Morning came late.
Not because the sun refused to rise—but because the sky was afraid to look down.
Smoke hung over the land like a funeral cloth, thick with the smell of burned prayer, ruptured earth, and something fouler: the scent of belief dying violently. The battlefield stretched for miles, reshaped into a nightmare of split valleys, floating stones, and pits so deep they whispered back when stared into.
Chukwudi stood at its center.
He could not remember how long he had been standing there.
The blade lay in his hand, silent now, heavy as guilt. Around him were bodies—some human, some not, many no longer recognizable as either. Faces frozen in terror. Mouths open mid-hymn. Hands clutching broken charms that had promised protection and delivered none.
The earth was quiet.
Too quiet.
Adaeze approached slowly, feet crunching on ash. Her eyes were dry now—no more tears left to burn. She looked at Chukwudi the way one looks at a storm that has spared you by accident.
"They're alive," she said softly. "Some of them. Running."
Chukwudi nodded, though he had not asked.
He already knew.
He could feel their footsteps fleeing through the soil, could taste their fear as it soaked into the roots. Every survivor carried him inside their bones now.
A name waiting to be spoken.
---
The Snake Mother emerged from the torn ground, her movements slower than before. Blood—dark and iridescent—traced the grooves of her scales. She did not look at the dead.
She looked at her son.
"You reshaped the land," she said quietly.
Chukwudi's voice came out raw. "They would have killed us."
"Yes."
A pause.
"And you would have stopped them," she continued, "even without destroying everything between here and the horizon."
Her words were not accusation.
They were fear.
Chukwudi finally turned to her. His eyes—once warm brown—still glowed faintly, like embers buried under ash.
"I didn't mean to—"
"I know," she interrupted. "That is what frightens me."
---
By nightfall, the stories began.
They spread faster than disease, carried by mouths desperate to make sense of survival.
They said a demon-child stood on a mountain of bones.
They said the earth opened its mouth and spoke his name.
They said prayers turned backward when he walked past.
In distant towns, bells rang without hands touching them. Shrines cracked. Old gods stirred uneasily in their sleep.
And somewhere, in a temple drowned in red water, Idemili Ọbara smiled.
"They have named you," she murmured.
"Ala-Ọkụgwụ—Root of Destruction."
---
That night, the cursed children gathered without being called.
One was missing.
The space he left behind felt louder than screams.
The twins sat apart, whispering less than before. Adaeze stared into the fire, watching ash curl upward like fleeing spirits.
"We can't keep doing this," she said suddenly.
Silence fell.
"Every time you use the blade," she continued, not looking at Chukwudi, "something else breaks. In the land. In us."
Chukwudi clenched his fists. The ground responded instinctively—cracking beneath him.
"I didn't ask for this," he said.
"No," Adaeze replied. "But it is still happening."
The Snake Mother listened, coils still.
Finally, she spoke.
"The covenant binds you together," she said. "But bonds can become chains."
Her gaze locked onto Chukwudi.
"And chains eventually demand a price."
---
Later, alone, Chukwudi pressed his palm to the earth.
For the first time since the battle, it did not answer immediately.
When it did, the response was… hesitant.
He pulled his hand back, heart racing.
"They're afraid of me," he whispered.
The realization cut deeper than any blade.
Far beneath the soil, something ancient shifted—an old law bending, not breaking, but remembering him.
The wind carried a distant sound.
Not prayer.
Not song.
A single whispered word, spoken by many mouths across the land:
"Heavenbreaker."
Chukwudi closed his eyes.
And for the first time since his birth—
He wondered whether the world would survive him.