CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Between Two Graves

The campfire cracked softly, but the silence around it was louder than any war horn. The Bloodbound Circle sat in a loose ring, backs to the forest, eyes on the flames — but no one was really looking at the fire. They were looking past it, into the weight pressing down on them from all sides.

Murenga wanted them dead.

Vhuramu wanted them erased.

The Bvuri wanted something worse.

Kael sat with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, knuckles scarred and unhealed. His Lion Totem stirred low in his chest, but it wasn't roaring. It was watching. Waiting.

"We should have never stopped here," Dendera muttered, his back pressed against a tree, shield resting across his lap. "We're between two graves, and we're digging both."

Tafara flicked a pebble into the fire. "Murenga thinks we're traitors. Vhuramu thinks we're Murenga's weapons. Everyone's wrong. That's the fun part."

Ranga gave him a side-eye. "You call this fun?"

Tafara smirked, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Better than dying bored."

Nyeredzi hadn't spoken since they sat down. Her silver eye — the one that saw too much — flickered faintly, reflecting something in the flames no one else could see. Liora, crouched beside her near the water's edge, kept her gaze low, fingers trailing in the stream. The symbols on her arms shifted with the current, never the same shape twice.

Ranga wasn't even subtle anymore — his eyes kept flicking toward her, his usual bravado faltering every time her fingers danced across the water. There was something about her now, something fluid and unfinished, like the spirit inside her was still trying to decide what shape it wanted to wear.

"You keep staring like that," Tafara snorted, "you'll trip over your own spears."

Ranga's glare was half-hearted at best. "Shut up."

Kael ignored all of it. His focus was forward — not into the forest, but through it. Vhuramu was out there. Somewhere. The enemy village, the shadow on the horizon Murenga had been too proud to name for years. Vhuramu didn't just want Murenga's lands — they wanted its history, its bones, its spirit itself.

The Bvuri moved between them, whispering to both sides, feeding the fire in secret. But the Bvuri weren't the only ones moving in the dark.

Kael's jaw clenched.

"They're here," Nyeredzi said softly, her voice cutting through the quiet.

Dendera's grip tightened on his shield. "Vhuramu?"

"No," Nyeredzi said. "Them."

The fire crackled louder, the shadows twisting unnaturally for a moment — like something was breathing just beyond the edge of sight.

Tafara stood, rolling his shoulders. "Which them?"

Kael stood too, gaze locked on the treeline. "The Circle."

Dendera's face darkened. "Murenga's dogs."

Not just dogs. Chidawo. Six warriors — one from each of Murenga's ancestral lines, each fully awakened to their Chidawo state. Not just totem warriors, but living conduits of divine will. The ones Murenga sent to wipe out what they couldn't control.

The Bloodbound Circle had once been Murenga's chosen, the prodigies meant to inherit the kingdom's future. Now they were its betrayers, walking proof that the totem system was breaking — that the old ways no longer held the leash.

Kael turned to the others, voice low. "They're not here for Murenga."

Liora's head lifted slightly, her eyes still unfocused. "They're here for us."

Tafara's grin was all teeth. "Finally."

Nyeredzi's glowing eye dimmed. "You shouldn't be excited."

"I'm not." Tafara's hands flexed, fingers dancing along the hilts of his knives. "I'm just tired of running."

Kael took a step forward, the earth under his feet trembling faintly — a pulse from the Lion Totem inside him, neither approval nor warning, just… acknowledgement.

"We're not running," Kael said. "We're moving."

Ranga's twin spears spun lazily in his hands, the weight of his Chidawo status still new, but his confidence in it already solid. "You say that like there's a difference."

Kael turned, the firelight catching the faint scars across his face, each one a reminder that the Bloodbound Circle wasn't just hunted — they were hunted by their own ghosts.

"There is," Kael said. "Running means we're afraid."

He stepped past the fire, into the dark, where the forest thinned and the land sloped gently downward — toward the borderlands where Murenga's forces clashed with Vhuramu's hunters, where spirit and flesh were equally expendable.

"Moving means we're choosing where we fight."

The Bloodbound followed.

In the Shadows — Vhuramu WatchesAcross the ridge, beyond the thin river that marked the edge of contested land, Chidawo Nhamo stood with his arms folded, the Crocodile Totem curling in and out of sight behind him, black scales glistening in the moonlight. He could feel them — the Bloodbound. Not just their footsteps, but the weight of their presence, like a rip in the spirit fabric itself.

"They're coming," a voice said beside him — Banga, Vhuramu's Bone Caller, her hands wrapped in spirit-thread, her eyes milky with second sight.

"Let them," Nhamo said. "Let the rogue lions and their ghosts come running."

"They are not alone," Banga warned. "The girl — the water-child — she is not like the others."

"None of them are like the others," Nhamo said, voice low. "That's why we end them ourselves."

Vhuramu didn't trust the Bvuri. Didn't fear them either. To Vhuramu, the Bvuri were just fools who forgot their place — spirits who mistook old fear for true power. But the Bloodbound? They were worse.

They were a mistake that refused to die.

"Send the hunters," Nhamo ordered. "Not to kill them. To push them."

"Push them where?" Banga asked.

Nhamo's smile was thin, almost human. "Into the Circle's hands."

"Let Murenga's own weapons finish the job."

The Bloodbound MarchAs the Bloodbound Circle walked, the night thickened around them — not with fear, but with something deeper. A sense of being watched, not by one village or the other, but by the space between.

Murenga wanted their blood.

Vhuramu wanted their silence.

The Bvuri wanted their secrets.

And the spirits themselves — they were still deciding.

Liora's fingers brushed the water again, her symbols shifting with the current, but this time they formed something familiar — a door.

"Kael," she whispered.

He didn't turn, but he heard her. "I know."

The Bloodbound weren't running. They were walking straight toward the door they were never meant to open.

And behind them, from the earth itself, the Bvuri stirred — their hunger older than both villages, and their patience finally running out.