The road out of Irokoton blurred into a fever dream of sleepless nights and hushed, nervous days. They moved beneath the stars, hiding from the sun like fugitives of fate itself. Each mile stretched taut with paranoia, until routine finally crept over them—thin and fragile as dust over an abandoned shrine.
Their camp that night lay hidden in a small copse of birch trees, their pale bark catching the moonlight like ancestral spirits keeping vigil. A meager fire burned at the center, its smoke curling upward to be swallowed by the leaves. They huddled close, wrapped in mismatched cloaks, indistinguishable from weary travelers—except for the quiet hum of àṣẹ that lingered around them like unseen breath.
Leonotis sat nearest the fire, the soft badger fur of his coat draped over his shoulders. Beside him, the little oak sapling he had carried since the tournament was planted carefully in the earth, its tiny leaves trembling as if tasting the heat of the flames.
Dinner had been simple—rabbit roasted over ash and salt—but comforting. For a moment, silence became something gentle.
As Leonotis idly stirred the coals with a stick, his hand brushed a wilted wildflower by the firepit. Absent-mindedly, he let his fingers linger. A faint, green shimmer ran beneath his skin—a pulse of àṣẹ, life-force. The flower straightened, its bruised petals unfurling as if greeting dawn.
He didn't notice.
But Jacqueline did.
Her sapphire eyes narrowed, catching the subtle breath of divine force that had slipped through him unbidden. She waited, patient as a scholar deciphering a forbidden script, before breaking the silence.
"Leonotis," she said softly, "may I ask you something?"
He looked up, firelight painting shifting gold across his face. "Of course."
"Your àṣẹ… it moves unlike any I've seen. When the inn fell, I felt it ripple through the ground like thunder under skin. But it was silent. You didn't call on your Orisha. You didn't even whisper a prayer."
Her words hung heavy.
"Every practitioner must speak. We plead. We invite our patron Orisha to lend their essence. When I work with water, I call upon Olókun, honoring their tides with name and praise. It is through respect that power answers. But you—" her eyes searched him—"you command without speaking."
Leonotis blinked. He hadn't considered it before. Leonotis looked down at his hands, as if they were foreign objects. He struggled to find the words, to articulate a process that felt more like an instinct than a skill. To him, àṣẹ was instinct, not ritual. "I don't… command," he said slowly. "It just happens. I think it, and the world listens."
Jacqueline frowned, not dismissively but with concern. "The world doesn't listen without cause, Leonotis. Àṣẹ flows through us from Olódùmarè, but only the Orisha give it shape. To shape without permission…" She hesitated. "That's something only spirits—or those touched directly by them—can do."
The others looked up. Even Low, usually more concerned with her next meal than metaphysics, stared quietly. Zombiel's ember eyes flickered in the firelight, unreadable.
Leonotis exhaled shakily. "I don't know how else to explain it. I don't even remember learning." He hesitated. "In truth, I don't remember anything before seven months ago."
Low's head snapped up. "You what?"
"I woke up in a healer's hut. No name. No memories. Just… pain." He paused, staring into the flames. "Chinakah told me my parents were Sadia and Leander. They said a Dryad—Oko Ègàn—attacked our home. It took my father into the Dark Forest. My mother died fighting it."
He touched his chest, just beneath the fur-lined coat. "It left something in me. A hole. Chinakah said no one should have survived. But she saved me."
Jacqueline's expression softened, sorrow threading through her scholarly composure. "And your àṣẹ?"
"It was barely there," Leonotis said. "Chinakah said I carried only a trickle of life-force. Gethii—my guardian—could hardly sense me. But months later, at the orphanage, when they made me touch the attribute stone… something changed. It woke up. Burst out of me."
Jacqueline listened intently. "A dormant àṣẹ awakened by trauma," she murmured. "That's not unheard of. But the silence—the lack of invocation—still defies reason."
She leaned closer. "Describe what happens when you use it."
Leonotis frowned. "I see it. I want it. That's all. I picture what I need—the roots growing, the wood splitting, the life breathing—and I hold that image until it obeys."
Jacqueline nodded slowly. "So you envision, not entreat. You do not ask the Orisha; you assume their will."
He looked uneasy. "Is that bad?"
"It's… dangerous," she said carefully. "Our words are not superstition—they are covenant. We speak to remind ourselves the world is not ours to command. When we ask, we maintain harmony between our desire and destiny. But what you do… it's as if you are the channel itself. No voice, no prayer, just pure àṣẹ forcing reality to listen."
Leonotis looked away. The fire popped between them.
"Gethii doesn't pray when he fights," he said suddenly. "He moves faster than breath. That's àṣẹ too, isn't it?"
Jacqueline smiled faintly. "That's àṣẹ inú—the inner current. He shapes only himself. A warrior strengthening bone and sinew does not disturb the balance of the world. You, Leonotis, wield àṣẹ ayé—the outer current that alters nature itself. That should not move without words."
Her logic was sound. Too sound.
Leonotis pointed across the flames, frustrated. "Then what about Zombiel? He never speaks either. He just looks, and metal melts."
All eyes turned toward the quiet figure. Zombiel sat still, fire reflected in his blank, glowing gaze. The air around him shimmered faintly with heat, as if the flame obeyed his very breath.
Jacqueline's eyes widened. Realization dawned. "The fire salamander," she whispered. "The spirit we bound to him—it wasn't mortal."
She turned to Leonotis, voice trembling with awe. "Zombiel's not casting. The salamander's àṣẹ flows through him by instinct. Spirits do not pray; they embody their element. They do not ask for flame—they are flame."
The conclusion came like a strike of lightning. Zombiel's silence was nature. Leonotis's was an impossibility.
Human beings could channel àṣẹ, yes—but only through Orisha. Without invocation, the current should have burned him hollow. Yet Leonotis sat alive, breathing, steady.
The forest seemed to lean closer in the quiet that followed. Even the fire crackled lower, subdued by unseen reverence.
Zombiel turned his gaze at last. Slowly. His molten eyes fixed not on Leonotis's face—but on his chest. Right where the hidden scar pulsed faintly under cloth and fur.
For an instant, it felt as if the fire spirit inside him was seeing not flesh, but the river of green-gold energy coiled beneath. A foreign flame buried in the boy's heart.
Leonotis shivered, clutching his coat closed as though to block that burning gaze.
"I don't have answers," he said finally, forcing his voice to steadiness. "But Chinakah might. She healed me. If anyone knows what this is, it's her."
Jacqueline nodded slowly. "Then that must be our next step. But before that…" she hesitated, looking thoughtful. "If you're channeling àṣẹ without calling your Orisha, perhaps we can discover which one allows it. Some divine force must still be answering you—even in silence."
Leonotis blinked. "How would we even find that out?"
"Dreams. Divination. The Ifá leaves, a vision, a shrine," Jacqueline said, voice hushed with reverence. "Every practitioner bears a patron's mark—seen or unseen. If we find which Orisha's current flows through you, we might learn why it doesn't require words."
Leonotis considered that, then turned toward Low, who was poking the fire with a stick. "Maybe we should find out yours too," he said half-jokingly. "You never talk about your patron."
Low smirked, teeth glinting in the orange light. "That's because I already know."
That caught everyone's attention. Jacqueline tilted her head. "You do?"
Leonotis grinned. "And? Which Orisha is it?"
Low leaned back on her hands, smirk widening. "None of your business."
Jacqueline gave her a look that was equal parts exasperated and amused. "That's not how spiritual lineage works, Low."
"Sure it is," Low said, stretching like a cat. "Mine just happens to be private. Besides," she added with a wink, "mystery makes me more interesting."
Leonotis chuckled. Even Zombiel gave a soft, almost human puff of smoke from his nostrils, as if in silent laughter. The tension broke, replaced by the quiet warmth of tired camaraderie.
Low rolled over, pulling her blanket tight. "Now stop talking about gods and ghosts. We've got a long road tomorrow."
The group murmured in sleepy agreement. One by one, they lay down as the fire sank into glowing embers.
Leonotis lingered awake, eyes on the oak sapling beside him. Its leaves trembled faintly, though there was no wind.
Somewhere deep in his chest, he could feel it—the same silent current Jacqueline had named dangerous, pulsing steady as if it was a second heartbeat.