Krel pressed the blade against his ribs and drew it down. The cut was shallow but clean — enough to scar. Blood welled in the line, dark against pale skin. He wiped it with ash from the fire, sealing the mark. This one would stay. The bone knife had carved the shape of his defeat. A single stroke, running from the lowest rib toward his hip. Drath's name would not go here — that would come later, when he had earned the right to mark it. But this line would remember. Every morning when he woke, every time he reached for his weapon, this scar would be there. Drath might forget their fight, might not even recall Krel's face. But Krel would carry the memory in his flesh until the day he stood before Drath again and made him see. He stood and walked to the small pile of bones beyond the fire's glow. Old ones. Warriors who had fallen before anyone living could remember their names. The desert had bleached them white, scattered them like dropped stones. Krel knelt and placed the knife among them. The ancestors in his blood were screaming now, their voices sharp with shame. They had not asked to fall with him. But they had not asked to be carried either. At the carved totem near the settlement's edge, Krel stopped. He touched the wood once, fingers trailing across symbols he did not understand. Then he turned away. The scar on his ribs pulled tight as he moved. Good. He would feel it with every step toward the next fight. Drath had walked away from their battle without a mark. Krel would arrive at the next one already bleeding.