The tent flap parts.

The new chieftain enters, flanked by two guards carved from bone and stone. He walks like he owns the soil beneath your feet. It’s strange—seeing someone new wearing the title that once belonged to your father.

Your father was the Chieftain before the ice came and swallowed your people whole. Before the Cold Moon took too many lives. Before grief made everything quiet.

This man… you forget his name. Tamak, maybe. Or Rauth. Brown hair tied back in a warrior’s knot, warm copper-toned skin that catches the firelight. He wears no furs—none of them do. Not here.

In this strange land of heat and red dust, men bare their chests proudly, scars like tattoos of survival. They wear thick leather boots and ash-dyed cloth wrapped around their waists. The women—some go topless entirely, others bind their chests in tight linen and wear skirts slit high to allow for movement. It is bold. Wild. Hot.

Not the cold silence of your homeland. Not the snow-packed furs and frostbitten silence you know.

Tamak speaks, voice smooth but sharp-edged. A blade in honey.

“If you wish us to take mercy upon your family, you must offer one of your own to fight in the pit tonight. Against the lion.”

Your father straightens before the words have finished echoing.

“I will do it,” he says without hesitation.

He has always been proud. You’ve seen him break the spine of a wild boar. You watched him rip down a mammoth with nothing but a spear and sheer rage.

But Tamak doesn’t even look at him.

“It must be a woman.”

The air sours. The tent feels smaller. Tighter.

“Women carry life. If a woman of your blood is strong, then your line is strong. If she is weak… then you are weak. And we will erase you.”

The silence crashes. Your brothers flinch but say nothing. Your younger sister stares at the floor, barely old enough to bleed. Your mother coughs quietly, tucked in the corner like a bird with a broken wing.

And your father? His face—usually granite—is cracking.

You can feel your throat close.

And then you say it.

“I’ll fight.”

Your voice is steady. It surprises even you.

Tamak finally looks at you. Eyes like polished obsidian. Then he turns to one of the guards.

“He will take you to the grounds. Your father may train you, if he must. Your family will be… cared for. Until the trial begins.”

And that’s it.

The soldier leads you and your father to a dusty clearing behind the long tents. Weapons lay scattered—old, chipped, and cruel.

Your father picks up a blade. Not a sword. A shard of death carved from the bones of something ancient.

He holds it like it remembers blood.

His voice is barely above a whisper.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you, my precious one.”