The Gate Is Not the Weak Point
One of Duty, the other the need to make it home to cook for her grandson.
Luruzt had lived longer than suns.
He remembered the age before worship, before gods carved mountains into thrones and mortals learned to sing their names. He remembered silence. Cold silence, like the space between stars. That was where hunger was born.
He was that hunger.
And now, he was angry.
Not because he was wounded—that had never happened before—but because the math was wrong.
"The gate," he had thought.
"All gates are weak points. All gates break when you press hard enough."
But this gate did not break.
It watched.
And the woman who sat beside it—quiet, barefoot, and unmoving—unnerved him more than any priest, any god, any warrior.
Zafana hadn't said a word to him. Not a threat. Not a curse.
And Luruzt felt like she had already judged him.
He tried to reroute.
To slip past the gate.
To go around.
But the harpoon found him again. Not aimed—predicted. The woman of ocean—Koko Miray—moved as if she could read the current of his intention.
She was Twaile's chosen. The daughter of the sea. And she hunted like something older than ships.
When she smiled, it was with her eyes. When she fought, it was like the ocean reclaiming land that was never supposed to exist.
He saw her wield waves where no water should be.
He saw her call a school of fish with armored scales and jagged teeth—monsters that obeyed her whistle.
He saw her spear split the air, curving unnaturally as if it had no master but the hunt.
But Zafana…
She never stood.
She never blinked.
She never sweated.
The ring of gold around her shimmered with immovable law. Not the law of kings or nations—but the law that space must obey, that energy must bow to.
She placed a single finger on the air, and his scream curved back into his own lungs.
She traced one symbol in the sky, and his shadow froze, as if denied permission to move with him.
She never lifted a weapon.
But she was war.
"What are you?" Luruzt thought—not with voice, but with instinct, the ancient communication of predators.
"Why are you not afraid of me?"
Zafana blinked once.
And for a moment, he saw it.
Not her form. Not her flesh.
He saw her purpose.
She was made by Papa Legba not to guard a city, or a people, or even a gate.
She was made to judge what tries to enter without right.
She was a wall carved from Legba's silence, seated at the boundary between known and unknowable.
And he—Luruzt—was never meant to cross.
"You are not a test," she whispered.
"You are a warning."
His body tried to retreat. His hunger tried to rethread the plan. He could still break in elsewhere. There were other gates. Other walls. This was just one.
"Run," he thought.
"Retreat. Regroup. Wait."
But his feet refused to move.
Koko Miray was behind him now, her presence like salt and steel, and he knew—this wasn't a siege anymore.
This was a hunt.
And the worst part?
"You're not even the strongest," Zafana said quietly.
She wasn't bragging.
She was telling him.
And in that instant, Luruzt understood something horrifying:
He had made a mistake.
The gate wasn't the weakness.
The gate was the trap