"I'm Mira Moonlight," she said, voice quiet but steady. "From the Moonlight Tribe."

Her gaze flicked briefly to the sack in her arms, then back to Ryn.

"I need food."

The words landed plainly, without drama.

"Vegetables," she added after a breath. "Grain. Roots. Anything that grows."

Not meat.

Ryn noticed immediately.

He didn't answer right away.

He watched her posture instead. The way her shoulders were tense, how her grip tightened slightly as the wind cut across the plain.

She wasn't trembling in fear.

She was cold.

And hungry enough to ask strangers instead of running.

"I don't need protection," Mira continued, as if anticipating the question. "And I'm not asking you to fight Bloodmane."

Her eyes flicked briefly toward the direction the beastmen had gone, then returned.

"I just need enough to make it back."

Ryn considered her in silence.

He could refuse.

Nothing would stop him.

But refusal bought him nothing.

He reached into his ring and withdrew a wrapped bundle, holding it out where she could see it clearly before tossing it gently onto the snow between them.

Mira stared at it for half a heartbeat.

Then she stepped forward and picked it up with both hands, fingers tightening around it as if afraid it might vanish.

Only then did Ryn speak again.

"In return," he said evenly, "I want to meet your tribe's elder."

She froze.

Her ears lifted slightly, eyes sharpening in calculation.

"That's not the same thing," she said carefully.

"No," Ryn agreed. "It isn't."

Silence stretched between them, filled only by the wind and the quiet sound of her breathing.

Finally, she nodded once.

"I'll take you," Mira Moonlight said. "But you walk behind me."

Ryn inclined his head, then glanced briefly at his party.

"That works."

They walked in a loose line, Mira a few steps ahead, her pace measured but steady despite the cold. The land dipped slightly as they moved, frost crunching underfoot, the wind carrying nothing but emptiness.

Ryn broke the silence.

"That mist," he said, not looking at her. "The way it cuts the land. It doesn't behave like weather."

Mira glanced back once, then forward again.

"No," she agreed. "It doesn't."

He continued calmly. "From the air, it only covers part of Dheam. The rest is clear. Cold, but visible."

A pause.

"Explain it."

Mira slowed just enough that the group naturally tightened behind her.

"There's Central," she said. "And there's the Outside."

She lifted a hand and gestured vaguely ahead of them, toward nothing in particular.

"Central is where Bloodmane lives. Where the ground still holds heat. Where food can be stored without freezing through."

Her ears flicked once.

"The mist marks it. You don't see Central unless you're under the Bloodmanes."

"And the Outside?" Ryn asked.

Mira's steps resumed.

"The Outside is everything else," she replied. "Where the cold never quite leaves."

A beat.

"It's where we are, barely scrounging to survive."

Ryn glanced toward the horizon, toward the unseen boundary he'd noticed from above.

The wind picked up, tugging at cloaks and fur alike.

After a while, Jay spoke up.

He gestured around them with one hand.

"I get that it's cold. I really do. But cold alone doesn't kill an ecosystem."

He crouched briefly, scooping a handful of dirt and letting it sift through his fingers. It fell apart like ash.

"Why not grow food?" he asked. "Or hunt? Even a bad land has something."

Mira stopped walking.

That alone made everyone else slow.

She looked down at the ground Jay had disturbed, then nudged it lightly with her boot.

"This soil is dead," she said. "Frozen through most of the year. Drained of anything that once fed it."

She shook her head. "You can plant seeds here. They just don't answer."

Jay frowned. "So there's nowhere—?"

"There is," Mira cut in. "Closer to Central."

She straightened, ears flicking back.

"Fertile land exists. Warm ground. Places where roots take hold."

A pause.

"Bloodmane controls all of it."

That settled heavily.

"They don't just guard food," Mira continued. "They guard the possibility of growing more. Anything that can sustain life long-term stays under their claws."

Jay absorbed that, jaw tightening. "Alright. Then hunting?"

"There isn't enough game," she said. "More powerful tribes in the Outside hunt them first. What's left doesn't replenish fast enough."

She glanced at Jay. "You don't starve all at once here. You thin out."

Her hand moved unconsciously to the sack she carried.

"And your tribe?" Jay asked carefully. "You're… rabbits. You don't hunt."

"We used to be herbivores," Mira said.

The way she said 'used to' made Ryn look up.

"We weren't made for meat," she went on. "It makes us sick. It still does."

She hesitated, then added, quieter, "But not all of us anymore."

Jay's eyes widened slightly.

"The young ones, including me," Mira explained.

"Some of them can digest small amounts now. It hurts…But it keeps us alive."

She didn't sound proud.

Just tired.

"Our elders can't," she finished. "Their bodies never changed."

Her grip tightened around the sack.

"That's why I stole these vegetables from Central," Mira said.

Silence followed.

The wind swept across the plain, cold and indifferent, carrying the weight of what she'd just said with it.

Jay stood slowly.

"…Okay," he murmured.

That single word carried more understanding than any argument could've.

Mira turned and resumed walking, her pace a little quicker now, as if the answers themselves had pushed her forward. The terrain began to change almost imperceptibly. The land dipped, then rose again, the wind losing some of its bite as broken stone and low ridges started to interrupt the open plain.

Ryn noticed it first.

Tracks.

Places where the ground had been cleared and reused, over and over again.

The kind of marks that were used by people on the run.

Mira slowed as a narrow pass opened between two jagged rock formations. Beyond them, the land dipped into a shallow basin, shielded from the worst of the wind.

She stopped at the edge and looked back at them.

"We're close," she said. "Don't speak unless you're spoken to."

"They'll see you before you see them."

Then she stepped forward.

The rocks swallowed her silhouette, and the party followed.

The unforgiving Outside giving way, at last, to the quiet and wary shelter of the Moonlight Tribe.

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