Night lay heavy over ??y??-ìlú.

  The palace should have been sleeping, but the torches along the colonnades burned with an uneasy brightness, as if the flames themselves sensed the tension rippling through the city. Tomorrow would decide everything: the spectacle, the final match, the King’s performance before the people. The realm breathed in, waiting.

  But deep in the palace, beneath the chambers reserved for kings and their closest blood, the High Seer of ??y??-ìlú did not sleep.

  High Seer Jabara moved through the old palace compound with slow, deliberate steps, her beaded mantle whispering behind her. Her staff tapped against the stone, each strike a pulse of sacred rhythm.

  She walked where few dared walk at night.

  To the ancestral archives. If there was anywhere to gleam more insight of the events one thousand years ago it was there.

  She paused before the vine-draped entrance. Two palace guards straightened, saluting.

  “High Seer,” one said, lowering his gaze. “We were not told of your coming.”

  “That is because no one told you,” she murmured. “Stand aside.”

  They hesitated.

  "Are you disobeying the word of the High Seer of ??y??-ìlú?"

  They obeyed.

  Jabara entered the dust-choked chamber. Much of the room had been abandoned—the old scroll racks sagged, and clay tablets lay cracked from age. But the moment she stepped over the threshold, her breath caught.

  Something was wrong.

  She closed her eyes, centering herself. Her Orí hummed, whispering warnings in her blood.

  This room remembers violence.

  Not physical violence—the echo of something more dangerous.

  Betrayal.

  She opened her satchel and withdrew a small calabash carved with spirals. Inside were three silver-white threads—Orí-threads, spun by priestesses who fasted for seven days and slept with their foreheads pressed to ancestral stones. They were used only to read places tainted by broken oaths.

  Never for casual divination.

  Jabara pinched one thread between her fingers and whispered:

  Ancestors, let the walls tell what the eyes could not.

  She cast the thread into the air.

  It burst apart like dust.

  And the room changed.

  Not fully—only in flickers, like a lantern flame stuttering. Shadows deepened. The walls pulsed once, twice, then released a soft, mournful sigh that only Jabara could hear.

  Her vision blurred—and then she saw him.

  Prince Rega.

  Painted in war camwood. Kneeling.

  The sight hit her like a stone to the chest.

  Her hand tightened around her staff. “No… no. Show me more.”

  The walls obeyed.

  Four men took shape in the ghost-light: Rega, the Bash??run Tendaji, Diviner Zuberi, Commander Sekou. Their bodies were only outlines—pale, smoky impressions—but their voices came sharp as cowries dropped on stone.

  Jabara's heart pounded as she heard:

  “Your father grows weaker.”

  “The gods no longer strike for him.”

  “We are here… to discuss how he dies.”

  Her breath trembled.

  The mask.

  The oath.

  The gourd of bitter gin.

  The promise.

  “On the night of the third moon… let it be done.”

  The vision snapped shut as if a hand had clapped over a candle. The room returned to silence so sudden it hurt.

  Jabara staggered back, gripping her staff.

  For a long, long moment she could not breathe.

  She had feared corruption. She had suspected rot creeping into the King’s court. But this—

  This was regicide woven in secret. A coup engineered not by enemies, but by his own blood.

  Her shoulders shook—not with weakness, but with fury bordering on holy wrath.

  She bent, retrieved the last two Orí-threads, and tucked them away.

  She only needed one.

  Jabara stormed toward the exit, mantle flaring like a storm cloud behind her. Halfway down the hall she stopped, mind racing.

  If I take this to the Mfalme Council… Rega will silence me before dawn.

  If I confront Rega… I will die.

  If I do nothing… the kingdom burns.

  She swallowed hard.

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  There was only one hope: to gather those untouched by Rega’s influence. Those who were already moving against him. Those whose presence the ancestors whispered of in her dreams—a girl of water, a child-bear disguised in stone, and a newcomer carrying the scent of Orisha-blessed destiny.

  But who they were exactly still alluded her.

  Jabara exhaled slowly.

  “The finals are tomorrow,” she whispered. “Rega will be watching the crowd. His eyes will be outward. Not inward.”

  Tomorrow night could be the last chance to shift the kingdom’s path.

  She stepped into the torchlight, eyes blazing.

  Her voice lowered to a tremor.

  “Rega’s reign will end.”

  High Seer Jabara stepped through the towering threshold of the shrine of the Orisha ?ya, and every priest and aseweaver in the hall froze.

  “High Seer?” gasped a young priestess, nearly dropping the bowl of divining kola in her hands. “Shouldn’t you be with the King? The final match is tomorrow—”

  “My matters with the King are mine alone,” Jabara said, voice soft yet immovable. “Tell me, is the meditation chamber occupied?”

  Heads shook immediately.

  “No, High Seer. No one has entered since sunset.”

  “Good.”

  She moved past them, her mantle shimmering with storm-thread as if ?ya herself tugged it forward. The priests bowed as she passed, though their whispers followed her like wind in tall grass.

  Why is she here?

  What omen does she seek on the eve of the final day of the tournament?

  Has ?ya spoken?

  Jabara ignored them.

  Tonight, only truth mattered.

  The chamber was circular and bare, save for a ring of carved stones forming an inner sanctum. The stones bore old sigils, each humming faintly with the restless breath of ?ya—the Orisha of storms, chaos, endings, and necessary change.

  Jabara knelt in the center and placed her satchel before her.

  She lit four palm-oil lamps.

  She marked her brow with white ash.

  She set a gourd of stormwater—rain collected during the last thunderclap—before the stones.

  “?ya,” she whispered, voice trembling despite her control. “Wielder of winds. Cyclone who clears the rotting fields. Mother of endings that make way for beginnings… I ask for sight.”

  The lamps flickered. The ash on her brow tingled.

  She began the ceremony.

  Her chant was steady, layered with ancient rhythms that twisted through the chamber like coiling air currents. She traced sigils with her staff, each glowing faintly before sinking into the ground. One by one, she dropped dried jujube leaves into the stormwater. They sank without floating—already a sign that ?ya listened.

  Minutes turned into an hour.

  Her breath grew thin. Sweat beaded along her spine. The chamber darkened until only the lamps and the stormwater glowed.

  Then—

  The water stirred.

  A breeze rose from nowhere, circling her. Papers rustled on shelves that were not there. The stones vibrated.

  And the visions came.

  First:

  A child pale as unbaked clay, with eyes like fresh wounds.

  A shadow-creature of ember and smoke clings to his back.

  Second:

  A small girl with a gaze too sharp for innocence.

  Behind her flickers the shifting outline of a moonlit beast.

  Third:

  A maiden whose spirit ripples like storm-touched water.

  Her form wavers between lungs and gills, land and sea.

  Fourth:

  A youth wrapped in living green.

  Vines coil around him until boy and growth are indistinguishable.

  Jabara’s breath hitched.

  Warriors. Seasoned fighters. Champions of renown.

  That was what she had expected.

  But these visions showed only… children.

  Yet ?ya did not choose carelessly.

  “If these four are the storm…” she murmured, “…then the storm must come.”

  The images wavered and dissolved. The lamps steadied themselves. The bowl of stormwater stilled to glass.

  She studied the lingering silhouettes in her mind, committing each face to memory.

  When the third appeared again in her thoughts, recognition struck her like a snapped drumstring.

  The girl from the archives—the one researching Silas. Jabara inhaled sharply. She had sensed the child’s quiet defiance toward the King… but now she understood. She was not merely angry. She was chosen. Pivotal to the unraveling of Rega’s reign.

  I must find her again, Jabara thought.

  The fourth vision—the youth swallowed in living vines—needed no meditation. Realization came instantly.

  The Green Aseborn.

  Rumors whispered he had aligned with Oko’s remnants, perhaps even Iku’s followers. Yet the wanted posters portrayed someone barely past boyhood. Still unclaimed. Still vulnerable.

  Does Rega know what destiny coils around the Green Aseborn? she wondered. Is that why he hunts him so relentlessly?

  Questions rose like stormwinds, piling in her chest.

  But one truth cut through the rest:

  She had to find these youths before Rega did.

  Jabara rose, her limbs stiff from the long trance. She extinguished the lamps, gathered her mantle, and stepped toward the chamber door.

  It creaked open—revealing a figure waiting in the hall.

  Diviner Zuberi.

  His ash-painted face caught the torchlight, his smile sharp and knowing. One hand toyed with a pouch of divining powder.

  “High Seer,” he said smoothly. “You walk far from your chambers tonight.”

  Jabara kept her expression steady. “Diviner. You walk far from yours.”

  “Curiosity,” Zuberi mused, leaning against a pillar. “I heard the High Seer rushed to ?ya’s shrine on the eve of the King’s great spectacle. It made me wonder…”

  His eyes narrowed like tightening snares.

  “…what burdens your mind so heavily.”

  Jabara stepped forward, unhurried, mantle settled around her like armor. “The ancestors always burden me. It is our duty.”

  “And what did they whisper tonight?” His voice was almost playful—almost.

  She turned just enough to meet his gaze. “Nothing that concerns you, Diviner.”

  His smile faltered, thinned. “Are you… quite sure?”

  Jabara held his stare for a heartbeat—silent warning flickering beneath her calm.

  “I must rest,” she said quietly. “Tomorrow will demand clarity.”

  She brushed past him, walking toward the outer gate, her posture unbroken.

  Behind her, Zuberi watched with hooded eyes.

  Suspicion sharpened the air around him, cold and waiting.

  Jabara did not look back.

  She had seen what she needed.

  And if ?ya’s visions were true it would decide the fate of a king. It would decide the kingdom.

  Jabara paused outside her chambers, hand hovering just above the carved wooden latch. A faint disturbance—like a ripple across still water—brushed against her senses. Someone was inside.

  She pushed the door open.

  King Rega sat in her chair as though it belonged to him, elbows resting casually on his knees. Behind him stood his shadows—Kenya and Zuri—silent, towering, their spears gleaming in the lamplight.

  Jabara stepped in without bowing. “Your Majesty.”

  Rega’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “High Seer… why were you in the ancestral archives today? The old compound is not a place I have granted you access to.”

  Her brows lifted. “Your father trusted me enough to walk where I pleased.”

  Rega’s smile thinned. “My father is dead.”

  “Yes,” she said, voice soft but edged. “And may the one responsible meet their downfall.”

  The air tightened. Rega’s gaze sharpened into daggers. “No need. I have already captured the conspirators. They were executed the day after the attempted coup d'état.”

  He said it too smoothly. Too quickly.

  Silence stretched between them—heavy, brittle.

  Jabara inclined her head. “I was looking further into the followers of Iku… and into the Orisha Oko. I merely wished to continue the research you commanded.”

  “Hm.” Rega rose from the chair, adjusting his clothing. “Then tread lightly, High Seer. These are dangerous times. Assassins are rumored to be lurking in the palace.”

  “I return the sentiment, my king.”

  The reaction was instant.

  Kenya and Zuri’s spears flashed forward, cold metal kissing both sides of her throat.

  Jabara did not flinch. She only offered a mild, innocent smile—one she knew infuriated him even more.

  Rega stepped close, voice low and venomous. “If my father truly favored you, he would never have sent you away. He didn’t trust you, Jabara. Not enough to keep you near.”

  “I was sent to complete my year-long meditation. To ascend to Aláà??.”

  Rega laughed—a sharp, dismissive sound. “You actually believe that? You aren’t as clever as you think. I need you only for appearances… for the simple-minded masses who cling to tradition. Remember that.”

  A subtle flick of his fingers, and the guards pulled their spears back.

  Rega left her chambers without another word, his guards trailing behind him like wolves.

  The moment the door shut, Jabara let out the breath she had held—not out of fear, but fury.

  Now she was certain.

  He had killed his father.

  And if King Rega was truly hunting the Green Aseborn…

  Then she would have to find Leonotis first—no matter the cost.