The night over the barbarian camp was no longer empty.
It breathed.
Fires had bloomed across the snow-packed ground like scattered, low-burning suns. Smoke rose in twisting curls, dragging the smell of charred meat, hot fat, and spiced broth up toward the heavy, cloud-stuffed sky. The snow around each firepit had melted and refrozen a dozen times, turned to rough, glassy ice flattened by boots and bare, calloused feet.
Kel stepped out from his tent, steam still faint in the air around him from the hot spring, his damp hair darker against his pale skin. He wore simple clothes—a dark, high-collared shirt and fitted trousers, the kind that allowed easy movement without the weight and aggression of armor. No cloak. The air bit at his neck.
Landon waited outside, arms folded, breath rising in steady clouds.
He straightened when Kel appeared.
"Young master," he said quietly, "the feast has begun. Dinner is already being served."
Kel's eyes lifted.
He could see it from here—the center of the camp glowing hotter, denser, movement thick as shadows danced across the firelight.
His lips curved slightly.
"Then we should join them," he replied. "It would be rude to hide while they celebrate."
Landon nodded once.
They walked together toward the center, boots crunching through layered snow. The sounds grew louder with each step—rough laughter, the clatter of bone cups, the crackle of roasting meat, the guttural cadence of barbarian speech rolling together like distant thunder.
At the very heart of the camp, beneath the tallest totem of horn and carved bone, a great fire burned. Logs the size of men had been stacked in a wide circle, flames devouring them from within. Thick iron spits ran across the blaze, heavy cuts of meat hanging and dripping fat into the fire, sending up brief, flaring sparks.
Around this central blaze, the barbarians sat in loose rings on furs and rough-hewn benches. Some held cups, some tore at meat, others simply leaned back with eyes half-lidded, letting the heat soak into their frost-hardened bones.
At the far side of the pit, slightly elevated on a raised block of stone and packed earth, Sera sat.
Fur cloak pooled around her shoulders, her posture relaxed but unmistakably central. The firelight etched her scars in deeper red, her white hair glowing like moonlit frost. She did not speak loudly, did not gesture grandly—but every ripple in the camp seemed to pass through her, like she was the stone beneath the current.
Kel's gaze brushed past her.
Their eyes met for the briefest moment.
No nod.
No wave.
Just awareness.
Then he moved on.
Reina sat not far from the central fire, close enough to feel the heat, far enough to observe. She had removed her traveling cloak but remained wrapped in simple, fitted garments more suited to movement than leisure. Her posture was straight, but the faint looseness in her shoulders betrayed that the hot spring had done its work.
She noticed them before they reached her.
Her eyes flicked once in their direction.
Kel and Landon took their places beside her, folding into the nearest available fur-covered seating—a section of low log and packed hide.
One barbarian slid aside to make room without complaint, grinning with more teeth than subtlety as he shoved a clay cup toward Kel.
"Drink," the man said in thick imperial, voice slurred with good mood, not drunkenness. "Fire goes in, frost goes out."
Kel accepted the cup calmly.
He took a small sip, testing.
The liquid burned its way down his throat—not like refined wine or clean liquor, but like something distilled from mountain berries and impatience. It warmed his chest almost immediately.
His curse stirred faintly.
He managed a faint, thin exhale.
"Strong," he said.
The barbarian barked a laugh, satisfied, and turned to shout something crude about "southern blood and northern fire" to his companions.
Landon accepted his own portion with less hesitation, drinking once and letting the burn settle. Reina did not reach for a cup until someone offered her one; she took it with both hands, inhaled the scent, then drank slowly, eyes thoughtful as the warmth spread.
Food followed.
Thick cuts of roasted meat, still glistening with juices. Stews thick enough to be chewed. Flat breads charred at the edges, cracked in half and used as makeshift plates. No delicate arrangement, no careful portioning—just abundance.
Kel ate with composed precision.
Not fast enough to seem starved.
Not slow enough to seem disinterested.
The meat was richer than he expected, smoked deep, the fat soft from slow fire. Warmth seeped down into his fingers, into his arms, dulling the ache under his skin.
He watched as he ate.
Watched the way the barbarians laughed with mouths wide open, not hiding their scars or their broken teeth. Watched the way they leaned into one another when they argued, voices rising but hands never straying toward weapons.
They were… loud.
But it was not chaos.
It was release.
He found his lips softening around the edge of a small, private, tired smile.
You live loudly because the world tries to silence you so often.
Reina watched, too.
Her eyes caught details others missed—the way women reached first for bones heavier with marrow, the way older barbarians spoke less but were given the best cuts by instinct, not command.
Landon was quieter, but his gaze lingered longest on the weapons stacked neatly nearby. No one here left their tools too far.
The fire burned higher.
The feast thickened.
And when it reached its peak—when the food began to dwindle and the heat had seeped deep into every muscle—a shift passed subtly through the crowd.
A young voice stood.
Literally.
A boy—perhaps eleven or twelve, hair braided back, face still unmarked by scars—rose near the front. His hands trembled slightly as he stepped closer to the fire, the light painting his features in flickers.
Conversations around them began to thin.
One voice shushed another.
Another fell quiet without prompting.
Within seconds, the camp's roar softened to a murmur.
Then to near silence.
Only the crackle of burning wood and the faint hiss of fat in the flames remained.
The boy swallowed—Kel saw the movement in his throat. The child looked briefly toward Sera. She nodded once.
He opened his mouth—
And began to sing.
The song was not smooth.
His voice cracked once, too high for one note, too low for another. But it held something raw and gripping, shaped not by training but by cold and hunger and stubbornness.
The language was of the northern tribes, words guttural and sharp, yet there was rhythm in it—a cadence that rolled like snowslide from distant ridges.
Kel did not know the exact meaning.
He did not need to.
He heard mountains in that song.
Heard storms.
Heard the sound of axes against ice.
Even Reina's eyes softened a fraction, lashes lowering as she listened. Landon's grip on his cup loosened slightly, his shoulders easing.
The boy sang of winter that does not forgive, of hunts that fail, of fires that go out too soon—and of standing anyway. Of waking up when there is no food and going out again with nothing but worn weapons and promises made to ancestors.
His voice faltered near the end.
He pushed through it.
When the song finished, there was a breathless beat of silence.
Then the noise returned.
But not as chatter.
As praise.
Hands thumped against chests and knees. Voices rose—not shouting over him, but for him. A few men barked approval in the barbarian tongue, women nodded, some clapping with hands wrapped in fur.
The boy's face flushed a deep red.
He bowed stiffly.
He looked both close to fleeing and yet rooted in place with pride.
Then his gaze shifted.
Across the fire.
Toward the outsiders.
Toward Kel.
His steps were hesitant at first, but once he decided, he didn't falter. He moved around the edge of the firepit, passing warriors and chiefs alike, stopping when he reached Kel's side.
Up close, the boy's eyes were bright—filled with a seriousness beyond his years.
He spoke in halting imperial.
"Sir… among you three," he said, voice uncertain but clear, "can any offer a song? Or something like a song?"
Kel blinked.
Softly.
The boy went on, words tumbling now that he'd committed.
"I want to learn more. I only know that verse. Travelers passed through before and sang pieces of things… but they never stayed. I don't know anything beyond it."
His hands clenched into small fists.
"Would you… tell us something? A song? Or something close?"
Reina's gaze slid to Kel.
Landon looked at him as well.
They both recognized immediately who would be answering.
Kel set his mostly emptied cup down.
His lips formed a small, patient smile.
"I don't sing much," he said, tone gentle.
Low murmurs stirred nearby. Some barbarians turned their heads, more out of curiosity than expectation.
"So I cannot promise your ears will enjoy it if I try," he continued. "But…"
His eyes lowered for a heartbeat.
Then lifted again, meeting the boy's gaze.
"I can offer you a poem instead."
The boy blinked.
"A…?"
"Words shaped like a song," Kel said. "Without the melody."
The boy thought about it, then nodded quickly.
"I would hear it."
Around them, more of the camp quieted.
Kel hadn't raised his voice.
He hadn't asked for attention.
But it came.
Curiosity always did, where something unfamiliar was offered.
Sera's gaze turned toward him from her raised stone seat, pale eyes reflecting the fire.
Kel rose slowly to his feet.
Not dramatically.
As if responding to a simple request, nothing more.
He stepped just slightly nearer to the fire—not at its center, not at its edge. Somewhere halfway. The flamelight painted him in alternating glow and shadow, turning his grey eyes almost clear in the shifting brightness.
He closed his eyes once.
Only once.
When he opened them, his expression had stilled.
His voice, when it came, was not loud.
But it carried.
It threaded through the spaces between flames and fur and bone.
He spoke.
A poem, not chanted, not rushed:
"Winter does not ask.
It arrives.
On breath that steals breath,
on teeth of wind that grind the edges of bone.
It does not knock on your door.
It becomes your door.
And waits to see who still walks through."
The fire popped softly.
Eyes, all around, focused.
He went on, words flowing with a cadence that was neither purely imperial nor barbarian—somewhere between.
"I have seen winters that were polite—
the kind that lay white sheets over fields,
that sat softly on rooftops,
that let children laugh beneath them.
This is not that winter.
This winter is made of stone and hunger.
It wraps its hands around your throat
and says:
'Prove you deserve another sunrise.'"
Some of the barbarians exhaled slowly, as if something familiar had been named.
Sera's eyes narrowed, intent.
Kel's gaze drifted across the crowd as he spoke, but never truly settled on any one face.
"Tonight, fire lives in your hands," he continued.
"Meat bleeds on your tongues,
cups are heavy,
laughter is loud.
But you know,
better than anyone I have ever met,
that this is not kindness.
This is a truce."
He lifted a hand, palm up, as if weighing something invisible.
"Winter looked at you—
at your scars,
your broken teeth,
the way your dead stand behind your eyes—
and said,
'These ones won't lie down when I tell them to.'
So it made a bargain."
His voice softened.
The flames seemed to lean closer.
"Every day, it sends teeth.
In fur.
In claw.
In storm.
And every day, you answer.
Not with prayers.
With axes.
With arrows.
With stubborn, living breath.
With the simple insult
of waking up."
A low rumble of agreement moved through the nearest barbarians.
Not cheers.
Not yet.
Just something like recognition.
Kel's eyes half-lidded.
His tone shifted—slightly lower, like a drumbeat sinking into the ground.
"To me,
you are not merely hunters.
Not merely raiders.
Not wild things on the border of maps.
You are the ones who teach the sky that it cannot close entirely.
You are the scar on winter's throat
that never quite heals.
When snow says,
'Die quietly,'
you answer—
'We'll feast first.'"
There were faint huffs of laughter at that.
Even Sera's lips tilted.
Kel's gaze finally shifted toward the boy who had asked him to speak.
"You sang of hunger," he said, more softly now. "Of waking on empty stomach and going to hunt anyway."
His eyes darkened.
"Remember this:
Winter may be vast.
But when you stand beneath it,
when you carry axe or bow or song,
the sky is forced to witness you.
It does not matter if it forgets your name.
The snow you walk on remembers.
The blood you spill remembers.
The fire you feed remembers.
And somewhere,
in the quiet parts of the world,
even fate looks north and says:
'There are people there who refuse to kneel.'"
He let the last word fade into the night.
No dramatic bow.
No flourish.
He simply fell silent.
Snow drifted slowly through the narrow gaps where the smoke escaped, melting before it touched flame.
The camp did not erupt immediately.
There was a stretch—just a breath—where the silence felt thick enough to cut.
Then someone thumped their fist twice against their chest.
Another joined.
Then another.
Voices rose—not in loud cheering, but in deep, approving sound.
It rolled through the camp in a wave, rough and low.
The boy who had asked for the song stared at Kel with wide eyes, as if he had just been handed something heavy and did not yet know how to carry it.
His lips moved.
"I… want to remember that," he said. "All of it."
Kel's expression softened.
"You don't have to remember every line," he replied. "Just the truth in it."
The boy nodded slowly.
"…We are the scar on winter's throat," he repeated under his breath.
His small chest rose, as if those words had carved more room inside him.
Sera leaned back on her stone seat, gaze thoughtful.
For the first time, she looked at Kel not only as a cursed traveler, not only as a competitor—
But as something else.
A voice that could take what her people lived and give it back to them in shape they could hold.
Reina exhaled quietly, eyes half-lowered.
Landon's lips curved by a fraction.
Kel sat down again, the warmth of the fire painting his face in fluctuating light.
He felt the curse in his chest.
Still there.
Still coiled.
But for that moment, beneath that heavy northern sky, surrounded by laughter and scars and rough, honest voices—
the weight of it felt just a little less absolute.