The Living Step into Ginen

Ayola stood at the center of the Crossroad, her staff humming like a heartbeat wrapped in wind.

The silence around her had grown dense—not empty, but pregnant with arrival.

She was about to do something not even Legba had done in ages:

Open Ginen for the living.

The sigils on her chest and palms lit one by one.

Choice. Timing. Intention. Witness.

This time, they didn't test her. They responded like muscle to breath.

Ayola whispered, "She is ready."

She meant Thalia.

She focused on her flame, her path, her calling.

And the Crossroad—her Crossroad—opened.

But something else moved.

The stone beneath her peeled back like a blooming gate. Light shot skyward, not golden, but multi-colored flame laced with ancestral shadows and flickers of lives long passed.

Then they stepped through.

Zion was first.

His steps were silent, but the entire realm felt his arrival. He carried no crown, yet power bowed around him like grass in wind.

Behind him came the priestesses—Ayomi, Sael, Thalia, and Elis. Each marked. Each changed.

Each bearing the presence of their Lwa, but none had ever walked here, the sacred in-between.

Ayola's breath caught.

She had only called Thalia.

But Ginen had answered with more.

They stopped at the center where Ayola stood.

For a moment, the silence welcomed them.

Then, Ginen breathed them in.

Sael trembled slightly. "This… this is where they go."

Ayomi whispered, "I hear the songs."

Elis fell to her knees. "It's like standing inside memory itself."

And Thalia…

Thalia said nothing. But her eyes were drawn south—toward the volcanic horizon. Toward the forge that had just called her.

Zion turned to Ayola. "Why now?"

Ayola looked into his eyes and said:

"Because the path forward isn't just divine.

It is ancestral.

And before the next war, you must know where your steps truly begin."

The skies of Ginen pulsed with unseen drums.

Far in the distance, a figure watched from one of the ancestral thrones—a silhouette wrapped in blue smoke and silence.

Papa Legba… smiling.

He was truly gone. For now.

But his trust had been well-placed.

The living had entered the land of crossroads, memory, and unseen war.

Ginen had opened its eyes.