The Choice of All Things

All paths converged.

Each soul stood naked—stripped of titles, memories, power, and even name.

Before them, two doors always appeared.

One led upward: ascension—light, divine order, clarity, power refined through surrender.

The other led downward: descent—depth, chaos, root-truth, power forged through burden.

This was Ginen's great law:

To rise is to serve.

To fall is to remember.

You may choose only one.

And so, they chose:

Some soared, becoming more than they had imagined.

Some fell, becoming what they had always feared—but needed.

Some wept.

Some resisted and vanished altogether.

Then Zion stood before his doors.

Both pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

The ascension door sang with light—a symphony of every prayer his people ever whispered.

The descent door throbbed with weight—a hum of memory so deep it cracked the stone beneath him.

And Zion said,

"I choose both."

The light recoiled.

The dark recoiled.

Then both opened.

Ginen paused.

For the first time since the foundation of its will, the force that shaped gods and swallowed empires…

did not know what to do.

"You cannot walk both," it whispered.

"You must split. You must decide."

But Zion shook his head.

"I was reborn from death.

I rose to lead.

I fell to remember.

I will rise again.

And fall again.

I am both.

And I always was."

The Crossroad beneath him shattered—not in destruction, but in revelation.

A third path appeared, never seen by any god, demon, or Lwa.

It was not carved.

It was grown.

From him.

In the distant depths, the Lwa turned their heads.

Ayola, bound to the chair of Legba, felt her spine lock and unlock in rhythm with his heartbeat.

Thalia burned.

Sael floated.

Elis lay sealed in glass.

Ayomi clawed through ancestral soil.

But Zion?

Zion walked the impossible path—both rising and falling with every step.

Ginen shifted.

Not in anger.

Not in fear.

But in respect.

"Seed of worlds," it whispered.

"Then you shall bear what no god has carried:

The Path Between."