The boy did not blink.
He knelt in the poisoned soil, head bowed, hands trembling—not from fear, but from reverence. The burned runes along his arms pulsed softly, reacting to Chukwudi's presence like wounds recognizing their maker.
"What is your name?" Chukwudi asked.
The boy swallowed. "They called me Obinna… before the bell rang."
Something twisted in Chukwudi's chest. Names carried weight. Names survived when villages did not.
"Stand," Chukwudi said.
Obinna obeyed immediately.
The earth shifted uneasily beneath them.
---
By sunrise, three more came.
Not from the village—there was nothing left there—but from the ruins beyond, from places where gods had brushed the world and left scars.
A girl whose shadow moved before she did.
Twin brothers stitched together at the wrist by roots and bone.
A child with no mouth who spoke through insects.
They did not arrive together.
They were drawn.
The earth itself betrayed him.
"You are becoming a beacon," it warned faintly.
Chukwudi said nothing.
Adaeze watched from a distance, her ash-form flickering like a dying flame. She was changing again—losing softness, gaining edges. The more cursed children gathered, the less human she appeared.
Idemili stood beside her, amused.
"See?" the river goddess murmured. "You feared loneliness. Now you are surrounded."
---
That night, Chukwudi tried to send them away.
"You don't want this," he said. "What follows me ends in graves."
Obinna shook his head.
"We already died," the boy said simply. "You're what came after."
The others echoed him—not in words, but in motion. Kneeling. Bowing. Bleeding into the soil willingly.
The earth screamed.
"Stop this," it pleaded.
Chukwudi felt the soil split under his feet, cracking like a skull.
"I didn't call them," he whispered.
"No," the earth replied bitterly. "You survived, and that is worse."
---
Idemili finally spoke.
"They will hunt you now," she said. "The alụsị who fear replacement. The humans who fear extinction. Even the earth will turn its back on you."
Chukwudi looked at the gathered children.
At their scars.
At their hope.
"What do I do?" he asked.
Idemili smiled, sharp and knowing.
"What your mother did not."
---
Training began at dawn.
Not spells.
Not prayers.
Listening.
Chukwudi pressed their hands into soil soaked with old blood and taught them how to feel the pulse beneath—how to recognize when the earth lied, when it was bribed by gods, when it was tired of carrying the dead.
Obinna learned fastest.
Too fast.
He could rot crops with a touch by the second day.
By the third, he could call worms from beneath stone.
Adaeze watched him with growing horror.
"He's becoming like you," she whispered.
Chukwudi answered quietly, "No. He's becoming what the world allows."
---
On the fifth night, the hunters came.
Not villagers.
Not priests.
Men wearing iron masks shaped like human faces twisted in pain. Their weapons hummed with old power—bone rifles, god-snares woven from sanctified hair, blades that drank divine blood.
The Order of the Cleansed Path.
Human weapon-makers.
Idemili's expression darkened.
"Ah," she said. "The clever ones."
The first shot took one of the twins.
The ground swallowed half his body, roots crushing his spine as he screamed. His brother did not cry.
He split.
Bone cracked. Flesh tore. Roots stitched him into something larger, wider, wrong. He charged screaming, no longer a boy.
The battle was short.
And unspeakable.
When it ended, the earth refused to absorb the blood.
It pooled.
Black.
Alive.
---
Afterward, Chukwudi stood among the corpses, hands shaking.
Children stared at him—waiting.
Waiting for approval.
For command.
For permission to become worse.
Idemili leaned close.
"You cannot undo this," she said softly. "They will follow you into damnation. Or you can guide them somewhere… deliberate."
Chukwudi looked at his hands.
At the soil that no longer recognized him as kin.
Far away, thunder rolled—too slow, too deep.
A god was waking.
Not Idemili.
Something older.
Angrier.
The earth whispered its final warning.
"When gods hunt gods, the land always dies first."
Chukwudi lifted his head.
"Then teach me," he said to Idemili, voice steady with terror and resolve, "how to kill a god without destroying what's left."
Idemili smiled.
Above them, the sky cracked—just a little.
Enough to let something look through.