A Village — Targeted By Barbarians |verified|

The village reeve, a stooped man named Aldric, gathered everyone in the longhall. “They are the Wolf Clan,” he said, his voice steady but pale. “They come not for our land, but for our stores. They will take the grain, the cattle, the iron. And if we resist…”

Aldric tried to negotiate. He walked out with a sack of silver and a salted ham. Skadi laughed—a dry, barking sound. “Silver is for merchants,” she said. “We are hunger.” She pointed her broken sword at the grain silos, the smokehouse, the blacksmith’s anvil. “These we take. The rest we burn. You have one hour to leave the old, the sick, and the stubborn. The young and the strong may run. We will not chase. We do not need slaves. We need space .” a village targeted by barbarians

The Vale had always been a place that time forgot—a scatter of thatched-roof cottages huddled around a stone well, their smoke rising in gentle gray ribbons against a spine of blue hills. To the farmers of the Vale, the worst danger was a late frost or a wolf taking a lamb. They knew of the barbarians, of course. The elders spoke of them in the same breath as bad harvests and winter fevers—as something abstract, a story to frighten children. The village reeve, a stooped man named Aldric,