The Flame That Dares the Gate

I. Smoke Before the Fire

It began before dawn.

The Open Flame moved in silence—hooded figures, faces daubed with ash and oil, gathering in the outer rings of Nouvo Lakay. The Velek-Tu warriors carried blades etched with stolen sigils. A priest from their old pantheon held a crooked staff wrapped in dried blood and bone.

They said the Gate belonged to all.

They said the Lwa were no longer enough.

They said power should not be caged behind one man's name.

"We do not come to beg," the high speaker whispered to the small crowd. "We come to take."

At the center of the village, the main temple doors were barred. Guarded by loyal warriors and priestesses alike. But even they hadn't expected the ritual.

From hidden places, the Open Flame unveiled their stolen workings—sigils carved into living bark, a child's tooth from the last Gate ceremony, and ashes of an old god's totem, burned in secret.

As they formed the false circle near the temple's sacred grove, the air twisted. The Gate, long sealed, trembled.

The priestesses felt it first.

Thalia dropped her water bowl mid-ritual. Ayomi fell to her knees, vision seized by ancestral screams. Elis's fire dimmed, as if pulled by an unnatural wind.

"They are pulling something through," Ayola hissed. "But it is not a god. It is not even alive."

II. The Sky Shatters

Then the sound came.

A blade striking iron.

A hundred times over.

And Ogou stepped out of lightning.

He did not roar. He did not summon storms. He walked, barefoot across the square, from nothing into being, skin gleaming like forged bronze, his spear longer than reason.

All turned to look. Even the Open Flame paused.

He raised one hand—a war god's call to silence.

And the Gate answered.

It exploded outward—not in opening, but in wrath. A shockwave of divine pressure threw half the rebels to the ground. Others burst into flame, their false sigils igniting from the inside.

The ritual shattered.

The priest with the bone staff screamed as his eyes turned to ash.

The Gate groaned… and then fell silent again, its stone blackened around the edges, as though scorched from within.

Ogou turned.

Walked into the temple without a word.

And vanished.

III. The Aftermath

When it was over, the village did not cheer.

They whispered.

"Ogou has returned… and left."

"He didn't stay."

"He didn't speak to the priestesses."

"He didn't speak to anyone."

Some said he was angry. Others said he was disappointed.

Thalia stood before the broken gate, her hand wrapped around its edge.

"He saw enough," she said. "And he left because we still do not understand."

Sael nodded. "But now they know. This village is not theirs to take."

IV. The Open Flame Fractures

In the days that followed, many of the rebels fled or were cast out.

But not all.

Ajima remained untouched, silent during the ritual, untouched by Ogou's wrath—but his voice carried further than ever now.

"You see how power chooses," he told his followers in secret. "One god for one man. Is that all we are to be?"

He would not move openly again—not yet. But a root had grown deeper beneath Nouvo Lakay.

And above them all, the Gate no longer glowed.

V. Far from Home

Zion walked alone now.

Ogou was gone.

The path ahead twisted toward a territory few dared name—a place where old gods never fell… because they were never born right.

Zion did not turn back.

He felt the storm rising behind him, and something strange rising ahead.