When the Earth Remembers Fear

The jungle air was thick with the scent of iron and thunder.

Somewhere in the eastern ridge, the birds had gone silent. Even the wind dared not speak.

They say that day the earth itself learned fear.

It had started like any other hunt.

Jalen and Ayira moved through the highlands together, quiet as ghosts. She carried her curved blades; he walked unarmed—he rarely needed a weapon. The wolf, ever playful with Ayira, darted ahead to scout.

The kill was clean. A horned boar. Big. Strong. Perfect for offering.

But before the fire could be lit, they came.

Four mid-sized tribes, recently allied under a man who styled himself "King Talek of the Red Hill." No true king—just a butcher in stolen gold and blood-wrought chains. His raiders had tracked Ayira for days. Foreigners were worth a price. Warrior women were worth double. A foreign warrior woman with no sigil?

A prize.

They struck from the trees. Ten men. Then twenty. Then more. Ayira fought like a lioness, but Jalen was surrounded—diverted, not bested. She was pulled away, chained, drugged with root powder, and vanished into the mist as he crushed skulls in silence.

By the time the last man gurgled on his own teeth, she was gone.

Jalen knelt beside a broken spear shaft, stained with her blood.

The wolf whined.

He pulled a scroll from his belt—marked only with Zion's private seal—and carved his message into it with a shard of bone. Then he bound it to the wolf's back.

"Go."

The wolf vanished like smoke.

And Jalen stood.

His sigil began to burn.

Not glow—burn. The jagged sunburst across his chest flared with crimson energy. The dirt beneath his feet cracked, and for the first time in three generations, the trees began to bend away from a man.

He tracked them by the scent of fear. By the echoes of chains clinking too fast. By the unnatural stillness of the jungle that seemed to shiver as he passed.

They say beasts in hiding wept that day.

Snakes curled back into burrows. Jaguars climbed high and dared not descend. Spirits whispered warnings in dead tongues.

He found the first camp at dusk. A scouting group—five men, resting.

None survived long enough to scream.

The second camp—larger—he let one live long enough to speak:

"Where is the girl?"

The man babbled. Jalen didn't flinch.

"Talek… took her… to the Iron Caves!"

The caves were two days away—fortified, garrisoned. But none of that mattered.

Because Jalen had stopped being a peacekeeper.

Now, he was the wrath of law denied.

He ran through the dark with no rest. When he slept, it was only for an hour. When he woke, his eyes were red with power, and his sigil flared brighter each time he remembered her face.

Tijan Petro laughed in the wind. Not mockery. Excitement. His champion was finally dancing in flames.

By the time the Iron Caves came into view, scouts were already fleeing.

"He's coming! He burned the old forest! He walked through arrows!"

"He killed Burok with his bare hands!"

"He's not a man—he's a curse!"

And in the shadows of the cavern walls, Ayira waited. Shackled, bruised—but not broken. Her eyes closed, she whispered to whatever Lwa might listen:

"If you won't bless me, then at least… let me see him one more time."

The wind shifted.

And from outside, came a single blow, like thunder striking stone.

Then another.

Then screams.

Then silence