Ikanbi – The Living Crucible

Ben awoke before the others. The fire was low, just glowing embers scattered across ash, whispering smoke into the dawn air. The basin was quiet, but not peaceful—never peaceful. Even in stillness, Ikanbi held its breath like a predator crouched behind beauty.

He stood and stepped to the ledge overlooking the eastern ridge. Mist rolled down from the trees, thin and silver, draping the land in a veil that hid its worst truths. He didn't trust it. Nothing here came without teeth.

Behind him, the branded stirred. Mala blinked sleep from her eyes and stretched her shoulders. Jeron sat up and checked his blade before he even looked at the sky. Laye rubbed his palms raw on his pants before walking to the river's edge, staring into the black current that rippled like glass beneath a thunderhead.

They hadn't said it aloud, but something had changed since the run. Mala moved with sharper precision. Jeron no longer stumbled when he stood. And Laye—quiet Laye—had begun to hear things none of them spoke. They all noticed, but none dared call it a gift. Not in this place. Gifts had weight.

Ben broke the silence.

"We build today."

He didn't ask for agreement. He gave no plan. He pointed to the flat stone shelf beside the glyph-marked cistern and nodded. Jeron moved first. Mala gave one last scan to the ridge before falling into step behind him. Laye remained by the water for a few heartbeats longer, listening to the river whisper back his breath, then followed.

They worked with what they had. Stone for walls, vines for lashings. They shaped shelter from the bones of the mountain and wrapped it in the skin of the jungle. Every tool was earned. Every cut fought back.

Ben took the first fall, clearing bramble from a carved groove near the base of the cliff. The roots bled white sap when sliced. He touched one, and it twitched under his fingers like it was alive. He said nothing.

Jeron cleared a plot for crops and found the soil dry and unwilling. His spade bounced off root after root—none thick, but all tightly wound. At one point, he stabbed down and the soil let out a sound like a breath. They did not dig there again.

Mala returned near dusk dragging a carcass—some strange horned beast with velvet fur that shimmered pink and green under light. She'd killed it with three clean strikes and a stone spear. It was massive, twice her weight.

But when they skinned it and cut the meat, it refused to cook. No matter how long it sat in the flame, the core remained cold—almost frozen. Ben tossed a piece into the fire. It hissed, turned black, and then slithered back out of the flames like it still had bones.

They buried the meat under stones by the western line.

That night, Jeron found something buried near the cistern. A long, pale bone—too smooth to be animal, too thin to be human. It had a spiral carved into it, and no one could tell if it had been a weapon, a relic, or a warning. He brought it to Ben.

Ben looked at it, held it for a moment, and set it aside.

"Leave it."

Jeron didn't ask why. He dropped the bone on a flat rock and walked away.

Ben didn't sleep that night. Instead, he climbed to the edge of the southern bluff and stared at the sky. The stars here were wrong. Too bright. Too slow. And the moon moved like it was trying to avoid something unseen.

Twa Milhom stood behind him without sound.

Ben didn't turn.

"They're changing," Ben said. "You know it."

The god crossed his arms, rope coiled like a living snake across his shoulder.

"Did you think my mark was only for you?" he said. "Even a spark leaves ash. But how it spreads… that's still yours to decide."

"I don't need them to worship you," Ben said.

Twa Milhom tilted his head. "I don't need them to, either."

Ben nodded. "I want a symbol carved into the cliff."

Twa Milhom raised an eyebrow.

"A hand," Ben continued, "with four slashes. One for each runner. One for each direction we claimed."

The god didn't answer. But when Ben returned the next morning, the stone wall behind the basin bore the image, deep and clean, as if it had always been there.

Jeron stared at it for a long time. Laye touched it with both hands. Mala simply grunted.

That same morning, the branded saw the vines near the southern edge curl away from the fire pit. Something massive had passed there the night before. The footprints were wide and deep. The edges still smoked from where claws had sliced stone.

No one said a word.

The fire that night burned higher than usual, not by magic, but by will. They didn't sleep all at once anymore. They rotated watch. They walked slower. They listened harder.

Ben stood at the edge of the carved symbol, watching the jungle sway in rhythms only the land understood.

Ikanbi had not accepted them.

But it had taken notice.

And in this world, that was enough to count as a beginning.

They could not live on muscle and memory alone.

By the third day, hunger had taken root—not sharp and sudden, but slow and twisting. The kind of hunger that made you imagine things moving in the corners of your sight. The strange horned meat had been buried and forgotten, and the jungle offered only poison dressed in silk.

So Ben led them to the river.

The black-glass current moved with deceptive grace. Clear on the surface, but beneath it—shadows tangled like knotted ropes. It teemed with life. Silver-scaled fish darted like living daggers. Long-bodied eels shimmered between submerged stone hollows. The water seemed full of opportunity. It also reeked of warning.

No one had dared step in.

Ben stood at the edge, eyes tracing the current's curves. He threw in a broken branch and watched it vanish—gone before it floated ten paces. That was enough.

"We don't go in," he said. "We bring the river out."

They built the first traps from bone and vine. Jeron split reeds and hollowed long sticks, fashioning a crude funnel. Laye weaved a net from the fiber of death-leaves, knowing full well that one wrong strand could wrap around your throat at night.

They anchored the traps with stones and tested them along the narrowest bend, just before the river veered around the stone shelf. Then they waited.

By dusk, one of the traps shivered. Not violently—but with rhythm. Laye pulled it up slowly, hands steady despite the bite in the current.

Inside: three silverfish, blinking with too many eyes, their fins shaped like knives. They were alive. Real. And warm.

Mala made quick work of them. She slit the belly of the first, sniffed the meat, and didn't gag. A good sign. They roasted them high above the flame, letting the smoke purify the scales.

When the first one hissed over the fire and did not resist—did not crawl, bleed cold, or whisper—they all knew they'd found something real.

They didn't eat like kings, but they ate like survivors. Quietly. Focused. Grateful.

Later, Ben returned alone to the riverbank, squatting at the edge. Twa Milhom stood a few paces behind, arms crossed, face unreadable.

"You're not going to help?" Ben asked without turning.

"I already did," the god said. "I put the fish there."

Ben gave a faint grin. "Thought you weren't pulling strings."

"I'm not. I'm setting the table. You still have to choose the seat."

Ben rose and looked over his shoulder. "And if I pick the wrong one?"

Twa Milhom's rope shifted across his shoulder, tightening like a snake uncoiling in thought.

"Then you starve. That's what mortals do."

But his tone held approval, wrapped in mockery.

Ben didn't respond. He simply turned back to the river and placed a new trap with his own hands.

The branded returned the next day with variations: sharpened stick fences driven into shallows, net loops that tightened when bait was disturbed, a crude pulley rig Laye called "the scream hook" for the sound it made when dragged back.

Soon, they had a rhythm.

No fire until a catch was made.

No swimming.

Never fish the same place twice.

They were still prey here—but prey that could bite.

And Ikanbi, wild and vast, now fed them not out of kindness, but curiosity.

The jungle watched. The river listened. And the branded endured.

Primitive life had begun.

It was sharp. It was cold.

But it was theirs.