The Chibali Ice
On a northern ice shelf the Chibali Guardian Tribe will not hand over their half of the wake-ritual until a stranger survives their trek — and Marcus Gray, of all people, is the only one built for it.
Siru, Marcus and Vivek reach the Chibali outpost only to find the ice shelf already failing beneath the tribe's feet. The Chibali elder refuses to release their fragment of the ancient wake-ritual to outsiders without the old trial: a roped trek across the moving ice to the ridge shrine. Marcus's marine-surveying eye reads the ice where the guardians themselves hesitate, and the trek becomes a real rescue when a crevasse opens under a Chibali guide. At the ridge, the tribe does something no other Guardian tribe has done yet — hands over Altan, their own cat, freely — even as a chilling detail in the snow tells Vivek someone else already knew they were coming.