Then came the second part of the ceremony.
As the drums shifted to a heartbeat rhythm, a white fire sparked at the foot of the altar. No fuel. No wood. Just light—pure and living.
The people murmured among themselves, wide-eyed. In Tepic, the gods appeared in omens, in storms, in visions delivered by trembling priests.
But this… this was something else.
Zion stepped forward and knelt. He knew what it was. He had known it would happen this way.
"Papa Legba," he said, voice low and certain. "Keeper of gates. Walker of roads. Open the way."
The fire flared, then parted like mist.
A man stepped out from its center. Tall. Brown-skinned. Dressed in a white linen suit with golden thread stitched into the cuffs. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and carried a black cane tipped with silver. Smoke curled around his feet with every step.
He looked like someone's grandfather. He looked like someone who had been walking a long road just to arrive here now.
The people gasped and shrank back—not in fear, but in disbelief.
A god had just walked into their midst.
Zion rose, eyes steady.
Only he used the old name: Lwa.
To the others, this was simply a god.
Papa Legba moved through them, unhurried. When he reached the edge of the crowd, he stopped and raised one hand.
He pointed.
Ayomi stepped forward—hands trembling, but her eyes calm. She had once lost her younger sister in the chaos before Bassoon. It had left a quiet ache inside her, a silence she carried but never let harden her heart.
Now, a god had chosen her.
Papa Legba smiled at her, a smile that felt like a road unfolding after the rain. The flame reached out—not hot, not wild—and gently curled around her shoulder. A radiant mark took shape: a spiral sun with branching rays.
Then, in a voice like river stones and warm firewood, Papa Legba spoke:
"You have built with your hands.
You have seeded the land.
But now you must nourish the soul."
He tipped his hat to Zion, turned, and walked calmly back into the fire.
The flames folded in on themselves like a sigh, leaving only a soft white glow behind.
Ayomi did not faint. She stood tall, marked and steady. Not possessed. Not overtaken.
She had been seen.
She had been chosen.
Zion stepped forward and embraced her, forehead to forehead.
"Welcome, Priestess of Papa Legba."
⸻
That night, beneath the stars, they danced not as strangers—but as a tribe.
Children with salt on their fingers.
Women braiding roots by firelight.
Men guarding fields they once thought they'd never plant.
And in the shadows, the sigils on the backs of Zion's inner circle glowed faintly in unison—a covenant made stronger not just by power… but by purpose.
They were no longer just feeding themselves.
They were feeding a future.