Kane wasn’t going to chase a frightened band through trees when a Giant crossing sat two days away.
He was also not going to pretend an empty camp, a child’s charm, and a warm stone that did not belong on the map were ordinary forest business.
"Log the site as priority watch," he told the system.
"If Cluster B reappears on a later sweep, or if anything with a proper taint signature moves through this belt, I want it flagged before we cast off."
Kane took one last look at the outcrop.
Heat continued to lift from it in the cool air, faint and steady.
Somewhere behind the trees, a single bird finally called, then stopped again as if it had thought better of the idea.
He turned back toward the creek bed and the long route to Sylvander’s markers, Mjoldr settled on his shoulder, brace dull against his side, and the unanswered question of the empty camp walking with him.
Kane had taken three steps back toward the creek bed when the forest broke open around him.
Figures erupted from the brush and the dead ground behind the outcrop, more than the original fourteen.
Light hides, tribal paint in dark streaks across chests and arms, spears and axes already in hand.
Several of the men and women were half-naked in the morning air, skin marked with the same rough patterns, eyes fixed on him with the bright, brittle focus of people who had already decided this might be a fight.
They closed a rough half-circle between him and the easy path out, close enough that a thrown spear would not have to travel far.
Kane stopped.
He kept his empty hand visible and left Mjoldr on his shoulder instead of dropping it into a guard.
The brace made his other side look weaker than it was.
He didn’t try to hide that either.
A man with a notched axe and paint across his forehead spoke first, voice loud enough to carry to the back of the ring.
"Throne-taker. You walked into Berakamon and left their emperor on the floor. You made the arena go quiet. You do not walk these trees for nothing."
"I’m flattered, but that’s not why I am here."
Whispers moved behind him.
Beast-killer.
The one who collects thrones.
The one the beast queen bent for.
Someone had taken the stories and sharpened them until the band itself seemed half-afraid of the shape they had given him.
’Not sure how they knew about Marisa getting fucked tho.’
Kane answered in the same flat tone he used on city thresholds and hostile halls.
"I came looking for spears that still answer a horn without asking a council first. The sky is going to break. I need fighters who understand that. I did not come for your camp, your food, or your people. I will walk out the same way I walked in."
A younger fighter on the left edge of the ring had an arrow on the string.
The point tracked Kane’s chest.
His arms were steady in the way of someone who had hunted, not steady in the way of someone who had decided to kill.
An older woman with a scar running through her lip stepped across his line of sight and pushed the bow stave down with two fingers.
"Hold," she said.
"You loose that, and this becomes a graveyard. Look at him. He has not even taken the axe off his shoulder."
The younger man bared his teeth but did not raise the bow again.
The scarred woman turned her full attention on Kane.
She was the same weight of authority he had expected when the system first marked the camp.
Someone who kept a band alive by deciding when fear was useful and when it was poison.
"You expect us to believe the throne-taker is recruiting in our belt out of kindness," she said.
"Stories do not travel this far without blood behind them. Why should we trust a man who leaves emperors on stone?"
"You should not trust me," Kane said.
"You should look at the clock. Something with yellow eyes already spoke through a corpse in Berakamon and called their emperor a pawn. The coalition I am building is not a charity. It is a wall. You can stand on it, or you can hope the first wave goes around these trees. I am not here to force the choice at spear-point."
Another voice, thinner, came from the right side of the ring.
"He left a mark on the boundary tree."
The scarred woman did not look away from Kane.
"We saw it. That is the only reason you still have an empty hand instead of a shaft in your ribs. We abandoned the camp because the ground felt wrong, not because we wanted a legend walking through our tents. Then the legend arrived anyway."
Kane glanced once at the warm outcrop. Heat still lifted from the stone in the cool air.
"The rock does not belong on my map of this belt," he said.
"It is warm when it should be cold. Your camp was empty with stew still on the fire, and a child’s charm left on a bedroll. If you ran from me alone, you ran early. If you ran from something else, then we are wasting time pointing spears at the wrong problem."
A mutter ran through the ring.
Paint-streaked faces turned toward the outcrop and back again.
The fear under the aggression was easier to see now.
They had tried to use his reputation as a story to keep the younger ones sharp, and the story had grown teeth in the wrong direction.
Facing him in the open felt less like honor and more like suicide, and they knew it.
The man with the notched axe shifted his weight.
"If we lower the weapons, what stops you from deciding we look useful in chains?"
"The fact that I do not need chains," Kane said. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂
"I need people who can hold a line when the sky goes wrong. If that is not you, I leave. If it is you, send a runner to Sylvander’s outer post before we cast off for the Giant island. Ask for the barbarian household. They will know what the message means. I am not taking anyone from this clearing at blade-point."
The scarred woman studied him for a long moment.
Her eyes moved from the brace to Mjoldr to the empty hand he still kept visible.
Around her the band held its breath in the particular way of people waiting for the oldest voice to choose.
"Let him walk," she said at last.
"Anyone who throws after he turns will answer to me before they answer to him."