Chukwudi did not scream when the covenant finally broke.
That silence frightened him more than pain ever could.
The bond snapped somewhere deep in his chest—clean, brutal—like a root torn from the earth. He felt the absence immediately, a hollow where voices once murmured, where strength once circulated like blood.
Adaeze collapsed beside him.
Not crying.
Not burning.
Just… empty.
Her ash-eyes stared at nothing, lips trembling as if words were trying to escape and dying halfway.
"The bond is gone," she whispered. "I can't feel them."
The twins were already gone.
One taken.
One lost to the trees.
Only Chukwudi remained—bleeding, kneeling, holding a world that no longer recognized him.
Idemili watched with quiet satisfaction.
"Now," she said softly, "you are alone enough to listen."
---
They moved eastward, away from the broken clearing, into lands the old gods had abandoned centuries ago.
Ruined shrines rose like broken teeth from the soil. Stone faces eroded until their expressions were neither mercy nor wrath—only forgetting. Here, the earth did not answer prayers.
It tolerated.
Barely.
Chukwudi carried Adaeze on his back for three days.
She spoke rarely.
Sometimes she laughed at nothing.
Sometimes she whispered names Chukwudi did not recognize—names that made the soil curdle.
On the fourth night, they reached a village that still had walls.
People saw them.
And did not hide.
That was mistake number one.
---
The villagers did not chant.
They did not pray.
They simply stared.
Children clutched iron charms. Elders fingered bone knives smeared with ash. A man stepped forward holding a rusted bell, its surface etched with god-killing runes.
"You brought the curse here," he said calmly.
Chukwudi opened his mouth.
Adaeze slipped from his back and stood on her own.
Her eyes burned suddenly.
"No," she said.
Ash fell.
The bell rang.
---
They had built a trap.
The ground beneath the village was laced with sigils—ancient, crooked, incomplete, but powerful enough. When Adaeze's ash touched the soil, the runes ignited.
The earth screamed.
Chukwudi fell to his knees as pain lanced through his bones, each sigil cutting off a pathway, severing his connection further.
Men advanced.
Not afraid.
Determined.
"We won't be eaten quietly," one spat.
Chukwudi understood then.
This was not hatred.
This was survival sharpened into cruelty.
---
Idemili sighed.
"Must I do everything?"
She moved.
The village ended in less than a minute.
Walls crushed inward. Bodies snapped like twigs. Blood soaked the sigils until they overloaded, exploding in red light that burned everything they touched.
Chukwudi watched, numb.
When silence returned, nothing lived.
Nothing breathed.
The soil smoked.
Adaeze vomited ash until her throat bled.
Chukwudi staggered away from the carnage.
"Stop," he whispered.
Idemili tilted her head.
"I saved you."
"You killed them," he said.
She smiled gently.
"And you let me."
That truth landed harder than any blow.
---
That night, Chukwudi walked alone into the ruins beyond the village.
He pressed his forehead to the ground.
For the first time since the Snake Mother vanished, the earth answered.
Not with warmth.
With judgment.
Images flooded him—roots blackening, rivers choking, children yet unborn screaming as soil turned poisonous beneath their feet.
A future shaped by choices like tonight.
"You cannot keep borrowing her cruelty," the earth warned. "Or you will become her."
Chukwudi trembled.
"What choice do I have?" he whispered.
The earth answered honestly.
"None without cost."
---
Before dawn, something crawled from the ruins.
A survivor.
A boy no older than ten, skin etched with glowing runes burned into him during the village's final moments. His eyes glowed faintly, wrong and hollow.
He looked at Chukwudi.
And knelt.
"Please," the boy whispered. "Teach me how to live like this."
Idemili laughed softly behind him.
The earth went silent.
Chukwudi stared at the child.
At the future forming its teeth.
At the path narrowing until there was no room to turn.
He understood then what the Snake Mother had tried to prevent.
This war did not create monsters.
It taught them.
Chukwudi closed his eyes.
And made the choice that poisoned the soil forever.