I. Whispers Across the Tribes
The earth still trembled.
From the farthest jungle edges to the cold mountain passes, news of the rampage spread like wildfire. Traders whispered it over cooking fires. Elders retold it in solemn chants. Warriors shivered behind strong shields.
They said:
A Gate had opened.
Two hundred gods had stepped into the world.
The land had screamed, and something ancient had fled.
The tribes—some allies, some distant, some resentful—gathered in hurried councils. What once had been dismissed as a growing village called Nouvo Lakay, now loomed like a pillar between worlds.
Some knelt in reverence.
Some sharpened blades in fear.
A few, drunk on ambition, plotted.
And in their shadows, the sigil forgers, the corrupted cults, and traitors branded in secrecy, felt their markings twitch in pain. The gods had returned—and they had drawn lines.
II. The Weight of Power
In Nouvo Lakay, Zion stood before the temple.
The stone was still warm from the ceremony. The skies were quiet, but the air was charged, heavy with the aftershock of divinity.
He looked to the priestesses—Ayola, Ayomi, Thalia, Sael, and now Elis—all marked, all changed.
They, too, felt it. The eyes of the world, the weight of divine favor, and the fear of what came next.
Thalia clenched her spear tighter.
Elis whispered prayers to Maman Brigitte beneath her breath.
Ayomi walked the ancestral grounds in silence, calling the dead for wisdom.
Sael trained her army with doubled intensity.
And Ayola… Ayola watched the skies and shadows both, her mind burning with secrets only the Gatekeeper's priestess could carry.
They met in private that night.
Zion, surrounded by the five priestesses, asked, "What are we becoming?"
Ayola answered without blinking:
"A beacon… or a target."
III. Deep Below – The Devoured's Lair
Far from the reach of light and song, the Great Devoured seethed in its hiding place—a chasm between worlds, where time unraveled and screams became stone.
Its form was broken, leaking cursed ichor and crumbling sigils. Pieces of gods clung to it still—mangled and sobbing.
But it lived.
And it remembered.
"They sent two hundred…" it hissed in a dozen stolen voices, "but not all… stayed."
Among the ruin, its most faithful cult—the Pale Wretches—tended to its wounds. They scraped dirt and bone to shape new bodies for it. They fed it with prayers twisted into blasphemy.
And the Great Devoured began to speak, not with mouth, but with hunger.
It called to distant hearts.
To betrayed tribes.
To fallen gods desperate for resurrection.
To beasts that remembered fire.
And to a child born under an omen, whose heart bore a twisted mimic of a god's sigil…
"Come to me… and I will make you more than gods. I will make you free of them."
IV. Zion's Dream
That night, Zion dreamt again.
He stood at the Gate—closed, sealed—and saw Papa Legba standing within.
"It limps, but it learns," the god warned.
"Can we win?" Zion asked.
"You can survive. But if you forget who you are—if power replaces purpose—then the next time you face it…"
Legba tapped his cane once.
"It will not run. And you will not rise."
Zion woke with a chill.
Outside his hut, the priestesses had already gathered.
Something had shifted.
The war had paused.
But the hunt had begun.