The mist was heavy along the riverbank, rolling in thick veils like ghostly curtains drawn between two worlds. The scouting party from the Tribe of Ondine moved with quiet precision, six in number, each cloaked in dark leather and bearing the curved blades of their people. Their faces were grim. They did not fear easily. But tonight, even the insects refused to sing.
"I don't like this," muttered Kana, the youngest of the group, his eyes darting to the trees.
"Silence," hissed Aja, the squad leader. "We are here to observe, not chatter. Mark the placement of their fish pens. Note the beast tracks. And stay out of sight."
They crept farther along the trail that overlooked the outer edge of Nouvo Kay. Strange crop formations curled in careful spirals, a deliberate pattern carved into fertile land. Beasts—massive, intelligent-eyed creatures—moved silently between pens and fields, bonded to farmers and children alike.
"It's like walking through a story," whispered Kana.
Then it happened.
A sudden chill. The air stilled. The world held its breath.
A figure stood in the middle of the path ahead, where seconds before there had been only emptiness.
Top hat. Bone-white skull. A coat blacker than midnight.
The scouts froze as Baron Samedi tilted his head, smiling without lips, cane tapping the ground in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
"Come to spy on the living, eh?" he said, his voice like rusted bells and coffin wood.
None of them moved.
"I remember your dead," he went on. "They begged. Screamed. Prayed to a god who never came. But me? I always come."
Aja reached for her blade, only for it to vanish—melt—into ash in her hand.
Kana fell to his knees, weeping. One of the older scouts screamed and fled into the mist, never to return.
Baron Samedi only laughed, a deep, hollow sound that echoed into the soul.
"Tell your little chieftain Wayan… that the dead remember. And we're watching."
The mist swallowed him. The scouts fled, shadows fleeing a deeper darkness.
Back at the Ondine camp, Chief Wayan knelt before a wrapped body. The warrior, a boy named Elu, had died during a hunting expedition—pierced by a strange, almost sentient vine that strangled the breath from his lungs.
It wasn't a beast.
It wasn't a trap.
It was the land itself.
Wayan's face was stone. His voice quiet. "He was the first. He will not be the last."
An elder touched his shoulder. "And the scouting party? They returned… shaken."
Wayan stood. "Bring me Zion."
Later, in a small clearing between the two territories, Zion and Chief Wayan met face to face for the first time. Wayan was guarded but respectful. Zion was calm, alert.
"You live like spirits," Wayan said, his eyes scanning Zion's beast companion, the precise movements of his people, the quiet strength in every breath.
"We live close to them," Zion replied. "The Lwa are not stories to us. They walk. They speak. They fight."
Wayan hesitated, then said, "One of them frightened my scouts. A spirit in a hat."
Zion didn't flinch. "That was Baron Samedi. You're lucky they came back at all."
Silence. Then Wayan asked, "What are you?"
Zion smiled faintly. "A boy from another world. A chief by inheritance. A vessel by choice."
Wayan considered this. Then: "One of my own is dead. Another saw death walk. I will not bring my people here again lightly."
Zion nodded. "Good. We are not yet enemies. But this land… it demands respect. From both of us."
The two men stood in silence. Two paths. Two tribes. Two futures.
Only time would decide which way the wind would blow.