Echoes Beneath the Bone-Lantern Sky
The Desert of Remaine was never meant to hold life.
No birds cried here.
No wind dared to howl.
And yet, beneath the crimson sky of dusk, Ayola, Priestess of Papa Legba, walked alone—her staff humming with quiet reverence, her body wrapped in blessed silk etched with crossroads and prayers.
This was not a place of war.
This was a place of answers, though no one had asked the questions yet.
Papa Legba had sent her with only three words:
"Open the door."
The Door in the Sand
Ayola arrived at what looked like a broken monolith jutting from the ground. It wasn't large—barely taller than she was. Symbols spun across it, older than any script known to even the ancient gods.
She touched her palm to the center.
The sand around her shivered.
The door was not a gate to another land.
It was a summons. A beacon.
The wind parted.
And someone answered.
Enter: N'Zaqiel, Chosen of the Forgotten Wind
From behind the dunes, a figure stepped forward, barefoot and quiet. His skin was like obsidian wrapped in stormclouds, his hair woven with threads of silver wind.
N'Zaqiel, chosen of the Forgotten Wind Pantheon—a pantheon so secretive even the other gods thought them myth.
He did not carry a weapon.
He was one.
"Ayola," he said, his voice like shifting sand. "You opened the path. I am the one who must walk through it."
"Then walk," Ayola replied, without fear.
They did not shake hands. They did not trade names beyond what was known.
In this place, both understood: This was not a meeting. It was prophecy.
The Trial Beneath the World
Together, they descended below the door—into a chamber that pulsed with long-dead magic. Bones floated in black water. The air smelled like wet ash and forgotten prayer.
The voice of something old whispered:
"Only one may leave."
Ayola's eyes narrowed. "You test my faith."
N'Zaqiel's shadow shimmered with blades. "And mine."
The walls closed in. The dead stirred.
But they did not fight each other.
They fought the trial.
Together.
Ayola summoned roads from thin air, walking between moments. Her staff cracked the skulls of crawling spirits.
N'Zaqiel moved like air escaping a sealed tomb. He disappeared and reappeared in places the eye could not follow, slitting throats of shadow with hands wrapped in wind.
When the chamber quieted, both still stood.
Both bleeding.
Both smiling.
The Pact of Bone and Wind
The chamber responded.
The bones dissolved.
The monolith cracked.
And from it rose a new sigil—a shared mark.
It burned into Ayola's chest, just beside her heart.
It drifted like mist onto N'Zaqiel's left shoulder.
Papa Legba's voice echoed for only Ayola to hear:
"The crossroads must now walk with the wind. When the world begins to burn again, it is through both of you that the first scream will be silenced."
Elsewhere, the Hive Felt a Shift
Somewhere, in a realm far removed from time, the Hive Overmind flinched.
A predator it could not sense had awakened.
Two paths—once isolated—now intertwined.
It retracted its thoughts.
The war had changed.