The Pare Mountains – Ten Years Ago (The Age of the Kids)
Far to the Southeast of the snowy peaks of Kilimanjaro, the Pare Mountains rose like jagged, green teeth biting into the clouds.
This was not a land of open plains or gentle slopes. It was a vertical world. The cliffs were sheer, the valleys were deep and choked with mist, and the only paths were narrow rope bridges that swayed in the constant wind. The Pare Tribe who lived here were not brawlers like the Kurya or farmers like the Chaga. They were ghosts. They were the masters of the ambush, the poison dart, and the longbow.
In a training glade shrouded in thick morning fog, a line of twenty children stood shivering. They held small wooden bows, their knuckles white against the dark wood.
"You cannot hit what you cannot see," the Instructor barked. He was a scarred, one-eyed archer named Kondo. He walked the line, correcting stances with the tip of his boot.
He pointed his bow into the white wall of mist. Fifty yards away, deep in the cloud, a target was painted on a pine tree. It was completely invisible to the naked eye.
"Who will try?" Kondo asked.
Most of the children lowered their bows. It was a trick. It was impossible.
But one girl stepped forward.
She was five years old, smaller than the others, with skin the color of polished copper and hair braided tight against her scalp in complex patterns. She moved with a silence that was unnatural for a child. But it was her eyes that made the village elders whisper. They were an unusual, piercing amber color—bright gold like a hawk's.
Her name was Sia.
Sia didn't raise her bow immediately. She closed her eyes. She took a breath, tasting the moisture in the air, smelling the pine sap and the damp earth.
She didn't feel the wind like Upepo. She didn't feel the weight of the earth like Amani.
She saw.
Her magic was Maono (True Vision).
When she opened her eyes, her pupils dilated rapidly. The amber irises glowed with a faint, golden bio-luminescence. To her, the fog didn't disappear, but it became translucent, like layers of thin silk. She saw the heat signature of a beetle crawling on a leaf thirty yards away. She saw the flow of water inside the tree trunks.
And she saw the target. A red circle, pulsing with the paint's chemical signature against the cold bark.
She drew the string to her cheek. Her stillness was absolute. The wind gusted, but she adjusted her angle instinctively.
Thwip.
The arrow vanished into the mist.
THUNK.
A second of silence. Then, a gasp from the instructor who had walked into the fog to check.
"Dead center," Kondo whispered, his voice carrying back through the mist. He pulled the arrow from the bullseye. He looked back at the small girl, a shiver running down his spine. "She split the knot."
From the edge of the glade, an old woman watched. She was draped in leopard skins and necklaces of lizard bones. This was Bibi Cheka, the Blind Seer of the Pare.
She hobbled forward, leaning on a twisted staff. She grabbed Sia's chin with a bony hand, forcing the girl to look up.
"Golden eyes," the Seer croaked, her milky blind eyes staring at nothing. "The Jicho la Tai (Eagle Eye)."
The other children giggled, but the Seer silenced them with a hiss like a snake.
"Do not laugh," she warned. "The world is going blind. The shadows are growing in the West. We will need eyes that can see in the dark."
The Seer leaned close to Sia's ear, her voice dropping to a whisper that only the girl could hear.
"You will not stay here, little bird," the Seer prophesied. "I see a Storm coming. And I see an Anchor. They are powerful, but they are blind to the distant threat. They need a Scout. When the iron eaters come… run to the Mountain."
Sia didn't understand. "Who are they?"
"The Twin Kings," the Seer whispered. "You will join the Balance when the sky falls."
TIME SKIP: TEN YEARS LATER
The Pare Village – Present Day (Sia is 15)
The world had changed, but it had changed quietly.
In the ten years since the Battle of the North, the United Nation of Kilimanjaro had prospered. Under the protection of the Twin Guardians, the North was a fortress. But rumors whispered that the poison in the earth was still spreading slowly, eating the roots of the world, and that the Iron Empire in the West was no longer a myth, but a growing cancer.
But in the Pare Mountains, the change was insidious.
Sia was fifteen now. She had grown into her eyes. She was tall, lean, and moved with a deadly grace that made the village hunters jealous. She wore leather armor dyed to match the bark of the pine trees. On her back was a recurve bow made of black ironwood, and a quiver of arrows fletched with eagle feathers.
She sat perched in a high canopy, a hundred feet above the ground, overlooking her own village.
Her golden eyes were active. She was scanning.
Something was wrong.
For the last month, travelers had come from the West. They claimed to be traders selling superior iron tools—axes that never dulled, ploughs that tilled the earth by themselves. Her Chief, Chief Mvua, had welcomed them. He said the iron would make the Pare rich. He said it was the future.
But when Sia looked at these "traders" with her Maono, she saw something that made her stomach turn.
She focused her gaze on a group of traders unloading a wagon in the square. To the naked eye, they were men in heavy cloaks.
Sia narrowed her eyes. Zoom.
The layers of clothing became transparent to her sight.
Their heat signatures were cold—room temperature. Living men are warm. These things were dead.
And under their skin… it wasn't muscle. It was grey, synthetic flesh. And where their hearts should be, there was a faint, green mechanical pulsing. A pump.
They are not men, Sia realized, gripping the tree branch until the bark cracked. They are constructs.
She shifted her gaze to the Chief's hut.
Chief Mvua was standing outside, laughing with the Lead Trader. To the naked eye, he looked normal. But through Sia's golden vision, she saw the horror.
Thin, metallic threads were buried under the Chief's skin. They ran up his neck, drilled into the base of his skull, and wrapped around his brain stem.
Puppets, she thought, a cold chill running down her spine. My whole village… they haven't been conquered. They have been replaced.
The Giza hadn't invaded with armies this time. They had learned from their defeat ten years ago. They had invaded with a virus of iron. They were taking the leaders, one by one.
Sia knew she had to leave. The Seer was dead—died in her sleep a week ago. Sia was the only one who could see the truth. She had to warn the North. She had to find the Twins.
She adjusted her quiver. She prepared to jump to the next tree.
CRACK.
A dry branch broke beneath her boot. The sound echoed in the quiet valley like a gunshot.
Down in the village square, the Lead Trader stopped laughing. He didn't turn his head.
His neck rotated.
It twisted one hundred and eighty degrees, a movement impossible for a human spine. His face looked up at the canopy.
His eyes were not human. They were glowing red camera lenses.
"Anomaly detected," the Trader's voice rasped, sounding like grinding gears amplified by a speaker.
He pointed a metal finger at Sia's tree.
"The Seer. Eliminate her."
Suddenly, fifty "Pare Warriors"—her own neighbors, her friends, her cousins—stopped what they were doing. They dropped their baskets. They dropped their hoes. They drew jagged iron daggers from their belts.
Their eyes rolled back, turning pure white.
They swarmed toward her tree like army ants.
The Hunt
Sia didn't hesitate. She launched herself into the air.
She caught a vine, swung across the gap, and landed on a thatched roof of a grain store.
Thwip. Thwip.
She fired two arrows mid-air. They struck the two warriors climbing the nearest ladder. The arrows pierced their shoulders.
They didn't scream. They didn't bleed. They didn't even slow down. They just hit the ground and mechanically began to stand up again, their limbs jerking with unnatural spasms.
They feel no pain, Sia realized, horror rising in her throat. They are hollow.
She sprinted across the rooftops.
"Stop her!" the Trader screeched. "Do not let the Eyes escape! The North must not know!"
An archer on the watchtower took aim at her. Sia recognized him. It was Kondo, her old instructor. The man who had taught her to hold a bow.
His one good eye was now glazed over with a milky white film. A green wire pulsed at his temple.
"Target locked," Kondo said in a monotone voice.
He fired.
Sia dove off the roof, tucking into a roll. The arrow thudded into the wood exactly where her heart had been a second ago.
She hit the ground running, sprinting toward the Northern path.
Ahead of her, blocking the exit, stood three beasts.
They were not dogs. They were Mechanical Hounds. They were built from scrapped iron and rotting meat, steam hissing from their nostrils, their jaws lined with serrated steel teeth.
They growled, a sound of static and wet gurgling.
Sia slid on her knees in the dirt. She drew three arrows at once.
"Maono: Lock."
Her vision zoomed in. She looked past the iron ribs. She saw the power source. Small, glowing green cores inside their chests.
Release.
Three arrows flew in a tight spread.
CRUNCH. CRUNCH. CRUNCH.
The arrows shattered the glass cores. The green fluid sprayed out. The hounds collapsed instantly into piles of scrap metal and sludge.
Sia scrambled up and sprinted into the dense forest. She didn't look back. She knew they would follow. They didn't sleep. They didn't eat. They would hunt her until her legs gave out.
The Border of the United North
Two days later.
Sia had been running for forty-eight hours. She had used every trick the Pare knew—doubling back, walking in streams, covering her scent with mud.
But the machines didn't track scent. They tracked body heat.
She stumbled out of the dense forest and fell onto the tall grass of the savannah.
Ahead of her lay the vast, open plains of the United North. And beyond that, rising majestically into the clouds, was the snow-capped peak of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Freedom.
But between her and the mountain stood a patrol.
It wasn't the Giza. It was a squad of Kurya Warriors, riding massive armored horses. They wore the blue and white colors of the Alliance.
Sia waved her hand weakly. Her throat was so dry it felt like sandpaper.
"Help…" she croaked.
But behind her, the trees exploded.
The Lead Trader burst out of the forest. He was no longer disguised as a human. He had shed his skin cloak like a snake.
He was a terrifying skeleton of black iron and green piping, standing eight feet tall. His hands were rotating blades. His face was a skull of chrome.
He roared, a sound of steam and high-pitched static.
The Kurya patrol saw the monster. They shouted alarms and drew their swords, but they were half a mile away. They would never reach her in time.
The Machine-Trader lunged at Sia, his blade raised to decapitate her.
Sia tried to lift her bow, but her arms were lead. She had no arrows left. She closed her golden eyes, waiting for the metal to bite.
"End of line, anomaly," the Machine buzzed.
WHOOSH.
Suddenly, the grass around Sia flattened. The air pressure dropped violently, as if the sky itself had pressed down.
A figure landed between Sia and the Machine.
He was fifteen years old. He wore the light, loose robes of a monk, grey and white. His build was muscular but compact. His head was shaved on the sides, with a topknot. He didn't carry a weapon.
He held up one hand, palm open.
"Simama." (Stop).
Amani—the Anchor—caught the Machine's descending blade with his bare hand.
But the blade didn't cut him. It stopped an inch from his palm, held by a barrier of intense, concentrated gravity. The air around his hand rippled like heat haze.
The Machine strained, its gears grinding, sparks flying, but it couldn't push the blade forward. It was like pushing against a mountain.
"You are trespassing," Amani said. His voice was deep, calm, and resonated with power.
From the sky, a second figure dropped like a lightning bolt.
He landed on the Machine's shoulders. He had wild, spiky hair and wore blue leather. He held a metal staff.
Upepo—the Storm—placed his hand on the Machine's chrome skull.
"Hey, Tin Man," Upepo laughed, his eyes sparking with electricity. "You're rusting."
"Kimbunga!"
Upepo released a point-blank blast of wind magic directly into the machine's neck joint.
CRUNCH.
The force was explosive. The Machine was driven into the ground, crushed instantly into a flat disc of scrap metal. Green fluid splattered across the grass.
Upepo backflipped off the wreckage, landing next to his brother.
"Nice catch, Amani," Upepo said, dusting off his hands. "I told you the morning patrol would be fun."
Amani ignored him. He knelt beside Sia.
He placed a hand on her shoulder. A grey light pulsed. Sia felt a rush of cool energy. Her exhaustion melted away. Her dehydration vanished as the Balance restored her vitals.
She opened her amber eyes.
She saw them. The Green Light and the Grey Light from her childhood dream. But they were older. Stronger.
"You…" Sia whispered, staring at Amani. "You are the Balance."
Amani looked at her strange, golden eyes. He felt a shiver of recognition.
"And you," Amani said softly, "are the one the Seers spoke of."
Upepo leaned in, poking the wrecked machine with his staff. "Who is she? A spy? And what was that thing? It looked like Giza tech, but… upgraded."
Sia sat up. She pointed back toward the Pare Mountains, where black smoke was beginning to rise above the treeline.
"The Shadow is not coming," Sia gasped, gripping Amani's arm. "It is already here. My people… they are gone. Replaced."
Amani stood up, his face hardening. He looked at the wreckage of the machine. He saw the green fluid leaking from it—the same poison that had killed the land ten years ago.
"Zuka," Amani whispered. "He has been busy."
He looked at Upepo.
"Sound the horn, Brother. The peace is over."
Upepo nodded, his playful grin vanishing. He raised his hand, and the wind began to howl, carrying a warning note toward the mountain.
The Wolf Pack was reuniting. The Storm Chasers were back. And now, they had their Eyes.