When he opened his eyes that morning, there was a weight in his chest he could not ignore.
Today was different.
Today he would either live, or he would die again.
His breath was short, and his heart beat like a drum.
Tension sat on his shoulders, but his stare was steady.
He shrugged the hide over his back and strapped the horned skull to his head, feeling its press like a promise.
He checked the spearheads one more time; the stone edges he'd sharpened through the night glinted in the sun.
His fingers traced the shafts; his hands trembled for a second, then steadied.
He drank deep from his waterskin and tore off a piece of meat.
It sat heavy and hot in his gut, a fuel that tasted of smoke and victory yet to come.
Stepping out of Ako's Haven, the light slapped his eyes.
The open plain was already full: men, women, and children formed a ring that closed around the clearing.
Silence hung heavy.
Only the rustle of cloth and the low breaths of a waiting crowd broke the air.
He stood in the center, Karlmos.
Up close, the man was like a living boulder: shoulders like split trunks, arms folded cords of muscle, and a long scar mapping his jaw and neck.
His club was a swollen tree branch, a jagged stone lashed to the end. His eyes were more animal than human.
The chief spoke, his voice rolling out like thunder:
"Ako will face Karlmos. The sun will be at its peak. No more rule than this: fight until one yields or until death."
The words landed like a stone in his stomach.
Karlmos met his gaze and bared his teeth in that slow, mocking smile.
Then he moved, and the earth answered him.
He came at Ako with a swing that would fell a man twice his size.
Ako yanked back; the club whistled past his skull, dust and small stones exploding from the ground.
The first shock landed in his shoulders and went right through to the bones.
He threw his spear, heart in his throat.
It sliced the air and found purchase near Karlmos's shoulder, tearing through hide and drawing blood that splattered in droplets across the dust.
The crowd murmured.
Karlmos sneered and answered with a convulsive surge.
His club connected with Ako's forearm; a burning crack shot up his nerve, and for a beat his hand went numb.
Blood beaded where the stone grazed his skin, warm and sticky.
He tasted iron at the back of his mouth; a rivulet ran from a split lip down to his chin.
They crashed again and again.
Karlmos smashed with the raw force of someone who had spent the best years of his life learning how to break things.
Ako answered with the bite of speed and a method born of the old life and the new combined.
A knee to Karlmos's ribs rattled his breath out; a hooked blade across his arm opened a seam that sent dark rivulets down his bicep.
Karlmos answered by backing him with the full weight of his bulk until Ako felt his breath compress under it.
His ribs ached; one of his side muscles twinged with a hot spike that doubled him over if he moved wrong.
At one point, the club lashed, and the stone scraped across Ako's flank, opening a long red line that pulled at his skin.
Blood soaked the fringe of his hide, sticky and warm against his back.
He gritted his teeth and kept moving.
His vision stuttered when Karlmos slammed a shoulder into him; sweat blended with blood and trickled into his eyes until the world was a smear of sun and color.
Still, he forced himself to breathe steadily, to find the rhythm between the strikes.
There was a moment, a sliver of time, when Karlmos's swing caught only air, his balance pitched too far forward.
Ako seized it.
He planted his spear hard into the meat of Karlmos's thigh.
The man howled, a deep animal sound that set everyone's teeth on edge.
He staggered but clawed at the spear shaft; his grip, enormous, was like a vise.
Blood poured down his leg and soiled the dust; he tried to lift, tried to push, and tried to stay upright.
Ako drove his knee into Karlmos's face as he collapsed to one knee, and the man's mouth spat red.
By then Ragno's own wounds were many:
The cut across his forearm throbbed, his side pulsed with pain, his lip was split and tasted of iron, and his fingers were slick and sticky and slower to obey.
Each breath was heavier than the last, but he was not spent.
The crowd's shouts were a fog around him; something like a drum pounded in his ears, it might have been his pulse, it might have been the heartbeat of everyone watching.
Karlmos rose like a trapped animal, furious and relentless.
He swung and missed as Ako stepped aside, but the motion took him forward, and his weight became his enemy.
Ako wrapped both hands around his spear and, using the last of his reserves, thrust.
The spear slammed into Karlmos's chest with a sound that felt like a bell in the hollow of Ako's bones.
Karlmos fell forward, the club flying out of his grip and skittering across the dirt.
They stood over each other in that silence after the storm, Karlmos gasping, face marked with blood and grime;
Ako breathing fire, sweat and blood streaking his chest.
For a second the world narrowed to his eyes and Karlmos's.
The crowd stopped.
Time was a held breath.
He could have pulled the spear and finished it.
The old reflex, the quick death, the finality.
The smell of iron was nauseating but clear.
If he ended Karlmos, there would be no question, survival, but not mercy.
But he looked at that defeated chest, the man who had been their shield and terror, and he saw the shape of the tribe, and he saw Annabel in the crowd, her face pale with fear and something like pleading.
His hand trembled around the shaft.
He pulled the spear free.
Karlmos thrashed, blood painting the dirt, then stilled.
He did not die.
His chest rose and fell in ragged pulls; his eyes rolled under heavy lids.
He had yielded.
The chief stepped forward, voice booming with a weight Ragno had not heard before.
"Ako has bested Karlmos. He is one of us now."
The cry that answered him was raw and sudden, a sound that moved the dust.
The crowd surged, some with cheers, others with the rattle of a grudging acceptance.
Women clapped and exhaled in relief; men set their jaws and looked at him anew.
Annabel's eyes met his, and there was a small, almost-broken smile on her face.
He felt the exhaustion like a tide pulling him down; blood from his wounds beaded and trickled across the hide and onto the sun-baked soil.
[+250 XP]
Strength +3
Endurance +2
Skill Progress: Weapon Mastery Lv.3
New Trait Unlocked: [Respected by the Clan]
New Trait Unlocked: [Clan's Respect +1]
The sun was sliding toward the west.
The crowd thinned and drifted back to their huts.
The chief announced that tomorrow Ako would be formally welcomed, but for now he was told to rest and recover in his cave.
He could feel the ache in every muscle, the hot sting of fresh cuts, and the slow loss of blood from shallow wounds.
His hands shook as he made his way back to Ako's Haven.
Inside, he stripped away the sodden hide and ran cool water over the worst of the cuts, watching the dark flow stream away into the earth.
The bandages he had were crude strips of cloth and bark, but they held the bleeding at bay.
His forearm throbbed; the line across his flank was red and angry.
He pressed his palm to the wound until it calmed, breathing slowly and evenly.
The wounds ached with the truth of what he had done and the cost of what he had spared.
He lit a small fire and sat, wrapping cloth around his cuts, tasting copper and grit.
His body was bruised and stained, shoulders pulled tight with the memory of the blows.
But there was a new steadiness under the exhaustion: something like belonging settling in his chest.
The chief's words hung in the cave like a warm cloak.
Tomorrow he would stand among them not as a stranger but as one of their own.
He let the fire die down, the embers warming the stones beneath him.
He closed his eyes and allowed the darkness to come, knowing that rest was what he must take now to mend, to gather strength, and to be ready for the ritual that would make a man of him in their eyes.