A Hundred Years in Twenty Days
The land of Bassoon was never meant to be the center of worlds. Yet now, its red soil bore the footprints of emissaries from every pantheon known to humankind—and some barely whispered about.
A Sudden Bloom of Civilization
The first transformations came in silence.
The Xianzhou scholars shared crop-yield rituals guided by lunar cycles, and irrigation systems carved from dragon-glyph blueprints. In less than a week, parched fields outside Zantrayel began to bloom with rice, herbs, and medicinal flora previously unknown to the continent.
The Egyptians, with their engineers and spiritual architects, raised a stone observatory aligned to the twin moons of Bassoon. It doubled as both temple and stellar compass, allowing for timekeeping across seasons with mathematical precision. Beneath it, they buried sacred sand that hummed with divine memory.
The Norse offered weapon-forging methods that fused elemental ore with ancient runes. Local smiths watched in awe as war hammers were forged that could resist lightning, and axes that whistled when thrown. And though chaos sometimes followed their drinking nights, they defended the village borders with loyal ferocity.
The Aztecs began to terraform the jungles, blending their spiritual cosmology into the land itself—floating gardens, obsidian shrines, jaguar patrols. Their priests whispered to the trees, and soon those trees bent unnaturally to shelter the young and the wounded.
The Inuit emissaries, quiet and tireless, helped restructure the northern defenses using whale-bone signaling systems and wind-sensitive charms that warned of movement from miles away.
Even the Celtic druids, with their songs and star-mapping trees, wove enchantments into the land. Spirits long forgotten awoke under their chants, and the trees whispered once more to the children of Bassoon.
The Hindu pilgrims, with their calm resolve, built sanctuaries where the sick were healed through vibration and sound. They taught breathwork and flame rituals to control internal energy. Zion watched young warriors meditate and burn with light.
In twenty days, Bassoon leapt ahead a century.
Stone and magic, medicine and metallurgy, poetry and precision—Zantrayel became the beating heart of divine innovation.
Zion: The Rememberer
Zion stood at the center of it all, unshaken.
He had once walked Earth's cities. He had read the scriptures, watched the documentaries, studied the gods in myth and metaphor. And now they breathed before him.
He remembered how the Norse gods demanded respect, not worship—so he met their emissaries with challenges, not offerings. They loved him for it.
He remembered that the Egyptian Ennead viewed time in spirals—so he used layered negotiations, looping questions to gain their trust.
With the Chinese pantheon, he bowed not in submission but in mutual respect, quoting Laozi and Sun Tzu. The emissaries were stunned. One offered him a scroll that hadn't been unrolled in 600 years.
And the Hindus—they saw his soul before they saw his face. They greeted him as "Old Flame," whispering that he was known to their ancestors in dreams.
Each move Zion made was a memory reclaimed, a strategy adapted. The world had never known a leader quite like him: a modern mind in an ancient soul.
He opened embassies for every pantheon, formed councils between nations, declared days of exchange and days of silence. The land prospered under this divine diplomacy.
But through it all… Ginen was silent.
The Stillness of the Lwa
Not one Lwa walked the land.
No drums spoke their names.
No veves burned into flame.
No spirit rode the wind.
It was as if they had withdrawn fully. Even Maman Odetta's spirit, once radiant and close, now whispered only in Zion's dreams—and even then, rarely.
The priestesses watched the sky and stars. They fasted, danced, prayed—but no signs came. Not from Papa Legba, nor Erzulie, nor Baron Samedi.
The silence unnerved everyone, especially as the others grew louder. Some whispered that Ginen was wounded. Others said the Lwa had returned to the deepest part of their world… preparing for something none of them could yet face.
But Zion never doubted. He knew silence was a language too—just not one the impatient could understand.
He said to Ayira one night:
"The Lwa are waiting. And when they speak again, it will not be with words. It will be with storms."
A Slow Turning Toward War
Far beyond the horizon, threats stirred.
Other planets, seeing Zantrayel overflow with divine knowledge and resources, began quietly sending young mortals into Bassoon—some with curiosity, others with hunger.
Some pantheons watched with jealousy.
Some with fear.
A few with dread.
And in the deepest hollow of the universe, the Devoured Hive began to churn. The death of one of their own—a rarity across a thousand millennia—had sent echoes through the void. And now they knew Bassoon had food.
But Zion—Zion had begun to prepare. And whether the Lwa moved or not, he would stand.
Because this was his land.
Because this was his tribe.
Because this was the heartbeat of the world.