The Root Network no longer beat as it once had.
This was not a rupture.
It was fatigue.
Beneath the plain torn open by the purple tempest, invisible roots vibrated with a slight delay, like a heart that continues to beat while already knowing the effort will last. Every zone of absence left by Nar'so carved more than a hollow in the earth. It carved a void in the very circulation of the kingdom's Nyama.
The Donso felt it.
They still held the line, but their steps were heavier now. Their breathing carried that particular weight known only to soldiers who are not losing, yet know they can no longer win for free. The totems behind them trembled without excess, like fires shielded from the wind instead of being allowed to rise.
Diala had just been pulled out of the circle of the duel.
Arbi and two hunters supported her by the shoulders, and every movement sent a shiver through her wounded arm. She did not speak. Her gaze remained fixed on the place where Nar'so had vanished.
Not out of anger.
Out of measure.
Around the area, the remaining Shadows hesitated. They no longer charged. They slid, observed, reformed more slowly than before, as if something in their regeneration had been forced to pay a price.
As if, for the first time, shadow had learned what blood already knew.
On the Terrace of Roots, Sirani dropped to one knee.
JARA still vibrated, but its tempo was no longer a drum of victory. It was a drum of survival. Her squad held the circle with outstretched arms, burning veins, unblinking eyes. Sweat had dried into salty crusts along some temples. Others trembled without admitting it.
"They're coming back slower…" a hunter murmured, his voice cracked.
Sirani nodded, without triumph.
"Yes. But so are we."
She swallowed, her breath catching.
Then she fixed her gaze on the horizon, where the plain remained torn like shredded cloth.
Just a little longer, she thought.
Just long enough for the kingdom to put its weight on the table.
Inside the Hall of the Great Tree, silence had become a substance.
The Nyama Sphere, the Hawk's Eye, had regained its clarity, but its contours still trembled, as if the battlefield refused to be locked into a stable image. Kani Sira's falcons returned one by one, tracing wider circles, wings heavy with fatigue. With each return, a fragment of time settled into the sphere, then quivered like a memory that refused to set.
Kani Sira inhaled deeply.
"The front is holding. But the structure of the terrain is broken."
She slid her finger across several zones of the sphere.
"These absences won't disappear. They'll disrupt all heavy movements. We can't maneuver like before."
Sambaké slammed his fist onto the stone table.
"So we can't wait any longer."
Nana didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to.
"Every minute now favors the enemy. Not because he's stronger, but because he imposes a rhythm we are forced to follow. And a rhythm that is endured always becomes a grave."
Bory swallowed.
"Diala wounded him. He's bleeding. But… he hasn't lost."
Famory remained motionless, arms crossed, eyes beyond the sphere. His gray gaze held no panic. It carried that strange thing sometimes seen in great hunters: an almost joyful focus when danger finally becomes real.
"Nar'so retreated," he murmured. "Not out of fear. He recognized a price."
Dioma, silent until now, moved two metal markers on the copper-inlaid map.
"An enemy who learns quickly is more dangerous than one who strikes hard."
Sambaké growled.
"Then we strike before he learns the next lesson."
Djata stood near the edge of the hall, fists clenched. He hadn't spoken in some time. But he felt the Root Network beating inside his chest, like a second breath grafted into him.
At his hip, Vespera vibrated.
Then, at shoulder height, her totemic manifestation appeared slowly. Small. Golden. Stable. A fine presence, sharp and almost insolent in its serenity.
No one else could see her.
"The kingdom is absorbing the blow," Vespera murmured.
Djata blinked, as if making sure he wasn't imagining it.
"It's absorbing it… without answering."
Vespera tilted her head slightly toward the sphere.
"It is answering. Quietly. Because the one bearing the weight has not yet released his grip."
A shiver ran up Djata's spine.
"So… he took everything onto himself."
Vespera's golden gaze rested on him, unmoving.
"You spent three years in Do, little lion. You already know what that means. When a pillar trembles, it does not cry out. It endures."
Djata clenched his jaw, the words striking harder than a blow.
"And if the pillar breaks?"
"Then everyone learns they were standing only out of habit."
As if the world itself had been waiting for those words, something shifted in the hall.
Nyama filaments along the Great Tree's trunk flared brighter. The Root Network's pulse deepened. It widened. Not faster.
Heavier.
The Faama of Do, Fodé Bamba, opened his eyes.
That simple gesture silenced the room.
He did not rise. He did not need to. His body still floated inches above the ground, legs crossed, back straight. Yet the air around him thickened, as if the kingdom itself were straightening.
His eyes, threaded with green and ochre reflections, gave the impression that another gaze, vaster and older, overlapped his own.
"I held the Network alone," he said calmly.
His voice was not loud.
It was inevitable.
"Not because I forgot you. Not because I failed to see the war."
He placed a hand against the trunk behind him.
A pulse traveled through the hall, as if the bark itself breathed.
"Because as long as JARA was under strain, as long as Sirani and her circle were holding a spiritual poison against a night that regenerates, I could not afford the slightest dispersion."
He paused.
That pause itself felt like an order.
"Every beat of the front. Every fracture. Every shock. I absorbed them here."
Sambaké gritted his teeth.
"You took the kingdom's wounds into your own hands."
Bamba did not smile. He answered as one answers a fact.
"That is what it means to be Faama."
Famory inclined his head slightly.
"This wasn't absence," he said. "It was anchoring."
Bamba nodded.
"The duel is over."
His gaze slid toward the sphere.
"And so is the test."
Something shifted inside Djata. Not joy. Not relief.
Understanding.
The Faama had not vanished.
He had held the kingdom together so it would not tear itself apart.
Bamba closed his eyes briefly.
The Root Network responded.
Not with a rumble.
With a call.
Beyond Do's walls, in the ancient forests, something stirred.
The Spirits of the Bush stopped watching.
It was not a spectacular manifestation. It was a correction of the world.
The wind changed direction, steadier now. Leaves rustled without visible cause. Where the air had been twisted by dissonance, it regained shape. Where the ground had hesitated beneath Donso feet, resonance returned, faint but affirmative.
Even the animals in the distance stopped fleeing at random.
They fled in the right direction.
Farther still, within the Primordial Bush of the Spirit Domain, eyes opened.
The Ancestral Dozo.
Half-men, half-totems. Leopard. Bull. Falcon. Serpent. Ancient silhouettes shaped by hunt and death.
They were not bodies.
Only echoes, present enough to weigh upon the war.
They had not been called to judge.
They had been called to walk.
Djata felt pressure shift at the base of his neck.
"They're coming…" he murmured without thinking.
Bamba turned his head slightly toward him.
"Yes."
For the first time in a long while, inside that command post, Djata did not feel like a child watching adults decide.
He was a piece on the board.
A piece that would one day set the beat itself.
Vespera whispered, barely audible.
"The world remembers its dead when it no longer has enough living to pay the price."
Bamba spoke.
And his voice did not stay in the hall. It flowed through the Root Network, through bark, stone, soil, all the way to the plain.
To Diala.
Captain.
Hold on.
The kingdom is advancing.
At the front, Diala closed her eyes for a second.
Then she inhaled slowly and nodded.
She turned to her Donso.
"You heard him," she said hoarsely. "We hold. A little longer."
Arbi tightened his grip on his spear.
"A little longer," he echoed, like a vow.
Back in the Hall of the Great Tree, decisions fell cleanly.
Bamba lifted his hand slightly.
"Sirani. JARA enters active phase the moment the next wave tries to reform. Not before. You seize their rhythm by the throat."
Far away, Sirani felt the Network respond through her circle, like a hand placed against her back.
"Understood."
"Sambaké. Heavy battalions advance. No frontal impact. You follow the fractures opened by JARA. You strike where their Nyama refuses to knit."
Sambaké flashed a brief smile.
"Finally."
"Kéba Dioma. Axis coordination. No dispersion. No useless heroics. I want lines."
Dioma nodded.
"Lines. Not shouts."
Bamba looked to Nana.
"You keep Niani at the center. No one gets lost in the surge."
Nana answered without hesitation.
"They will stay in rhythm."
Then the Faama turned to Djata.
Not like one looks at a child.
Like one looks at a future point of balance.
"You're coming."
Djata inhaled slowly.
He felt Vespera drift closer, as if she had chosen to listen too.
"Yes, Faama."
Vespera murmured, faintly amused.
"You walk at the center. You won't understand what that means until you feel the weight."
Famory placed a hand on Djata's shoulder, a light pressure.
"Stay behind me at first," he said. "Not because you're weak. Because you need to see. A learning lion learns first with his eyes."
Djata nodded.
"I'll watch."
They left the hall.
The command doors opened onto Do like the opening of a war chest.
The drums began to speak.
Not a festival rhythm.
A rhythm of order.
Niani's elites moved first, disciplined and silent, their fabrics snapping in the wind like oaths. Do's units followed, bows, spears, talismans, steps steady despite fatigue.
The kingdom did not rush.
It moved.
Famory went first.
Not toward the heart of the battlefield yet, but as a pathfinder, a point of opening.
His stride devoured distance with unreal ease, not because he moved faster than the world, but because he knew exactly where to place his foot.
The column advanced behind him, still out of sight, when something tried to surface along a wooded flank.
A Shadow.
Not a major entity.
A harassment presence.
A probe.
It slid from the ground too close, too confident.
Famory did not slow.
He made no grand gesture.
One movement.
Clean.
Sani-ko passed.
The Shadow dispersed without a cry, without resistance, as if the world itself refused to grant it an "after."
Famory kept moving.
The path had been opened.
Djata walked.
He did not run.
He advanced with the kingdom.
At his shoulder, Vespera floated, small, golden, androgynous. No one could understand why Djata seemed, at times, slightly calmer than the others.
"Are you afraid?" she asked.
Djata let out a humorless breath.
"I'm afraid of stumbling."
"That's not fear," she replied. "That's awareness."
They kept advancing.
The Nyama around them thickened. Not like a technique. Not like a power.
Like density.
The soldiers were not suddenly faster. Not magically stronger. But their steps grew surer. Their breathing aligned.
The aura did not come from a shout.
It came from certainty.
Djata tightened his grip on Vespera's hilt without drawing her.
"If I stumble," he murmured, "I won't fall alone."
Vespera looked at him.
"There. You've understood what an heir carries. Not a crown. A consequence."
The kingdom drew closer to the front.
And the nearer they came, the more the plain seemed… different.
It was no longer merely broken.
It had become a ground that chooses.
Djata lifted his gaze northward.
And for the first time since this war began, he did not feel only the night advancing.
He felt the kingdom advancing too.
The Mandé was no longer preparing to endure.
It was preparing to move forward.