The elder's hall smells like a mix of smoke and desperation.
Kael pushed through the hide flap that served as a door, stepping into the dim interior. Five figures sat in a rough circle around a dying fire, their face carved with lines of exhaustion and defeat.
Elder Marik looked up first. At Seventy Three, he was the oldest among them. His back bent from decades of hard labor. "Chieftain. We were just-"
"Discussing surrender," Kael finished, his voice flat. He moved to the center of the circle, standing rather than sitting. "I heard."
The air in the room shifted. Something about Kael's posture and tone made the elders exchange glances.
Elder Voss, a scarred warrior who'd lost his right eye to Iron Fang raiders, grunted. "Then you know where we stand, boy. We can't fight them. We can barely feed ourselves."
Boy. There it was again.
Kael's eyes swept the circle, and for the first time in his life, he saw them. Not just their faces, but their scars and weariness. He saw the threads.
Shimmering lines of energy, faint as morning mist, collide through the air around each elder. Around Elder Voss, the threads pulsed stronger than the others, Untapped, seemingly unconscious, waiting.
[ANALYZING TARGETS...]
The words appeared in his mind, cold and precise.
[ELDER MARIK - AGE: 73 - CULTIVATION POTENTIAL: MINIMAL]
[ELDER VOSS - AGE: 56 - CULTIVATION POTENTIAL: MODERATE]
[ELDER SENNA - AGE 61 - CULTIVATION POTENTIAL: LOW]
[ELDER TORIN - AGE 48 - CULTIVATION POTENTIAL: MODERATE]
[ELDER DREN - AGE: 54 - CULTIVATION POTENTIAL: MODERATE]
Three of them. Three could be trained.
But not yet. Not until he'd proven himself.
"I didn't come here to discuss surrender," Kael said. His voice was colder now, harder. "I came to tell you there won't be one."
Silence.
Then Elder Marik laughed, A dry, Bitter sound. "You're even more foolish than your father, boy. At least he knew when to surrender."
"My father is dead." Kael's words cut through the room like a blade. "He'd died covering a retreat we didn't need to make. He died because we were too weak to stand and fight."
"And we're still weak!" Elder Senna snapped, her voice sharp despite her age. The tribe's healer had delivered half the children in the camp, including Kael himself. "Nothing has changed! We have 250 people, half of them children and the elderly. The iron Fangs have thousands. This isn't courage, Chieftain. It's suicide."
Kael met her eyes. Held them. And for just a moment, something flickered in the air between them, a pressure, A weight that made Elder Senna catch her breath.
She blinked, Confused. The feeling had passed.
"Everything," Kael said quietly, "Has changed."
Elder Torin, the hunter chief, leaned forward. He was younger than the others, still in his prime despite the grey threading his beard. "Then explain to us, Chieftain. What's changed? Did you find a largesome of weapons? An Alliance? Because unless you've got an army hiding in the forest, I don't see how-"
"Give me thirty days."
The words hung in the smoky air.
"Thirty days," Kael repeated. "If we're not stronger by then- If I haven't given you reason to hope, I'll lead the surrender envoy to the Iron Fangs myself."
Elder Marik's eyes narrowed. "And if you fil? If they raid us again before your thirty days are up?"
"They won't."
"How can you possibly know that?"
Because the system had told him. A notification had appeared in his mind while he stood on the barricade, watching the threads of QI converge and flow.
[IRON FANG WARBAND - CURRENT LOCATION: 45 KILOMETERS SOUTHEAST]
[ESTIMATED RETURN: 28 DAYS]
[REASON: RAIDING LARGER SETTLEMENTS. ASHWOOD TRIBE DEEMED 'INSUFFICIENT PLUNDER']
Even the raiders thought they were too poor to bother with right now.
But Kael couldn't explain that.
"I know," he said simply. "Trust me."
"Trust?" Elder Voss barked a laugh. "Boy, trust is earned. Your father earned it through twenty years of keeping us alive. You've been chief for three years, and all we've done is shrink."
The words stung because they were true. Kael had been a caretaker, nothing more. Managing decline. Choosing which families ate and which went hungry. Deciding who got the gew remaining weapons when raiders came.
But that was before.
"Then let me earn it," Kael said. He looked at each elder in turn. "Thirty days. No surrender. No rethreat. And when those thirty days are done, you'll never call me a 'boy' again."
Something in his voice made Dren shift. The old warrior's hand moved unconsciously to his sword hilt.
The pressure was back. Subtle but growing. Like the air before a thunderstorm.
"What exactly are you planning?" Elder Senna asked, her healer's instincts picking up on the wrongness in the room. "Kael, what happened to you out there?"
Everything. Nothing. The end of one age and the beginning of another.
"You'll see," Kael said. "But I need something from you first."
"Of course you do," Elder Marik muttered.
Kael ignored the bitterness. "I need a list. Every person in the tribe is between fifteen and forty. Their skills, their health, their temperament."
"Why?" Elder Torin asked.
"Because I'm going to make warriors out of them."
Elder Voss snorted. "We already have forty of them, if you count the boys who can barely hold a spear. Against the Iron Fangs thousands."
"Not warriors like you've seen before," Kael said. The threads around Elder Voss pulsed brighter, responding to something. The old fighter couldn't see them, couldn't feel them, but they were there. Waiting. "Warriors who can do things you wouldn't believe."
"This is madness," Elder Marik said. His voice wavered. "We should send the envoy tomorrow. Beg for mercy while we still can. Maybe the Iron Fangs will let some of us live as servants. Maybe-"
"No."
The word came out harder than Kael intended.
The pressure in the room spiked. The fire flickered, though there was no wind.
All five elders flinched.
Kael took a breath, forcing the energy back down. The system had warned him about this.
[WARNING: UNCONTROLLED QI EMISSION DETECTED]
[RECOMMENDATION: PRACTICE BASIC CIRCULATION TO PREVENT LEAKAGE]
He was still learning. Still adapting. But that was a momentary loss of control, had done something useful; the elders were staring at him with something that wasn't quite fear, but wasn't far from it either."
No surrender," Kael repeated, quieter now but now less firm. "No Retreat. No Begging. The Ashwood Tribe ends here, or we become something greater. Those are the only options."
Silence stretched.
Finally, Elder Dren spoke. "Thirty days, you said?"
Kael nodded.
"And if you fail?"
"Then I'll walk into the Iron Fang camp myself and offer my head. The tribe can choose a new chief. Someone more... Practical."
Elder Senna's expression softened slightly. "Kael...."
"Do I have your agreement?" He looked at each elder. "Thirty days. Will you give me that much?"
They exchanged glances. A silent conversation decades in the making.
It was Elder Torin who nodded first. "Thirty days. But I want to see results in ten, Chieftain. Show us you're not leading us to a faster death."
"Agreed," Elder Voss said reluctantly.
Elder Senna sighed. "The spirits help us, but yes."
Elder Marik was last. The old man studied Kael with watery eyes that had seen the tribe at its height, when they numbered over a thousand. When they held three valleys and sent tribute to no one.
"You have your father's pride," Elder Marik said finally. "I just hope you have more than his luck."
It wasn't quite an agreement. But Kael would take it.
"The list," He reminded them. "By tomorrow morning. And Elder Dren- I want to speak with you after this."
The warrior's scarred face registered surprise. "Me?"
"You." Kael turned to leave, then paused at the doorway. "One more thing. Start rationing food more carefully. We're going to need our people at full strength soon."
"For what?" Elder Senna asked.
"For work," Kael said. "There's a river that needs taming. Hills that need terracing. A future that needs building."
He left before they could ask more questions.
Outside, the night air was cold and clean. Kael breathed deep, feeling the QI flow into his lungs. It was everywhere now that he could see it. On the earth. In the wind. In the very stones beneath his feet.
[QUEST UPDATED: CONSOLIDATE POWER]
[OBJECTIVE: GAIN ELDERS' COOPERATION - COMPLETE]
[NEW OBJECTIVE: IDENTIFY 10 CULTIVATION CANDIDATES]
[REWARD: BASIC CULTIVATION MANUAL (BEGINNER)]
[TIME LIMIT: 7 DAYS]
Seven days to find ten people who could learn what he was learning. Ten people could become the foundation of something greater.
Kael's eyes drifted north, toward the dark shapes of the mountains. The system pulsed gently in his mind.
[HIGH QI CONCENTRATION DETECTED]
[DISTANCE: 15 KILOMETERS NORTH]
[RECOMMENDATION: INVESTIGATE WHEN STRONGER]
When stronger. Not if. When.
Kael smiled into the darkness. The elders had given him thirty days to prove himself.
He'd need ten.
Behind him, He heard the elders' raised voices as they argued about his sanity. Let them argue. Let them doubt. In ten days. They'd see their miracle.
In thirty days, they'd stop calling him boy.
And in a year?
In a year, the Iron Fangs would be the ones begging for mercy.
Kael Asborn walked throughhis dying tribe, seeing what it was not, but what it would become. Every hut was a future building. Every starving child was a future soldier. Every elder who called him boy was a future believer.
The system remained patient and certain.
The age of Cultivation had begun.
And the Ashwood Tribe's rise had started tonight.