The sun had barely cleared the trees when Amarachi and Alaric reached the edge of the sacred grove.
A small crowd had already gathered, drawn by the cries of the boy who had stumbled across the body while foraging for mushrooms. Elders stood at a cautious distance, whispering prayers. A few women pressed cloths to their mouths to muffle their horror. The scent of blood hung in the air—thick, metallic, unmistakable.
Alaric's stomach tightened. He had seen corpses before—victims of plague, war, famine—but there was something different about this one. Something wrong in a way that defied science.
The body was that of a man—barely more than twenty. His chest was split open, not by a blade but by something alive. His ribcage had been bent outward, almost pried open like a ceremonial bowl. His eyes were wide and glassy, his mouth frozen mid-scream. But it was not the physical damage that unsettled Alaric the most—it was the expression of sheer terror that still clung to his features.
Carved into the earth around him were symbols—burned black into the soil as if seared by lightning. Alaric recognized some of the shapes from old manuscripts. Not from West African traditions. Older. Proto-scripts. Forbidden markings whispered about in the margins of his anthropological studies.
Amarachi approached with reverence, her bare feet silent in the grass. Her sigils flared in response to the energy left behind—glowing a low, threatening crimson. She knelt beside the body, touching the earth with her fingertips.
"The witches did this," she said.
Alaric crouched beside her. "How do you know?"
She looked up at him, her face hard. "Because they left a mark meant for me."
She pointed to a strange, double-ringed spiral burned into the boy's stomach. "This is a challenge. A message. They want me to know they've returned."
Alaric frowned. "You've dealt with them before?"
She stood, brushing her hands against her thighs. "Not directly. But my mother did. And my grandmother before her. They were all flame-bearers—marked by the gods to protect the balance. But each generation, the witches grow stronger… and smarter."
"What do they want?"
Amarachi's expression darkened. "Chaos. Control. Power drawn from suffering. They feed on fear and corruption. But more than anything, they want me out of the way. I am the last vessel of the Codex. They cannot claim it while I live."
Alaric stood slowly. "So they're not just killing to scare the village."
"They're killing to weaken me," she said, voice bitter. "Every soul taken in this manner pollutes the earth, stains the river, disrupts the flow of ancestral power. It makes my connection… dimmer."
She turned to him suddenly, her eyes sharp. "You felt it too, didn't you? When we approached. The air. The wrongness."
He nodded, unsettled. "It was like… the forest was holding its breath."
"Because it remembers." Her voice dropped. "It remembers the old wars. The dark blood rituals. The screams that shook the trees."
Mama Nnenna approached then, flanked by two younger priestesses carrying palm fronds and small clay pots filled with chalk, herbs, and ashes.
"We must cleanse the land," she said. "Before the rot spreads."
Alaric watched as they began a ritual—a slow circling of the body, the drawing of protective sigils, the pouring of blessed water into the soil. The fire in Amarachi's markings dimmed slightly as the air began to settle.
But he couldn't ignore the deeper dread now tightening in his chest.
"What exactly is the Codex?" he asked, his voice low.
Amarachi turned to him, her expression unreadable. "A source of truth. A book that is not a book. It contains the language of the gods… and the laws that govern balance. Life and death. Love and madness. Science and sorcery. It was hidden in Ugbene long ago, and only a vessel can unlock it."
"And you're the vessel."
She nodded once. "And you… you're the key."
His breath caught. "The spirits said something like that. Fire and wind."
Amarachi's lips curved into something like a smile—sad, knowing. "Yes. You bring movement. Disruption. Breath. But breath can be life… or storm."
They stood in silence as the women chanted over the body. The sun climbed higher, casting sharp gold over the red-stained earth.
"This is just the beginning," Amarachi said finally.
Alaric looked at her, the weight of destiny pressing between them.
"And the end?" he asked.
Her gaze was distant, already seeing beyond the trees.
"If we fail… the Codex will fall into darkness. And this village—this world—will burn."