The morning air bit into my lungs as I ran, each stride jarring my sore muscles. Our days of rest were over; the circle had returned to its ritual march. Feet thudded in rhythm, breaths rose in clouds, but something was different today—Iman had taken charge at the front.
The Madawaki ran behind us, silent and distant. A shadow among the living.
He had been quieter these past days, like he was carrying the weight of every name written into the death tally. Anyone else might think the fallen recruits had gouged a wound into his stony heart.
Still… I remembered him being my anchor once, back when Idris had seized the throne.
Now I wasn't sure if he needed someone to hold him up—or if I was the one drifting too far to reach.
The gates had been shut for days. The watch party returned from Kurmin Mutuwa carrying bodies for the living to claim. Some evenings, the wails of mothers still drifted through the compound walls—sharp, piercing things that clung to the soul like soot.
Of the sixty recruits, fifteen were missing or dead.
Fifteen.
The number struck like a sharp stone to my chest.
My body had healed, but my head throbbed with a deeper ache: the ache of failure, guilt, and lingering questions I didn't have the courage to voice aloud.
If not for Nala's stubborn loyalty—and the intrusion of that shameless god of war—I would have joined the fallen. A fact that sat heavily in my throat like swallowed iron.
Was I really cut out for this?
A warrior so vibrant with life and energy, yet her thread of life could be snatched at any moment.
One thing was painfully clear:
I still hadn't grasped what it meant to be a warrior. I was defiant, reckless, rushing headfirst into danger with a heart full of fire but a mind too young to count the cost. And now, facing death had cracked something inside me.
My thoughts drifted as my feet pounded the earth, until a memory of my father flared—steady and sharp.
"Warriors are not made by praise or by the ease of wielding a weapon.They are forged in the pain and guilt they carry—of those they love, and of those they have conquered."
I was twelve when he said that.
I let the memory settle like armor.
Pain was not meant to break.
It was meant to sharpen.
But for the first time… I wondered if such pain could indeed sharpen instead of break me.
The run ended, but the restlessness in me didn't. Several of us continued drills along a narrow path beyond the outer fields. The trees whispered softly as the wind brushed through their leaves. My pulse synced with the silent drum in my head, grief fading into focus.
Then—chaos.
A scream tore the air apart.
The underbrush erupted. A massive boar burst forth, bristles wet with dew, fury steaming from its nostrils. The ground vibrated beneath its charge.
"Musa! Scatter!" someone shouted.
Bodies flew in every direction. Spears clattered. Dust clouded the air.
Everyone ran—everyone except me.
I didn't think.
I moved.
Something surged within me—a memory embedded in muscle, not mind. The world narrowed. Sounds collapsed. My body reacted with a precision and grace that felt older than me.
I lunged sideways, caught a fleeing trainee's spear mid-air, pivoted, and met the beast's charge in one fluid breath.
The spear sank beneath its jaw.
Momentum drove it closer, closer—until the beast collapsed at my feet in a heavy, shuddering fall.
Silence.
Dust hung around me like a veil. My stance was loose, controlled, almost… familiar. My breath came steady, too steady, like someone else's rhythm lived beneath my skin.
Musa's voice cracked through the quiet, low and uneasy:
"That… was not human."
The words cut deeper than I expected.
My fingers tightened around the spear until my knuckles burned. The boar's blood seeped into the soil, steaming.
No one spoke. Even the wind paused.
Nala stood a few paces behind, eyes sharp—not afraid, but knowing. It was the kind of look that stripped a person bare. I hated that I could not read her face. Was it fear? Judgement? Disappointment? Still…She didn't say a word. She didn't say a word. She didn't need to.
Something had shifted.
Musa approached slowly, reverently, as though I were an altar or a warning.
"Amira," he said, voice thin, "that strike—where did you learn it?"
My mouth opened, but nothing came.
Not from any palace training.
Not from Uzazzu's drills.
It felt borrowed—like a whisper left behind by the god of war after the forest, still lingering under my skin.
"I… don't know," I whispered.
He nodded, uneasy. "Thanks be to the gods you were not harmed. The cooks will have use for this one."
He tried to laugh. It broke halfway.
The murmurs began—half-blessings, half-fear. Some averted their eyes. Some crossed their wrists. Nala turned away first, and that small, simple motion cut deeper than all their whispers.
By evening, the camp buzzed with warped stories. Some claimed lightning had danced along my spear. Others said the beast bowed before dying.
When the Madawaki passed near the well, he said nothing—just looked.
Not as a commander.
As a man studying a storm gathering in the shape of a girl.
That night, sleep denied me. My arms remembered the weight of the spear. My bones pulsed with a rhythm that wasn't entirely mine.
The fire outside crackled, and in its hiss, I thought I heard the forest breathing back at me.
Was this the aftermath of that encounter?
Had I gained supernatural strength?
Was that really me—or had he slipped through the cracks again?
Haba. It cannot be.
I was fully awake now. He couldn't have come; I hadn't given permission.
So what was that?
I closed my eyes. Beneath my skin, in the thrum of my blood, something lingered. Something awake. Something waiting.
And for that, I despised him all the more—
The god of war.
I shifted on my mat, forcing my thoughts to quiet, when—
The temperature changed.
Not warmed.
Not chilled.
Shifted.
A slow, creeping heat curled over my skin, blooming from my spine outward like invisible fingers. Not fire. Not fever.
Him.
My breath hitched.
I knew that heat.
Knew the way it pressed against the inside of my ribs, the way it claimed space that did not belong to it.
The way it watched.
For a heartbeat, the tent felt too small for just me.
Too warm.
Too still.
Too familiar.
My pulse thundered.
I opened my eyes—
And it vanished.
All at once.
As if someone had snuffed out the sun.
Cold rushed in so sharply I shivered.
Silence.
Only the crackle of the campfire, distant and harmless, remained.
No voice.
No whisper.
No presence.
But the message was clear.
He had been here.
He wanted me to know.
He would not give up easily.