had been raised, carved hastily—the beginning of a memorial, or a warning, depending on whose mouth said it. Mothers had scrubbed blood with snow until the place hurt to look at.
Sky-Torn stopped at the edge. Children saw him and did not run to him. Their eyes were round; their mouths were thin lines. He had become something they drew in the air with a finger and did not name.
The System, ever the clerk at the end of the world, whispered:
Arc Quest: "First Clash" — final threshold crossed.
Arc Reward Granted:
— Villain Points: +400.
— Destiny Warp: +1 daily charge.
— Oath-Engine: Tier II unlocked.
— Passive: Enemy Doubt (Minor).
Title Conferred: The Villain Crowned — history will mark this day as your coronation by fear.
He looked at the invisible crown and found it fit. It would never sit comfortably, and that was correct.
Broken Antler approached, walking like someone who has known too many winters and not enough springs. "It is done," she said. She did not mean the raid. She meant the shape of him. "Carry it."
"I will." He bowed again, not to her, not to the council, but to the tribe as a creature with a single long, suffering spine. "And I will make it cost me."
"Good," she said. "That makes you dangerous to yourself. We will need that."
Down the valley, a faint shout rose from the fort—confusion, anger, some poor man discovering flour that baked into bitterness and powder that coughed without fire. The sound came thin but satisfying. The winter sky listened and said nothing.
Children's eyes found him again—half-fear, half-need, that old alloy from which leaders are poured and then broken. He lifted his hand. He did not promise safety. He promised to stand where iron fell.
The first arc of his path closed like a trap. He was crowned not with feathers, not with praise, but with blood. The tribe would live by his cunning and choke on it. The colonizers would learn his name and spit it. The neighbors would measure him with their sharpest rulers.
History's hand, patient and ungentle, wrote his name with a charcoal stick across the sky. It smudged as it wrote, darker for the smearing.
At the edge of the clearing, a crow tipped its head. It spoke a single click of its beak that might have been a blessing if you believed in strange blessings.
Then night drew its black hood over the village, and Sky-Torn stepped into it like a man going to meet an old friend who will one day kill him.