Chapter 6 – The Prophecy

There was no floor to hit.

Kana fell, and the world fell with her.

Then there was nothing.

No weight. No direction. No edge to press against. She was suspended in a vast, breathless pause, caught not by hands, but by pressure, as if the space itself had decided she had gone far enough.

Heat gathered at her brow, her palms, her chest. Not the sharp burn of flame. Not the clean cold of ice. This was older than both, dense warmth, like stone that had held the sun for centuries and never given it back.

Her soul shuddered.

Air rushed into her lungs in a harsh gasp.

Kana's eyes flew open.

She stood in the Vision Chamber.

Or something like it.

The altar lay beneath her feet, the carved circle of Àse glowing faintly through a veil of mist that hugged the stone. The totems of her grandmothers ringed the space, their forms half-lost in haze. Candles burned around them, flames tall and unnaturally still, as if the air itself had forgotten how to move.

The walls were wrong.

Where stone should have been, there was glacial blue, deep, luminous, shifting slowly as if rivers and roots moved beneath a frozen surface. Veins of crystal drifted through it, appearing and vanishing like memories trying to surface.

Above her, the opening to the sky was gone.

The moon remained.

It hung impossibly low, vast and pale, its rim bruised faintly red. Its light did not fall on her,it passed through her, exposing marrow and memory alike.

Kana's breath came fast, fogging the air.

She looked down at her hands. Whole. Her ceremonial robes smooth against her skin. She stood where she had knelt, feet planted in the center of the altar as if she'd never left.

At the edge of the circle sat the basin.

Water from the Vestige spring lay frozen mid-motion, droplets suspended in the air like garnets strung on invisible threads. Two dark spirals of blood, mother's and daughter's, curled together within it, merged and unmoving.

The chamber was silent.

Then the silence inhaled.

Mist stirred at the floor, rising in slow, deliberate coils. It thickened, stretched, braided itself upward into columns. Shapes emerged, not sudden, not violent, but inevitable.

Women.

They formed just beyond the altar's boundary, half-made at first. Smoke became cloth. Haze became skin. Their bodies solidified as they drew closer, though their edges still trailed faintly behind them, as if time struggled to keep up.

Some were young, barely older than Kana herself. Some bent with age, spines curved by decades of carrying crowns. Some bore the scars of warriors, the gentle hands of healers, the cold eyes of queens who had ruled in winter's harshest seasons.

Only their eyes were fully clear.

Dozens of pairs of pale blue eyes opened in the dark.

They glowed without pupils or whites,rings of luminous color, sharp and unblinking. Kana recognized some from portraits in the Corridor: the curve of a jaw, the line of a brow, the particular tilt of a head she'd seen captured in oil and memory. Others were older than paint, older than names, older than the mountain itself.

They all turned toward her.

Kana's breath caught in her throat.

Her knees trembled. Her hands curled into fists at her sides. Every instinct screamed at her to run, to kneel, to do something,

She did not move.

The women began to walk.

Not toward her. Around her.

Bare feet made no sound on stone as they circled the altar in slow, synchronized motion. Their movements were ritual, deliberate, a dance they had performed for generations. Hands lifted: some clasped in prayer, some open with palms outward, fingers spread in gestures that felt like blessing and warning braided together.

They spoke.

Not words at first, layers of sound, voices slightly out of sync, weaving in and out of one another like threads in a tapestry. Kelama syllables surfaced from the hum, dissolved, returned altered.

"Retounen… wè sa ki mennen w…"

"Zansèt yo ap pale…"

"San manman… san pitit…"

Meaning washed over Kana without form, settling into her bones rather than her mind.

This is them, she realized.

All of them.

For one fragile, foolish moment, her heart lifted.

They came. They really came for me. I'm not alone,

Something cold touched her brow.

The thought shattered.

Kana flinched.

It was not ice. It was focus, precise, unwavering, like the point of a blade pressed gently between her eyes. It did not break skin. It did not move. It simply rested there, an invisible fingertip anchoring her in place, holding her still while the world spun around her.

Her thoughts scattered like birds from a struck tree.

Her entire body went rigid.

The circling slowed. The humming shifted, voices separating just enough to be understood, distinct lines emerging from the chorus, weaving call and response.

One voice, high and thin as a reed pipe:

"Ki moun ki vini ak dife nan je l?"

Who comes with fire in his gaze?

Another, rough with age, deep as roots:

"Pitit gason kòlè a, lam ki poko fini."

The son of fury, the half-made blade.

A third, smooth and steady like river-stone:

"Ki moun ki kenbe fòs jou lontan yo?"

Who holds the strength of ancient days?

The answer came as one, a wave of voices merging into a single, resonant chord:

"Pitit fi tanpèt la. Lespri-fè."

The daughter of storms. The spirit-made.

The cold at her brow pulsed once.

Kana's stomach dropped.

The women around her bowed their heads. Some lowered to their knees. Some pressed foreheads to the stone. Hands that had hovered near her shoulders withdrew and folded across chests.

The hum fell to a reverent hush, barely more than breath and heartbeat.

Kana's pulse hammered in her ears.

What's happening? she thought wildly. Why are they,

When the next voice spoke, the entire chamber leaned toward it.

It was a girl's voice.

A woman's voice.

An old woman's voice.

All three layered so perfectly that Kana could not separate them, could not tell where youth ended and age began. Each syllable carried the bright uncertainty of childhood, the grounded weight of experience, and the patient finality of someone who had waited centuries for this exact moment.

"Yon chwa pou fè pouvwa a antye," it said.

One choice to make the power whole.

"Yon sèl chimen," it continued softly.

One path.

"Twa pri."

Three prices.

Every figure in the circle lowered further, until only one remained standing.

She stepped forward.

Narobei.

Kana felt her before she saw her, the way the air tightened and bent, the way light curved subtly toward her presence as if even illumination recognized power when it approached. The circle of women parted silently, never lifting their eyes, creating a path straight to the altar's edge.

Narobei did not walk.

She moved as if the ground rose to meet her feet, each step soundless and smooth. A glide rather than a stride. Her feet touched stone, but barely, as if gravity itself deferred to her will.

She looked as she had in the portrait, dark bronze skin with its faint inner shimmer, silver-threaded black braids flowing loose over her shoulders, the same straight line of back and shoulder. But this was no artist's interpretation. This was not softened by paint or mercy.

Power burned in her pale blue eyes. Not a flash or flare, a steady, banked fire that had never gone out, not even when buried beneath snow and centuries.

Around her, smoke coiled and uncoiled like living shadow, clinging to the edges of her garments and hair.

She stopped just beyond the altar's edge, close enough that Kana could see the faint lines around her mouth,tiny cracks that hinted at laughter and fury and long, patient waiting.

Their eyes met.

"You hear us," Narobei said.

The three layers of her voice wrapped around the words, making them feel as much like sensation as sound. They vibrated against Kana's ribs.

"Yes," Kana whispered.

"You are afraid."

It was not a question. It was observation, flat as stone fact.

Narobei's mouth curved slightly.

"Bon."

Good.

"Fear means you understand the weight."

Kana wanted to look away. Wanted to bow her head like the others had. Wanted to do anything to release the pressure bearing down from that gaze.

But some stubborn, foolish part of her kept her spine straight.

Narobei's expression flickered, just for a moment, with something that might have been approval.

Or hunger.

"Pa pale ankò, pitit mwen," she said softly.

Do not speak yet, my child.

The word pitit slipped under Kana's skin and found her spine. Something inside her loosened and knotted at the same time.

Narobei lifted one hand.

Smoke coiled around her wrist, spiraling up her arm, gathering around her fingers like rings. She reached toward Kana's face, fingers extending,

and stopped a breath away from her skin.

Kana braced for cold.

It wasn't cold.

Heat seared inward, not burning the surface, but sinking deep, threading along the hidden paths of veins and nerves. It felt like being marked from the inside out, branded in places that had no names.

Kana gasped.

Her thoughts flared, loud and desperate.

I don't want this. I don't want to be bound to some man with fire in his eyes. I don't want,

Narobei's eyes sharpened like ice catching sudden light.

"Panse w yo rele fò," she said, almost amused.

Your thoughts speak loudly.

She leaned in, just slightly.

"Men isit la," her voice dropped to something intimate and terrible, "tout bagay pale fò."

But here, everything speaks loudly.

Kana's breath hitched.

"You are not the first to say no," Narobei continued, and for the first time, something like amusement, cold, unsettling, entered her voice. "Ou pa pral dènye."

You will not be the last.

"But the prophecy does not ask you, pitit mwen," Narobei said, and there it was, the soft, eager undercurrent beneath the calm, like ice cracking over deep water. "Li chwazi w."

It chooses you.

Her hand pressed more firmly against Kana's brow, never quite touching.

The circle of women began to move again, faster now, their slow walk becoming more like a dance. Voices rose in volume and urgency, no longer questioning.

Naming.

"Ki moun ki vini ak dife nan je l?"

"Pitit gason kòlè a, lam ki poko fini."

"Ki moun ki kenbe fòs jou lontan yo?"

"Pitit fi tanpèt la, lespri-fè."

On the second repetition, Kana realized they were no longer asking.

They were declaring.

The moon overhead thickened. White bled slowly into the edges, creeping inward like blood spreading through water, until its center pulsed a dull, rhythmic red.

Narobei leaned closer, so close Kana could see the faint cracks around her eyes, the way power had worn grooves into even this smoke-and-memory face.

"Sa ki mare yo tankou rasin ak wòch?" she asked, but did not wait for the chorus.

What binds them tight as root to stone?

Her eyes, those pale, burning eyes so like Kana's and yet so much older, locked fully onto hers.

"A choice," she said quietly. "Yon chwa pou fè pouvwa a antye."

A choice to make the power whole.

She paused.

Smiled.

"Through eyes of blood," she whispered, and her voice carried centuries of waiting, "the door is shown."

The chamber shattered.

Vision struck like lightning, rapid, disorienting, impossible to hold.

Ash fell like snow over a city of stone and bone. It coated rooftops, clung to torn banners, filled the mouths of toppled statues. Somewhere in the distance, something screamed, not animal, not wind, something too vast for either.

Crimson eyes watched her from the darkness. Not glaring. Not burning with malice. Just watching, steady and unblinking, gentle as a hand pressed to her cheek. They were framed by thick dark lashes, impossibly long, and in their depths flickered something that looked disturbingly like recognition.

Heat rolled over her skin, thick and humid, nothing like mountain cold. Smoke curled around her ankles, rising from an unseen fire, carrying the scent of charred wood and copper-sweet blood.

Wolves stood in a circle, their white fur stained gray with soot. Their eyes were still ice-blue, but in each pupil, a tiny red spark glowed and faded, glowed and faded, in time with a heartbeat that was not hers.

A baby wailed somewhere far off, the sound thin and stretched as if it came from underwater. A woman's voice rose with it, singing a lullaby that was almost a sob. The two sounds layered, slipped out of sync, then, for one terrifying second, became one. Cry and song fused into a single, aching note.

A dragon's shadow passed overhead, wings blotting out what little light remained. Fire leaked from the corners of a mouth lined with too many teeth. When it inhaled, the air grew thin, stealing breath from Kana's lungs.

A hand reached across a chasm of fire and ice, dark brown skin, her skin, reaching toward another hand. Larger. Veins glowing faintly red beneath pale flesh. When their fingers brushed, the world behind them cracked like glass.

Ice spread across a river in jagged fractals, racing toward a distant shore where buildings burned bright as lanterns.

Through every image, Narobei's voice threaded like smoke:

"M ka santi li," she said, joy threading through her words like poison through honey. "Syèk ap tann. Pi pre."

I can feel her. Centuries of waiting. So much closer now.

The images crashed over Kana again and again, overlapping until she couldn't tell which came first, which was memory and which was prophecy,

The crimson eyes returned, closer this time. Not hovering in darkness now, but set in a face she couldn't quite see, features blurred at the edges like wet paint. All she caught was the curve of a mouth, neither smiling nor frowning, and the way those eyes softened when they found hers.

Not pity.

Not delight.

Something like recognition.

A rush of Àse and something heavier, hotter, Aura, twisted through it, slammed into her from that gaze alone.

Her heart stuttered.

Stopped.

Kana tried to scream.

Her throat closed.

Her body bowed backward without her consent, spine arching as if yanked by invisible strings. The cold and heat inside her chest went to war, frost and flame clawing at each other beneath her breastbone, each gaining ground only to lose it again.

She couldn't breathe.

Couldn't think.

Couldn't,

Stone slammed into her knees.

Then her shoulder.

The impact was distant, dulled by the roar in her head. Her fingers scraped against the altar's surface, then slipped on something wet, blood, wax, she couldn't tell.

She couldn't feel her hands.

She couldn't feel anything.

The glacial-blue chamber, the circle of women, Narobei's shimmering shape, all of it shattered into fragments and flew outward into a vast, dark space that yawned open beneath her.

She fell.

This time, there was no pressure to catch her.

There was only cold.

It rushed up fast and absolute, swallowing warmth, sound, light, thought.

Kana's last sensation before it took everything was not of eyes or fire or falling.

It was of something inside her chest, quiet and small, curling in on itself like a wolf pup trying to make itself unseen while a storm roared overhead.

Then even that went out.

The world went black.