The sky did not break.
It peeled.
A thin wound opened above the eastern horizon, leaking a red light that made shadows bend the wrong way. Birds fell mid-flight. Insects burrowed deep into the soil as if trying to hide inside the bones of the earth itself.
Idemili went still.
"So," she murmured, almost respectfully. "Ọbara has finally risen."
Chukwudi felt it then—a pressure, ancient and suffocating, like a hand closing around his lungs from miles away.
"The god beneath the hill," Adaeze whispered. Her voice echoed twice, once human, once something older. "The eater of sacrifices. The drinker of wars."
The cursed children whimpered.
Even Obinna trembled.
---
They reached the Red Hill by dusk.
It was not tall.
It was not impressive.
That was what made it wrong.
The soil was dark, slick, pulsing faintly as if breathing. Bones jutted out like pale roots—human, animal, god, all fused together. Old shrines lay half-swallowed, their symbols carved over by newer, bloodier ones.
Chukwudi knelt.
The earth recoiled.
"You have come to witness your replacement," the soil hissed bitterly.
"No," Chukwudi replied. "I've come to end a wound."
The hill laughed.
---
The ground split.
Blood poured upward, defying gravity, forming a towering figure of sinew and rusted iron. A face emerged—too many mouths, each whispering prayers spoken over centuries.
Ọbara.
Alụsị of slaughter. Patron of conquest. The god humans fed with wars so he would not turn on them.
"You smell unfinished," Ọbara boomed, his voice cracking stone. "Born wrong. Loved wrong. Worshipped by scraps."
Chukwudi stood.
"I wasn't worshipped," he said calmly. "I was abandoned."
The cursed children screamed as the god's presence pressed against their minds, trying to rewrite them into offerings.
Obinna collapsed, blood pouring from his ears.
Chukwudi felt rage rise.
Not hot.
Cold.
---
Ọbara lunged.
The hill moved with him.
Roots lashed, iron tendrils slicing through air. Chukwudi slammed his palms into the soil—not commanding, not pleading—listening.
He felt it.
The rot beneath the god.
The forgotten sacrifices. The villages burned to keep this monster fed. The earth had never accepted Ọbara.
It had endured him.
"Now!" Idemili shouted.
Adaeze stepped forward.
And shed her skin.
---
What rose from her was no longer human.
Ash spiraled upward, forming a vast serpentine shape crowned with a woman's face—cracked, burning, ancient.
The Snake Mother Unbound.
Ọbara roared, half in fury, half in fear.
"You were sealed!" he thundered.
"And you were tolerated," Adaeze hissed. "We are both past due."
They collided.
The sky screamed.
---
Chukwudi felt the moment approach—the impossible crossroad.
If he let the gods fight, the land would die.
If he intervened, he would cross a line no child of earth ever returned from.
He looked at Obinna.
At the children watching him like believers.
Chukwudi stepped forward.
And took.
Not power.
Authority.
He reached into Ọbara's bond with the land and cut it—not cleanly, but brutally. The god howled as his essence spilled into the soil, burning it black.
The hill collapsed.
Ọbara fell to his knees, bleeding divinity.
Idemili stared, stunned.
"You just—" she began.
"I know," Chukwudi said.
And he finished it.
---
When it was over, nothing remained of the Red Hill but a crater filled with dead earth.
Ọbara was gone.
Not sealed.
Not sleeping.
Ended.
The earth was silent.
Not grateful.
Not angry.
Empty.
Adaeze collapsed, her form shrinking, cracking.
Chukwudi caught her.
Her eyes met his.
"Now they'll all come," she whispered. "You've proven it can be done."
Far away, other gods stirred.
Human weapon-forges burned brighter.
And deep beneath the land, something older than alụsị opened one eye.
Chukwudi stood in the crater of a dead god, cursed children kneeling around him, and understood the truth.
He had not saved the land.
He had started the age of god-slaughter.