The body was buried before sunset.
The tribe believed the spirits traveled fastest on smoke and heat, so the raider was burned on a pyre of pine and birch, the flames devouring both flesh and evidence.
No one asked where he came from.
No one asked why he lurked near children.
No one realized this was only the beginning.
The council met in low voices near the central fire. Their staves tapped patterns in the dirt as they spoke — each strike a punctuation, each circle a question.
"Enemy," one elder murmured.
"Scout," another decided.
"More will come."
"Maybe they already watched us."
"What do they want?"
"Children."
"Always children."
Baba Voss stood at the edge of the circle, arms crossed over his chest. His voice cut through the whispers like a blade.
"They will not take ours."
The others nodded. There was no rhetorical debate here — only survival calculus.
But the moment that mattered most happened later, in the privacy of Baba's hut.
Smoke filled the small interior, the smell of dried meat hanging from rafters mixing with the musk of leather and fur. Haniwa slept curled in furs, clutching the bone Baba had carved for her. I pretended to sleep beside her, breathing steady and shallow.
Baba sat near the fire, sharpening another bone knife. The rhythmic scrape normally soothed him. Tonight it didn't.
Finally he spoke — not to a council, but to the midwife who stitched the last cuts from the hunt.
"They came for the children," he said.
The midwife nodded once. "They smelled weak."
"They smelled value," Baba corrected.
The midwife tightened the final knot and sighed. "Ours are… not ordinary."
Her hand drifted to us, hovering over the furs. "I have raised many children, Baba. None walked so soon."
She hesitated. Then:
"And their eyes…"
Baba stiffened. His hand went still on the blade.
"They look," she whispered. "They track the fire, and the shadows, and the spears. They do not reach blindly. They look."
Silence devoured the hut.
After a long moment, Baba answered, voice low and dangerous.
"You will speak of this to no one."
The midwife bowed her head. "I am not a fool."
She gathered her things and left, her cane tapping slowly across the dirt as she vanished into the cold.
When the flap shut, the hut fell completely silent except for fire crackle and breathing.
Baba waited.
Then spoke — to me.
"You see, don't you?"
Not a question — a verdict.
I opened my eyes.
He could not see my gaze, but he could hear it — hear the shift of weight, the change in breath, the stillness that wasn't blind instinct but deliberate observation.
I sat up.
Tiny, barely past infancy, wrapped in furs like a small animal — but aware.
Baba's head turned toward me. He listened to the room more than to me — to ensure no other ears lurked.
Then:
"When others move, you follow the sound. But when the fire moves…" he tilted slightly toward it, "you turn before it cracks."
He tapped his temple.
"You see."
There was no point denying it.
So I nodded once.
Baba exhaled slowly — not in fear, but in calculation.
"In a world where no one sees, the one who does…" He paused, searching for words once spoken by sighted ancestors he never knew.
"…is king or curse."
It was the most accurate political summary of sight I'd ever heard.
He leaned forward, voice low.
"You must hide it."
I nodded again.
He continued.
"If the council learns, they will fear you. Fear becomes superstition. Superstition becomes knives."
He tapped the blade once against the ground.
"And knives become graves."
His logic was brutal and correct.
Sight was power.
Power attracts knives.
Baba finally asked the first question a ruler must answer:
"Can you hide?"
I raised my tiny hands and covered my eyes dramatically, then looked down and felt my way along the fur like a blind child would.
Baba chuckled — a small, genuine sound.
"Good. We will teach you to be blind."
Training the Sighted to Act Blind
For months, Baba drilled us — not in letters or numbers, but in survival.
Blind survival.
He blindfolded both me and Haniwa with strips of leather and taught us to walk by sound, scent, and vibration. We learned to:
• Identify approaching footsteps by weight
• Navigate huts by counting steps
• Distinguish wood, stone, and bone by touch
• Track airflow before door flaps opened
• Recognize voices by breathing patterns
These were skills every blind hunter had — but we learned them young, before sight could make us soft.
Then he taught the opposite — how to move invisibly to the blind.
• No scuffing feet
• No changes in breath when stalking
• No sudden bursts of speed
• No scent panic
He was forging not just children, but future predators.
Haniwa complained constantly, babbling and whining, frustrated by the blindfolds. I embraced them — each lesson sharpened both my real advantage and my cover.
The system noticed.
Skill Gained: Blind Huntsman (Basic)
• +Silent Movement
• +Footstep Prediction
• +Low-Light Stealth
• +Sensory Masking
More importantly:
Camouflage Level 1: Sight Concealment (Basic)
Perfect.
Sight wasn't just a gift — it was an intelligence asset.
The First Ideological Seed
One evening during training, Haniwa tripped on a root and burst into frustrated tears.
"It's stupid!" she cried. "Why can't we just look?"
Baba froze.
His blind eyes slowly turned toward her, expression unreadable. The tribe didn't speak of sight. To them it was myth. The word look was almost taboo in that context.
But Haniwa continued, still too young to censor herself.
"We can see! Why pretend we can't?"
The words slipped like flint into dry grass.
Baba stared at the fire for a long moment.
Then he answered.
"Because the world kills what it does not understand."
Not shouted. Not angry. Simply true.
Haniwa sniffed. "But someday?"
Baba nodded once. "Someday the world will change."
That sentence sparked something in me — not emotional, ideological.
Someday was how kingship began.
Not now. Not while vulnerable. But after time, strength, and leverage grew.
The first stage of rulership wasn't conquering — it was waiting.
The Slavers Return
Two months after the first raider was burned, scouts smelled smoke beyond the ridge. Baba sent hunters to track. They returned with grim faces.
"Tents," one whispered.
"Six men."
"Spears."
"Carts."
Slavers didn't travel with carts unless they intended to leave with cargo.
Children.
The council convened again. Voices rose.
"We are not fighters!"
"We have women with newborns!"
"They will take them!"
"We must abandon the village!"
"Go where?"
"Anywhere!"
Chaos. Fear. Tribal instinct.
And then Baba spoke.
"No."
The council fell silent. Baba did not yell. He did not plead. He stated.
"They will hunt us if we run. Wolves chase those who run."
An elder whispered, tapping her staff against the ground. "Then what do we do, Baba Voss?"
Baba's answer signaled the first true divergence from canon.
"We prepare ambush."
The elders stiffened. Ambush meant coordination. Coordination meant strategy. Strategy meant vision — not literal, but conceptual — something this tribe rarely used beyond hunting.
"A trap," Baba clarified. "We choose the ground. We choose when. We choose who dies."
There was no debate after that.
Hunters nodded. Warriors prepared. Snares were laid. Spears were sharpened. The village became a hunting ground.
The system chimed:
Tribal Action Detected: Defensive Warfare
New Development Path Unlocked: Military Tree
Branches extended:
Tier 1: Ambush Tactics
Tier 1: Militia Training
Tier 1: Weapon Crafting
Tier 1: Patrol Routes
The system gave no free victories. It only offered tools. The people would decide how to wield them.
I sat by the fire, watching preparations unfold like the early foundations of an army. Sight let me see battle lines before anyone else even knew what a battle line was.
War was coming.
And war was opportunity.