When the River Swallowed Fire

The river had changed. Still beautiful, still quiet—but it no longer hummed with indifference. It carried something else now: recognition.

Ben crouched at the bend where their fish traps lay, checking the snare lines when he heard it—a rustling, not far off, uneven, panicked. He stood. Through the thick veil of hanging roots, he saw three figures tucked beneath a fallen tree: barely alive, barely moving.

The first emerged—thin and wiry, a scout by posture, though the scar across his throat suggested he no longer served anyone but himself. He held a jagged scrap of obsidian like a blade.

"Friend or leech?" he rasped.

Ben didn't move. "You bleeding?"

The man shook his head.

Ben gave a small nod. "Then you're mine now. Come on."

The man turned, helped a woman out—a quiet one with a twisted foot and sharp eyes. Then came a child, barefoot, staring at Ben with unsettling calm. A bleached jawbone hung around his neck, strung with animal sinew. He didn't speak. Just watched.

Ben led them upriver. Vines parted without effort. No predators circled. No sounds of pursuit. It was as if the jungle respected a line even it would not cross.

High above, watching from the stone slope of the mountain, Twa Milhom stood silently. His arms folded, the coiled rope on his shoulder shifting with thought. He said nothing.

But the jungle listened.

—

When they reached camp, Mala was sharpening bone-blades. Laye stood near the traps with arms crossed.

Ben pointed at the three new arrivals.

"More mouths?" Laye asked, skeptical.

"More blades," Ben replied.

The man introduced himself as Kael—a former pathfinder from another shattered group. The woman was Sema, a skilled hunter, her leg crushed during a stampede. The boy remained silent, so Mala named him Boji, and that was the end of that.

Within the hour, shelters were rearranged. Boji was fed first. Kael and Sema helped reinforce thorn lines. The branded said nothing about the newcomers, but they worked faster.

That night, Boji stared up the mountain slope toward Twa Milhom's house. He didn't speak. Just watched. His eyes full of something no child should carry.

—

By the third morning, the camp began to feel too quiet.

Ben noticed it first—the jungle hadn't tested their perimeter in days. Not a pawprint, not a broken trap, not even the whisper of beasts in the brush.

Mala returned from a short patrol with a jaguar's skull, sun-bleached and hollow. No body. Just the head—left outside their boundary line, resting like an offering.

Laye said nothing, but he sharpened his spear with unusual force.

Kael pulled Ben aside.

"They're watching you."

Ben looked at him.

Kael gestured toward the new cliff symbol—now with six marks carved beneath the open hand.

"Not just the god. The others. They think this land belongs to you."

Ben replied evenly, "Because it does."

—

That night, Kael volunteered for watch. Sema rested beside him, her foot bound tightly in vine cloth. Boji curled near the fire, still staring toward Twa Milhom's home.

Then came the scream.

Ben reached the perimeter first, followed by Mala with a torch in hand. Kael was on the ground, gasping, bleeding from a gash across his ribs. But the thing that struck him never made it inside.

It had approached—something part-animal, part-nightmare, bones tied with bark and flesh like wet wood—but the moment it touched the stone line Ben had marked with his blade weeks ago, it stopped.

The thing shrieked once, stepped back.

And fled.

Ben chased it to the edge of his domain. The air felt colder beyond the line. He stopped there. He wouldn't leave his land for something that couldn't breach it.

Later, when the fires burned low, Twa Milhom appeared beside him.

"You felt it too," the god said.

Ben nodded.

"It couldn't enter."

Twa Milhom's grin was subtle but sharp. "Nothing enters what belongs to me—unless I allow it. And I've allowed this land to answer to you."

Ben looked out at the jungle, now darker than ever.

"What if I step beyond it?" he asked.

"Then you speak for yourself. And the wild speaks louder."

—

Kael healed slowly, but he healed. Sema taught Mala new ways to bind thorn spears for better piercing. Boji began carving on the stone wall—an upside-down version of Ben's mark.

Ben asked him, "What's that?"

Boji shrugged. "So the land knows I'm watching it back."

At night, predators gathered beyond the cliffs. Eyes burned in the trees. But none entered.

The branded no longer looked at Ben as a survivor.

They looked at him as a keeper.

A man with land the jungle dared not take.

And behind him, always watching, always silent, Twa Milhom smiled—not because Ben had become a god…

…but because he hadn't needed to.

Night in Ikanbi did not sleep. The jungle beyond their boundary whispered, hissed, paced just outside the reach of their firelight. But within the marked territory—the land now claimed in Ben's name—it was silent. Sacred.

Kael sat propped against a mound of woven ferns, gritting his teeth with every breath. His ribs were split deep from the creature's strike. Sema's leg, though no longer bleeding, had begun to swell, her skin tight with infection. She didn't complain. She simply wrapped it again and again, as if willing the bones to remember how they used to stand.

Ben stood between the fire and the slope, staring up at the stone house where Twa Milhom sat cross-legged, eyes closed, a rope resting on his shoulders like a living serpent waiting for a reason.

Ben called out, steady, deliberate.

"They fought for me."

Twa Milhom didn't open his eyes.

Ben took a step forward. "They bleed because I let them. If this is my land, then let them walk it whole."

One eye opened. Then the other.

The god tilted his head slightly. "You ask for healing."

"I ask for balance," Ben replied.

Twa Milhom stood.

He said nothing. He only raised one arm and flicked his fingers outward—like brushing dust off a sleeve.

A second passed.

Then the trees beyond the marked line trembled. The earth grumbled. A scream, hollow and sharp, tore through the canopy.

From the darkness, the beast that had torn Kael open came thrashing into view—dragged not by claw or rope, but by unseen force. It skidded across the soil, clawing at the earth, bark-flesh tearing with every tug.

It howled—but not from pain.

From submission.

When it crossed into the territory, it froze. Limbs rigid. Eyes wide with white panic. Twa Milhom stepped down from his perch and walked toward it with a predator's calm.

He pointed.

The beast convulsed, then arched violently backward—its bark-like chest splitting open. From the wound, blood began to pour, glowing faintly like moonlight in smoke.

It did not fall to the ground.

The blood rose—lifted into the air in two slow, spiraling streams, alive with light and heat. One tendril drifted toward Kael. The other toward Sema.

They both recoiled.

Ben stepped forward. "Let it work."

The blood hovered before them, humming softly.

Then, without warning, it rushed into their wounds—flesh drinking it in like dying roots absorbing rain. Sema gasped as her leg snapped into place, bones knitting, muscle forming anew. Kael arched backward, clutching his chest as the last of the wound sealed with a hiss.

They fell still.

Then Kael sat up.

Breathed deeply.

Stood.

Sema looked down at her leg. Straight. Strong. Whole. She took one step. Then another.

And then she wept—silently, fiercely.

The glowing blood vanished. The beast slumped to the ground, now just a husk. Empty. Its use complete.

Twa Milhom turned to Ben, expression unreadable.

"You owe me," he said simply.

Ben nodded. "What kind of offering?"

Twa Milhom gave a half-smile. Not cruel. Not kind.

"When you're worthy of giving one… I'll take it."

He turned, the rope slithering back across his shoulders as he walked toward the mountain. The branded watched in silence, unsure of what had just happened—only that the world now felt thicker with meaning.

Kael leaned against the wall, flexing his side.

Sema stood with both feet firm beneath her.

And Ben… Ben stood alone in the middle of the firelight, the god's echo in his ears.

He didn't fear the debt.

He feared what it might cost to become worthy of paying it.