I. A Distant Drumbeat
It began with a murmur carried on the wind.
Not from the forest.
Not from the mountains.
But from the low, wet places—the marshes beyond the sacred stone fields.
A place thought uninhabited, too full of poison and rot for life.
Then came the footprints.
Dozens at first. Then hundreds.
Deep, bare, webbed at the edge.
Moving in organized paths that avoided the main roads, and yet circled Nouvo Lakay like wolves.
Zion was informed by the dusk-watch captain.
"They don't announce themselves," the captain said, "but they want us to know they're here."
Zion nodded. He knew the signs.
A new tribe had emerged.
One that knew how to move in shadows and rituals.
II. A Fracture in Faith
As the village processed the news, the silence of the Lwa grew heavy.
Where once their presence was like wind beneath the skin—subtle, constant—now there was a void. Not absence, but something deeper:
Withdrawal. Watchfulness. Judgment.
Some in the tribe understood. They whispered:
"The gods have stepped back to see what we will do without their breath in our lungs."
Others grew uneasy.
"Have we offended them?"
"Why have the priestesses not spoken in days?"
"Where is Papa Legba now?"
Even those with sigils felt their power still working, but… duller, less vibrant. As if the divine current had gone underground.
Zion called for calm, but even he felt it.
He prayed at the edge of Papa Legba's house.
And the door remained closed.
III. The Questions Unspoken
Though the people trusted Zion, the seed of doubt had been planted.
They remembered the Lwa walking among them—divine fire, laughter, judgment. Now the gods had vanished into the trees, and another tribe stood at their doorstep.
Some wondered aloud:
"Has Zion become too confident?"
"Do the gods withhold to punish him?"
"Why do no beasts approach him?"
Zion heard all of it.
He said nothing.
But in private, with his original circle, he confessed:
"This is not a silence of anger. It is something else. As if… they're listening for something I haven't said yet."
IV. Signs and Portents
The warrior-priestesses awoke from their meditations shaken.
One saw a mouth without a face whispering into the river.
The other dreamt of a beast with a thousand wet eyes, crawling up from under the marsh.
Neither dream was of the Lwa.
Zion marked their visions down, his brow furrowed.
"This tribe that comes from the wetlands… it doesn't come seeking alliance. It comes with worship we do not know."
That night, a blood hawk landed on the roof of the Council Lodge, dead before it hit the stone.
Its eyes were carved out.
Inside its belly was a torn scrap of bark etched with unknown symbols—dark, coiled, almost weeping with dampness.
The meaning was clear:
We are not the only ones who remember the old gods.
V. At the Edge of Dawn
Zion stood atop the watchtower, his gaze cast far toward the swamps.
He did not fear the new tribe. But he feared what they worshiped.
And more than anything, he feared what his own people might do in silence, without the warm fire of the Lwa's presence to comfort them.
"If this silence is a test," he whispered into the wind, "then let me not be the reason we fail."
The wind did not answer.
But the trees swayed—as if listening.