The Rums Must Flow

The skies over Zantrayel shimmered with unfamiliar dread, but beneath that tension, Zion worked with calm precision. In the heart of Nouvo Lakay, within a sacred forge once used for ceremonial weapons, he repurposed the hearth for an even holier task:

Distilling rum for gods.

"Fire in a bottle," he murmured, remembering Papa Legba's request.

He had learned the art of fermentation from elders, chemistry from long-dead books, and spiritcraft from whispered dreams. Every flask he filled radiated heat and memory, courage and laughter—rums that could burn away shadows and make even death loosen its grip.

Behind him, Tijan Petro groaned.

Stripped of his godly glamours, the once-boisterous trickster was now a grunt in the distillery, barefoot, sweaty, and miserable. He stirred the massive vat with a giant oaken ladle as Twaile, his little sister and jailer, lounged nearby, tossing roasted peanuts into her mouth like judgment itself.

"You laugh too loud," she said without looking at him. "Now you work. Until enough rums flow to fill all of Ginen's thirst."

"I was excited," Tijan muttered. "It's not every day we get to eat a living apocalypse…"

"You woke up Bosou," she snapped. "And you almost woke up them."

The words hung in the air like the stillness before a scream.

Tijan went pale. He knew who they were.

In truth, Twaile did not yet realize that their Mother and Father, Primordial spirits older than even Papa Legba, were already stirring. Deep within Ginen's coldest depths, beyond the gates of known memory, the First Two had opened their eyes.

They, too, hungered for the hive.

Across the worlds, the other pantheons moved in silent panic. Atum and Isis led the shifting of the Egyptian sphere. Indra's warriors carved celestial paths out of the hive's way. The Chinese Xianzhou sent emissaries back across the sky-sea, warning of a hunger that gods could not command. The Persian Yazatas fled into light. Even the cold stars of forgotten deities trembled and shifted.

Only the Lwa did not move.

They prepared.

They waited.

And they cooked.

Back in Nouvo Lakay, Zion and Tijan poured the first casks of finished rum into enchanted gourds and gourd-calabashes, each one humming with ancestral power. Tijan, begrudgingly, admitted:

"It's good. Not as good as mine, but… good."

"It's not done," Zion said, eyes glowing faintly from strain. "This is just the beginning. Papa Legba said it has to taste like defiance."

Suddenly, a hush fell over them. Twaile sat up, her eyes narrowing, not toward the horizon, but down—deep down.

"They're moving," she whispered.

Zion paused. "Who?"

She didn't answer.

But from Ginen's deepest well, a warmth rose. Something older than time. Something that remembered the first feast, the first devouring. Something that had once fed the stars to the dark, only to spit out the bones and laugh.

In the distance, the hive grew nearer. The cosmos wept. Worlds were burning in its path.

And the Lwa sharpened their hunger.

The feast of the end was coming