The lodge was opened to the cold, as custom required. Smoke curled through the hole in the roof like a serpent escaping, and the people stood in rings outside, faces painted, eyes hard with winter's kind of clarity. Trials were not done in secret. If a shaman's words were chains, then let everyone watch the forging.
Wounded Bear waited beside the fire pit, bare to the waist though frost bit at his shoulders. He had smeared his cheeks with ash and fat, the old sign that meant I will not turn aside. The murmur of the gathered rose and fell like a sea. Children perched upon rafters with bird-bones in their hair. Old women tightened shawls. Warriors rested hands on spearshafts, a rhythm of fingers that counted to anger.
Sky-Torn entered with the staff that had belonged to three shamans before him. He had not slept; the System had hummed and purred in his dreams as if it lay curled against his throat. He set the staff point-down in the earth and met Wounded Bear's stare. There was no hate in the warrior's eyes, only a steadiness that made Sky-Torn think of stone beside a river: battered forever, never broken, patient the way truth is patient.
"Today," the eldest councilor intoned—Broken Antler, her hair as white as the quartz beads upon her throat—"the law stands between two fires. A people must know who speaks for them when the iron-walkers come. We will not wrestle like dogs in snow. We will bind our words to the oldest cord."
The people breathed in as one. Even Wounded Bear's chin dipped a fraction. The cord: the oath-binding that made liars cough blood, that made oathbreakers wander with their names turned to smoke. It was not a duel. It was heavier.
Sky-Torn could have demanded combat, could have taken the path where blood decided what words could not. He did not. He had asked for the cord himself.
The System glided across his inner sight, bright as a falling star and twice as cold.
Quest: Trial of the Oath (Major).
Objective: Bind the tribe to your path without striking a blow.
Constraints: Public ritual. No physical coercion. Fate will resist meddling.
Success: +250 Villain Points, Reputation: +Fear/+Authority, Skill Unlock: Oath-Engine (Minor).
Failure: Status loss, Ritual Backlash (Severe), Reputation: –Authority.
He bowed once to Broken Antler. "Let the cord be laid."
They brought it from the cedar chest: plaited sinew threaded with blue-dyed grass, wrapped around a thin braid of hair from every line in the tribe. Mothers had wept when they'd cut those hairs; even those whose men had died far up the river had mailed back locks for the cord. Sky-Torn felt the weight of it like a child in his arms.
By law, both men set their hands upon it while the eldest spoke the bones of their dispute. Broken Antler's voice was gravel and winter wind. "Wounded Bear says Sky-Torn twists the ancestors for his own blade, leads the tribe with visions that smell of fresh blood. Sky-Torn says the iron-walkers will flood our valleys if we bend, says the spirits demand a harsh path. He stands accused of secret rites and public deceits."
The lodge was very quiet now. Sky-Torn raised his chin. "I will bind my words before all. I will make an oath that any child can repeat: I do not lie about what I have seen or what I will do."
A murmur: bold, or fool. Wounded Bear nodded once. "And I swear that if your path is rot, I will expose it and turn our people from it, even if it breaks my back."
Broken Antler turned to the fire, scooped coals into a clay bowl, and set the bowl between them. "The cord hears. Speak your oaths. The smoke remembers."
The words of binding were older than the clan's name. Sky-Torn sang them soft and low, a river-current under the chanting of the witnesses. When the last line reached the roof-smoke, he pressed his palm to the coals and did not flinch. Skin sizzled. The smell rose. The people took the pain into their eyes and held it there; pain proved you meant the syllables you bled.
Wounded Bear pressed his hand to the coals too, and if he flinched, it was inside his teeth.
The ritual demanded balance: two oaths, two burns, two breaths sent up. But the System was a third thing in the lodge, invisible, smiling.
New Ritual Hook Available: Destiny Twist (Minor) can be applied. Warning: Oath cords are resilient. Side effects unpredictable. Chance of ricochet: elevated.
Oaths were like woven baskets; twist them too far and they sprang back. Sky-Torn knew this. He had learned it sitting at Broken Antler's knee when he still wobbled like a foal. Yet the tribe had called him liar and shadow-maker. If he walked away bound as any ordinary man, the council would pin him to their slow caution and wring the fire from him. He could not fight iron with a tongue in a halter.
He reached—not with fingers, with will—toward the cord. He did not try to splinter it. He sought the flaw in the braid where so many family hairs crossed and made a knot inside the knot. Every craft has weak spots, even sacred ones. The System brightened as if he had leaned toward a beloved.
Action: Micro-bend accepted. Scope: Redirect minor burden of binding.
Risk: Collateral oath-binding.
A breath, no more. The twist would be small. Enough to send any false vow sliding off him like rain off oiled leather. Enough that anyone who swore against him with hatred in their mouth might catch the thorn he'd planted.
He said the last word. The cord drank it. Power went through him like swallowing cold river-water until his belly hurt and his spine sang. The hair-braids trembled.
And something else trembled.
Broken Antler's eyes widened. She was a woman of ice, but a shadow went across her face so sudden the children on the rafters craned. Not Broken Antler. To Sky-Torn's left, Slow Mink—the councilor who had smiled at every colonizer gift and touched every glass bead as if it were a star—shifted his stance and pressed his fist to his chest like a man choking.
He coughed once. Twice. The third cough sprayed the cord with a star-burst of blood.
Gasps tore the lodge. Slow Mink staggered, then dropped to a knee, eyes bulging. He tried to speak and could not. The cord had caught his tongue. Not because he'd sworn—he hadn't yet spoken today—but because of a vow he had made in private days ago, a sly oath to bring more of the iron-walkers' goods into the village, to show the people trade was easier than fight. The System showed Sky-Torn the memory like a pond surface: Slow Mink taking a trinket behind the smoke-house, whispering words that bent the tribe toward a market-stall future. A vow made with his mouth still sweet from wine.
Fate gnawed the bait Sky-Torn had laid, and bit the wrong fish.
The lodge erupted. Wounded Bear's hand went for his knife and then stopped, because to draw steel in the binding was to declare war on the spirits. He shouted instead, a sound like a boulder rolling downhill. "What have you done?"
Sky-Torn did not step back. He felt the twist sliding through the world like a eel through reeds. He had not meant this, but the System's warnings had not been poetry. Oaths were living nets. He had cast. They had caught.
Ritual Outcome: Partial Redirect Achieved.
Collateral Binding: Slow Mink (councilor) afflicted with Oath-Choke (Temporary).
Gain: +150 Villain Points (Unintended Consequence, Utilized).
New Passive (Minor): Aura of Scruple — those who malign you while swearing are more likely to stumble upon their own falsehoods.
Balance demanded his next act be clean. He lifted the cord in both burned hands, bent, and set it against Slow Mink's brow. "Release," he whispered. "Release." He put will into it, the way he had put will into the twist. The cord was old; it listened to someone who had bled properly and sung the words without fumble.
Slow Mink's breath hiccoughed. The choke eased. He sucked air and sobbed. The blood on the cord smoked.
The eldest fixed him with a gaze that could have nailed him to the post. "What vow did you speak that the cord clawed you?"
Slow Mink shook his head too fast, the way a boy denies stealing when crumbs scratch his lips. He would not say. Perhaps he could not. Shame tied its own knots. The lodge smelled of iron now—as if the colonizers' muskets had sweated into the floorboards.
Sky-Torn faced the crowd. If he tried to explain, the truth would sound like a trick. He let the silence hold him. He let them decide whether the cord had judged him or spared him, whether the choke that struck Slow Mink was proof of Sky-Torn's rightness or proof that the world itself was tangled now around the shaman's hands.
The System, mercilessly practical, noted the way eyes shifted to him like leaves to sun.
Reputation Shift: +Authority +Fear.
Trait Progress: Villain's Mantle (I) — Your presence compels decision in others; hesitation calcifies into opposition or obedience.
Wounded Bear's lips peeled back, not in anger but in something more dangerous: grief made into blade. "You play with the cord the way children play with cat's cradle," he said softly. "We are not a string for your fingers."
"Then do not let yourselves be knotted," Sky-Torn replied, just as soft. "Stand with me. The iron-walkers pound logs into the marsh this very morning. I can smell their tar. We waste time."
"Truth," Broken Antler said. That one word from her was the sound of a door opening. She lifted her right hand. "The binding stands. The cord did not strike Sky-Torn. The cord leapt at false speech. Trial met. We step to the next step: whether we follow the shaman's road."
A dozen voices broke at once. Some yessed, some spat. Night-Runner, who had mocked Sky-Torn days ago, stared at Slow Mink with a new, superstitious respect. Sky-Torn knew that look. Men had flung stones at medicine-men wearing that expression, and they had also laid their firstborn sons in the men's hands for naming. Fear is a hook that carries love behind it like a fish.
He raised the staff and let it bite once into the packed earth. "Hear me. I will not apologize for using every tool the spirits put before me. The cord is a tool. So is the hidden word. So is a well-laid snare. Our enemies bring thunder-sticks and powder. They bring ships that float uphill. I bring what we have: song, blood, cunning. If you hate me for it, fine. Hate me when your daughters are safe. Hate me when your sons return from the trees instead of rotting in iron chains."
He should not have said chains. The word sent a ripple through those who had already pictured it in their dreams. In the doorway, a toddler began to cry without knowing why.
Wounded Bear stepped forward, palms open—empty, to show he would not break sacred law here. "If we follow you," he said, "you must tie your own wrists as well. Bind yourself not to lie, not to twist, not to feed on fear. Swear it on the cord, with the smoke in your lungs."
Here lay the knife-edge. If Sky-Torn swore such, the tool he had just half-tamed would turn on him at need. He could not afford a vow that broad. He needed the room to bend. He needed the ugliness.
The System offered a path, smooth and shining: Selective Oathcraft: craft a vow that sounds whole but binds only in a chosen frame. Cost: 50 Villain Points. Risk: perceptible to elders with ritual fluency.
He glanced at Broken Antler, whose eyes were half-lidded, whose mouth had forgotten how to smile. She would hear any hollow in his words the way a woman hears hollowness in a drum. He could trick a crowd, perhaps even a warrior. Not her.
He bowed his head. "I will bind myself where binding helps us live. No further."
The murmur became a snarl. Wounded Bear's nostrils flared, but he did not crow. "Then say what you will bind," he said. "Let the people know what leash you accept."
Sky-Torn looked at the cord in his hands. He could feel every hair: the fine strands of river-wives, the coarse threads of hunters, the silken drift of babies cut in their first spring. He wanted to be clean. He wanted to never twist anything again. He wanted to leave the System in the grove and go back to being only the third shaman to carry this staff.
He placed the cord across his own throat. The lodge hissed softly; it was not a thing men did, it was a thing condemned men did.
"I swear," he said, clear as a winter sky, "to never twist a prophecy that the ancestors speak through me. I swear to never break the laws that kept us alive before iron. I swear to turn every earned fear into a shield for those who cannot fight. I do not swear to be gentle. I do not swear to be loved."
The cord warmed. It did not tighten. He had chosen the corners carefully: prophecies spoken by the ancestors (not visions the System shoved through his skull), laws of before (not the improvisations now needed), fear-as-shield (not as a spear). The people heard what they wished. Broken Antler's gaze knifed him once and slid away, faintly disgusted, faintly impressed. She had seen the holes. She let them stand.
Skill Unlocked: Oath-Engine (Minor).
You can define narrow parameters within oaths to control what binds and what flows free. Oath backlash reduced by a small margin. Counter-bind chance against hostile vow-makers increased.
Wounded Bear let out breath slowly. "Not the leash I wanted. But a cord is a cord. And the smoke has remembered." He lifted his burned palm so the crowd could see. "Hear me: the iron-walkers raise a fort. They will not wait for spring. We must choose: strike their food while it's wagoned and their gunpowder while it's damp, or turn inward and cut out the rot that whispers trade and ease."
His eyes flicked to Slow Mink, who had regained his feet and stood pale as old snow.
The System blossomed two paths before Sky-Torn again, as if it had only been playing all morning to sharpen his appetite.
— Sabotage (Path): Destroy supplies and scatter alliances at the colonizer camp.
— Corruption (Path): Break or bind rivals within the tribe and neighboring clans.
Permanent path bonuses will accrue upon commitment.
He should not choose in a room of listening ears. But not choosing was a choice, too, and it had made a man choke on blood. He tightened his fingers on the staff until the burn snarled at him.
"Both," he said.
Laughter, angry and frightened, stung the air. Wounded Bear barked once. "You cannot walk two trails at once without tearing your feet."
"Then I will tear them," Sky-Torn said, and was surprised by the calm in his own tone. "We hit their wagons by night, in six days, when the moon is a bitten apple and their watch grows lazy. And before the moon fattens again, we will hold judgment on those who trade secrets for beads. If we are two fronts, so are they: forest and fort, envoy and soldier. Why should we be less?"
Silence spread, then shattered as voices took sides. Broken Antler rapped the hearthstone with a charred stick. "Enough. The oath is bound. The plan is named—though the council refuses the word plan until it votes." A pinch of humor there, the old woman remembering the language games of councils back to her mother's mother. "Sunset: we meet again. Noon tomorrow: scouts bring news."
People began to spill from the lodge. Sky-Torn stood where he was as if the cord still held his throat. The System whispered tallies and probabilities, soft pleasures, hard costs. He wanted clean air.
He stepped into it—and tasted tar.
Down-valley, across the bare-armed poplars, rose a smear of black beyond the winter light. Men shouted there in a language like teeth clicking. The sound of axes was a hammer in the chest. Gulls, far inland, circled and cried over spilled flour and fish. The colonizers had chosen a spit of land where the river bent and slowed into a broad shoulder: a place from which boats could launch in every direction by spring. Their carpenters beat stakes into mud that had never known such iron. The skeleton of a wall gleamed. Smoke rings rose from their cookfires in neat circles, as if even their hunger marched in ranks.
A scout trotted to Sky-Torn's side, panting fog. "They have two long guns already set," he said hoarsely. "They lift them on wheels. They turn them with ropes. When they crack, the trees leap."
Cannon. The word had not yet settled in the tribe's tongue. It came out a dozen ways in the mouths of boys, but the meaning needed no grammar. Sky-Torn imagined that crack tearing through a lodge's side and setting meat to steaming.
Fear tried to crawl up his back. He made room for it instead. He let it sit where love should sit, warm and heavy. He had sworn to use it as a shield. He would. He would walk into the night with fear as his cloak and with cunning as his knife. He would tell the children in his head that they could be afraid later, when the wall was ash and the iron long guns were belly-up in the marsh.
Behind him, Wounded Bear spoke without looking at him. "If you go to wreck their food, you will need shadows and fast feet. I will choose the runners."
Sky-Torn nodded. They could not afford to be enemies tonight. "I will choose the songs," he said. "And the smoke."
The System, pleased as a crow who has spotted a field of unguarded corn, chimed one last time:
Major Questline Synchronization: Outward Sabotage + Inward Corruption engaged.
Bonus: +50 Villain Points (Audacity).
New Sub-Quest: Smoke-Locked Oath — host a public rite to purge mercantile rot; ensure at least one rival binds themselves to your path.
New Sub-Quest: Starve the Fort — burn, poison, or mislead three supply lines before moon-fat.
Sky-Torn watched the carpenters stand on their planks like kings of a small square land. He imagined them coughing on blackened flour. He imagined Slow Mink standing with a cord around his wrists, swearing clean or spitting defiance. The future flexed.
History would carve him with a dull knife, he knew. It would call him villain from the first drop of blood to the last burnt tent. It would arrange his deeds in a necklace and declare that every bead was black. Fine. Let history carve. He would carve back while he had hands.
The wind changed. It brought the tang of salt from barrels opened for meat, the copper breath of a long gun's mouth, and the faint sweetness of stolen things. The day was gray and brief. He turned from it to the tasks it demanded.
In the lodge behind him, the cord cooled on the hearthstone, smelling faintly of blood and hair. It had not loved what had been done to it. But it had remembered. The smoke would tell the sky, and the sky would tell the night, and the night would be listening when Sky-Torn began to sing.