The slaver attack had changed the village, even if no one spoke about it plainly.
Before, the tribe hunted to live.
Now, they hunted to prevent being hunted.
That shift alone was a step toward civilization.
Predators became strategists. Prey became citizens. Children became an investment rather than a burden.
And rescued children, once just mouths to feed, quietly became something else:
Human capital.
Training the Small Ones
Children in blind tribes didn't receive lengthy childhoods. They learned by being thrown into experience—fire, knife, winter, sickness. Those who survived became the next hunters and midwives.
But my children—the rescued four plus Haniwa and myself—learned differently.
We didn't start with the spear.
We started with sight.
In the mornings, I led them to the riverbank. There, the mud softened enough for handprints and footprints to hold shape.
"Look," I said, pointing to a set of depressions in the mud. "Hunter walked here."
The smallest girl—Talli—ran her fingers along the prints, jaw clenched.
"How can you tell it is hunter and not slaver?" she asked.
"Boot prints," I said, tapping wider indentations. "Hunter feet," I tapped narrower, smoother ones. "Slavers wear boots. Hunters wear hide. Boots make toes vanish."
They nodded.
Then I touched a different print—elongated, clawed.
"Wolf."
They all froze.
Tullen leaned closer. "How close?"
"Not close," I said. "Old. Melted. Wind dried. Scars cracked." I pointed to where the edges frayed. "Two days."
To them, I was revealing magic.
To me, it was just basic tracking, enhanced by sight.
But it was more than teaching. It was a foundation for a future army.
Pattern recognition was the first form of intelligence.
The System agreed.
Skill Gained: Early Instruction (Primitive)
Effect: +Learning Rate for Target Group (Child Cohort)
Then:
Cohort Identified: "Children of the Hunt"
Potential: Scouts / Messengers / Scholars / Officials
Officials.
That word didn't belong in tribal life yet. But it would.
First Signs of Loyalty
After tracking came games—games to train reflexes, listening, and hiding.
Haniwa loved hiding. Talli loved chasing. Tullen loved watching.
The smallest boy—Ren—just loved not being alone anymore.
During one game, Tulli climbed onto a fallen tree and declared:
"When I grow up, I will hunt slavers too."
Ren shook his head. "No. We will hunt for the one who saved us."
Haniwa puffed her chest. "That's our Baba!"
Ren looked at me instead, certainty heavy in his voice.
"No," he said quietly. "Not Baba. Him."
Every head turned toward me.
I froze for a breath. Then shrugged, as if I didn't understand.
I understood perfectly.
Loyalty Acquired: Refugee Children → Sovereign (Seed)
Strength: Fragile, but growing.
Loyalty at this age wasn't ideological. It was emotional.
But emotion hardened into identity. And identity hardened into factions.
Weapons Before Words
Weapons training came next. Baba didn't wait until we were big enough. He started immediately.
Not with spears—those were too deadly—and not with knives.
With sticks.
He placed us in a line in the clearing while hunters watched with amused skepticism.
"Hands up," Baba said.
We raised sticks.
"Legs apart."
We spread feet awkwardly.
"Listen for breath. When I step, you strike."
He stepped.
Six sticks swung.
One hit his thigh. One his forearm. One caught his hip. The others whistled through air.
He disarmed us all in two breaths, stick whipping between knuckles and toes.
We yelped and laughed and scrambled to pick them up.
But afterward, when he thought we weren't looking, Baba rubbed his hip.
We had actually hit him.
Not much. Not hard. But children striking an adult hunter at all was impressive.
New Trait Detected: Early Martial Aptitude (Group)
Unlocked: Basic Militia Concept
Then, quietly:
Leadership Opportunity Identified: Create Youth Militia?
Not yet.
Chaos needed structure. Structure needed ideology. Ideology needed symbolism.
Weapons without symbols made raiders.
Weapons with symbols made armies.
Fear and Theology
That night, as the children slept, I sat by the central fire with the clay map tablet in my lap.
The white-haired elder approached again, staff tapping slow, deliberate rhythm on the earth.
She sat without invitation.
"You teach the little ones to fight," she said.
"Yes."
"You teach them to remember."
"Yes."
She nodded. "You teach them to think."
"Yes."
Silence pooled between us.
"They will not be children long," she said at last. "Alkenny children grow into winter or they die before summer."
She tapped the tablet.
"Winter takes memory. Summer takes strength. But ideas…"
She dragged her finger along the carved line.
"…ideas stay."
Then she asked the first theological question any kingdom-builder would ever face:
"What do you want these children to become?"
I didn't answer immediately.
In my old world, this would be a terrifying question. But in this world—where sight was myth and survival was religion—it was worse.
She waited.
Finally I said, "Leaders. Fighters. Builders."
She smiled faintly.
"No. They will become what you teach them to believe they are."
She rose, leaning on her staff.
"And that, little prince, is how kings are made."
Night Without Storm
When she left, the System began to speak in windows I had never seen before.
System Branch Unlocked: Sovereign Ideology
Choices appeared—not hard-coded paths, but loose philosophical directions:
☐ Force → Rule through fear
☐ Wealth → Rule through trade
☐ Faith → Rule through belief
☐ Legacy → Rule through continuity
☐ Vision → Rule through knowledge
The best kingdoms used more than one.
The best emperors chose all of them.
But I was three years old and did not need to commit yet.
Instead, I closed the window, and the System allowed it.
It was patient.
Empires were patient too.
The Smallest Coalition
Over the next days, the six of us trained, played, mapped, counted, and argued. We were not a militia. We were not a school. We were not a priesthood.
We were something simpler and rarer:
We were children with purpose.
When the hunters returned from spring scouting with news of distant smoke, the rescued children didn't cling to fur.
They asked Tullen:
"Where on the tablet is the smoke?"
Not "what is smoke?"
Not "will slavers come?"
But where.
That was the shift.
Prey asks what.
Survivors ask when.
Builders ask where.
The System registered it.
Cohort Upgrade: Children of the Hunt → Proto-Scouts
Skill Seeded: Spatial Awareness
Future Class Possibilities:
• Scout Captain
• Cartographer
• Courier
• Officer
The tribe didn't understand the change.
But they would.
Because children with maps eventually become adults with borders.
And adults with borders become tribes.
And tribes with borders become nations.