The first night was cold—not from weather, but from silence.
Zaruko sat near the edge of the Elder Tribe's encampment, close enough to be watched, far enough to be alone. No welcome fires, no shared bowls. Just the sound of the forest and the quiet breath of guards who didn't speak unless challenged.
They didn't trust strangers.
And they especially didn't trust those who arrived alone, with stories of gods and conquest.
Zaruko understood. He expected nothing less.
So he waited.
On the third day, he offered help. Not with speeches, but with work.
A group of villagers struggled with a collapsed waterway — an old wooden aqueduct worn thin from time and rot. Without asking, Zaruko joined them, studying the slope, the weight of the water, and the rot lines.
"I can fix it," he said simply. "But I'll need flat stone, bark-rope, and someone who can shape hollow logs."
They stared at him, unsure.
But when he laid the first pieces and the water began to flow again by sunset, the staring turned into watching.
By the fifth day, the watching turned into quiet questions.
A young girl followed him as he walked near the cedar grove.
"Is it true your god came from lightning?"
Zaruko knelt beside her, drawing the outline of Ogou's hammer in the dirt.
"He came through it. But he's not made of it. He's made of fire. Purpose. Iron."
"Is he angry?"
"He's… sharp. Like the edge of a blade."
In the second week, he sat among the elders, not as an equal, but no longer a threat.
They asked about Kan Ogou, about trade, about the strange symbols he marked on bark maps. Zaruko explained roads that didn't vanish with rain, shared storage for winter droughts, and signal drums that could speak between hills.
"Old ways keep us alive," one elder said, skeptical.
"I don't ask you to abandon them," Zaruko replied. "Only to build upon them."
On the twelfth day, a foraging party was ambushed by a black-horned tuskwolf.
Zaruko was nearby when the screaming started. He ran without command, drawing his blade low and wide. Two youths were down, blood in the moss. The beast charged again.
He didn't flinch.
With a twist-step learned from fighting heavier enemies back home, Zaruko turned the tuskwolf's weight against it, slamming it into a tree. His strike was clean. The beast fell. No flourish, no roar. Just precision.
When he carried the wounded youth back to camp on his back, no one blocked his way.
On the fourteenth day, Elder Amari joined him by the riverbank at dusk.
"You've kept your word," the old man said. "And given more than we asked."
"I don't want to rule you," Zaruko replied. "Only to walk beside you. We all stand alone until we decide not to."
Amari studied him for a long moment, then reached into his robe.
He handed Zaruko a carved wooden token — half of a sigil, its other side unfinished.
"When the day comes that our tribes call each other family, bring this back. We will carve the rest."
At sunrise, Zaruko left the Elder Tribe with nothing in hand but the token and the road.
As he walked into the trees, a few children followed to the edge of the forest. One of them waved the iron sigil of Ogou, carved from stone scrap. The same girl from the grove.
"You'll come back?"
Zaruko smiled faintly.
"If the fire calls me."
And then he vanished into the green, toward the next village, the next challenge, the next piece of Kan Ogou's future.
Zaruko walked alone through the old world.
The forest thickened as he traveled east — no trails, no drums, no scouts ahead. Just trees that grew too close together and rivers that changed direction overnight. In these wilds, maps meant little and memories were swallowed by the dark.
Days became weeks.
He hunted small game with a bow carved by his own hands. Slept in trees when the ground whispered. Marked his path with Ogou's symbol scratched into bark to remind himself he was not lost — just forging something new.
The silence taught him. The hunger honed him. The loneliness didn't crush him; it made him sharper.
But the wilds did not remain still.
Late one night, under a storm-choked moon, something unnatural stalked him.
Its breath sounded like wind through bones. It moved without sound, but the air itself recoiled when it drew near.
Zaruko didn't see it at first — only shadows that bent the wrong way. Trees that seemed to retreat when he passed. A deep thrum that rolled beneath his feet, like distant war drums echoing under the soil.
When it came for him, it did not roar. It simply appeared — a massive, four-limbed beast with black fur matted like burned rope, glowing red eyes, and tusks curling backward toward its spine. It smelled of rot and sulfur.
Zaruko didn't run.
He waited — blade drawn low, breath steady.
The fight was brutal.
The creature moved like smoke and struck like thunder. Zaruko was flung through trees, his ribs cracking, his right arm torn open. But he adapted — using the forest terrain, fallen limbs, sharp stones.
He remembered Ogou's hammer not as a weapon, but as a tool. He used weight, leverage, rhythm.
He drove his broken blade into the beast's eye, then crushed its skull with a branch soaked in blood and lightning.
The beast twitched once, then bled black into the moss.
Zaruko didn't roar in triumph.
He passed out beside its corpse.
He awoke days later, weak but alive, nursing wounds with herbs and rainwater. Time no longer made sense. Hunger blurred thought. But he kept walking — limping, crawling when he had to — across broken hills and ash-stained rivers.
After nearly three moons, Zaruko crested a ridge of stone and bramble. Below, nestled in a cradle of cliffs and smoke plumes, stood another village.
Walled. Guarded. Alive.
He didn't know its name. Not yet.
But it was the next step.
His fire still burned.
And he was not done building.