The clash outside was a distant storm. The metallic ring of Elven blades meeting crude Goblin stone, the guttural roars, the high-pitched shrieks of the dying—it was all muffled by the thick cave walls, a backdrop to the intimate, raw tragedy unfolding within.
The initial surge of battle-rage had drained away, leaving behind a cold, heavy residue of pain and loss. The main chamber of the cave, once their communal heart, was now a field of suffering. The air, already thick with smoke, was now laced with the coppery scent of human blood and the strange, cloying sweetness of the silver Elf blood, a nauseating cocktail that spoke of the brutal intersection of their two worlds.
Gron moved through the wounded, his own body a tapestry of aches and cuts. His knuckles were split open from driving the rock into the Elf woman's skull, the memory of the impact a sickening tremor in his hand. He was the chief, the rock, and he could not show the fissures cracking open inside him.
He knelt first by Bor. The stocky hunter's face was pale, beaded with sweat. The gash on his leg was deep, slicing into the muscle. Kala was already there, using a clean strip of hide to staunch the bleeding, her hands steady but her eyes wide with a mother's terror. Bor gritted his teeth, his gaze fixed on the cave ceiling. "Just a scratch," he grunted, but the tremor in his voice betrayed him.
"You held the line, Bor," Gron said, his voice low and rough. He placed a hand on his friend's shoulder, a gesture of solidarity that conveyed more than words ever could. Bor gave a tight, pained nod, his eyes squeezing shut.
Fen was next. The cut on his forearm was clean but long, and he had taken a blow to the head from an Elf's pommel. He was conscious but dazed, his pupils wide in the flickering firelight. He looked up at Gron, his expression confused. "The… the sun. Is it setting?" he mumbled.
Gron's heart clenched. He looked at Kala, who met his gaze with a silent, sorrowful shake of her head. A head wound was a spirit-wound. There was no poultice for it.
Then came the harder stops.
He crouched beside the young mother, Anu. She had been one of the best basket-weavers, her fingers capable of creating beauty from simple reeds. The Elf's blade had caught her across the mouth and cheek, a cruel, disfiguring slash. Her husband, a quiet hunter named Jor, held her hand, his own body trembling with silent sobs. Anu's eyes, wide with shock and pain, stared up at Gron, pleading for an answer he did not have. The children, her two little boys, were huddled nearby, their faces buried in an elder's furs, their small shoulders shaking.
"The bleeding has slowed," Kala murmured from behind Gron, her voice thick. "But the pain… the spirit-pain…"
Gron could only nod. He reached out and touched Jor's arm. "Your sons need their father to be strong," he said, the words feeling hollow and inadequate. Jor didn't look at him, his entire world narrowed to his wife's ruined face.
Finally, Gron came to Old Man Hask. He lay where he had fallen, near the rear of the chamber. Someone had closed his eyes and folded his hands over his chest. His face, wizened and etched with the lines of eighty long winters, was peaceful in death, a stark contrast to the violent end he had met. He had been the tribe's memory, its storyteller, the keeper of the old ways. He had sung the songs of the first mammoth hunt, had named the stars in the winter sky. And now, his voice was silenced by a blade from a people whose name he hadn't even known a moon ago.
Gron stood over him for a long time, the weight of the old man's passing settling on his shoulders like a physical burden. Hask had been a boy when Gron's grandfather was chief. His death was not just the loss of a man; it was the snapping of a chain that stretched back into the deep, misty past. A piece of their history had been erased.
A small, cold hand slipped into his. He looked down. Lana was there, her face pale, her eyes red-rimmed but dry. She had seen it all. She had seen the Elf woman land, had seen the flash of the blade, had seen Hask fall.
"The story-man is gone," she whispered, her voice small.
Gron's composure, the chief's mask he had worn so tightly, finally cracked. He sank to his knees, pulling his daughter into a fierce, desperate embrace. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling the simple, clean scent of her, a tiny anchor in a world gone mad. He felt the sobs he had been holding back rise in his chest, a convulsive, silent storm. He did not weep for the pain or the fear, but for the innocence lost. Lana should be learning to weave, to track a rabbit, to giggle at the firelight stories. She should not know the smell of blood or the sight of a slashed throat.
He felt small arms wrap around his neck, holding on tight. "It's okay, Father," she whispered, her breath warm against his ear. "You are still here."
Her simple, profound courage was a balm. He held her for a long moment, drawing strength from her small, resilient heart. When he finally pulled back, his eyes were clear, though the grief remained, a permanent new resident in his soul.
He stood, Lana's hand still clasped in his, and looked around the cave. At the wounded, the grieving, the terrified. They were all looking at him. They had seen him break, and in that breaking, they saw not weakness, but a shared humanity. He was not a distant, unfeeling leader. He was a father, a friend, a man carrying the same crushing weight they all were.
"We will survive this," he said, his voice quiet but carrying through the chamber. It was not a roar of defiance, but a statement of fact, solid and unshakable. "We have lost much. We have lost Hask, whose stories were the roots of our tribe. We have lost a part of Anu's smile. We have lost the peace we knew." He paused, his gaze sweeping over every face. "But we have not lost each other. We stood together. Bor and Fen held the narrow way. Our women and elders fought with rocks and courage. My daughter…" he squeezed Lana's hand, "…shows me that our hearts are still strong."
He walked to the cave mouth, careful to stay in the shadows. The battle outside was still raging, a chaotic, brutal dance of death. He turned his back on it.
"This cave is not just stone anymore," he declared. "It is a place where the Frost-Tribe proved its will to live. We will tend our wounded. We will honor our dead. We will remember the names of those we lost today. And we will be ready for whatever comes next."
He looked at Kala, who was now helping to bind Fen's arm. He looked at Bor, who was trying to sit up, his jaw set in determination. He looked at Jor, who had finally lifted his head from his wife's side, a new, grim resolve in his eyes.
The emotional storm had passed, leaving a landscape scarred but solid. The grief was a shared burden now, and the will to endure was a collective fire, burning low but steady in the heart of the mountain. They were no longer just survivors of an attack; they were a people forged in loss, their bonds tempered in blood and sorrow. And as the sounds of the war between gods and monsters echoed outside, the humans inside, small and fragile and infinitely resilient, began the slow, painful work of binding their own wounds, one name, one memory, one heartbeat at a time.