The children were rushed to the ACE ASSEMBLY Hospital in the Benin Metropolis. White wards lit by enchanted lamps flickered against the pale walls as the doctors fought to keep them alive.
Michael, Phoebe, and Adrian remaining unconscious, their bodies sustained by both magic and machines. Nas was nowhere to be found. The nurses whispered as they worked, their voices carrying more truth than comfort.
"It's almost impossible" one said under her breath
"To save all of them? No chance."
"Magic has its limits. And so does tech."
"They'd need bioengineered parts. Intellectual tech."
"That's pretty much forbidden. And who here even knows how to graft those?"
The rumours spread quickly. The best chance the children had lay in stolen technology, but harvesting from the intellectuals was dangerous. Worse, the only intellectual in the group, Peter, hadn't been harmed. The race had no reason to get involved.
Alexei and Flourish have their statements but seemed oddly... blank. Neither remembered anything after Victor pulled them. Kendra's arrival, her storm, her lightning, they were gone from their minds.
Flourish told the investigator that they'd been attacked by an unmanned intellectual suit, its goal to capture their friend. In today's world, crimes involving supernaturals were nothing unusual. According to the investigator, this seemed straightforward enough: a rouge intellectual trying to make a profit by kidnapping the child of a high ranking ACE ASSEMBLY officer.
But when asked to list who had been with them, both Flourish and Alexei spoke every name... except Nas.
Were their memories altered? Erases? Or were they protecting their friend, as they had always done?
The hospital doors swung open. A square of ACE agents stepped in, their black coats marked with silver crest. The lead agent spoke with the weight of command.
"We're here for the children, Michael, Phoebe, Alexei, Flourish and Adrian."
The doctors stiffened. "Impossible. They're not stable enough to be moved."
The tension in the room thickened instantly.
The ACE agents stood unflinching under the doctor's protest.
"This is an order" the leader said, producing a sealed letter. The wax shimmered with ancient wards, the unmistakable crest of the PRIMORDIAL MAGE pressed into its face.
Even then the doctors pushed back. "Do the parents... do the guardians... know of this?"
"They have been informed" the agent replied coolly.
The hospital called, desperate for contradiction. But when the parents answered, their voice were flat, almost detached. "Yes. Take them. Do as the director commands."
The doctors exchanged troubled looks. Their oaths told them to fight. But the parents' nonchalance left them powerless.
Preparations began. A medical van was brought around, equipments ready to stabilize the children during transit. The agents waved it away.
"That won't be necessary."
One of them pricked a finger, letting blood fall into a tune carved into the floor. Lines of Crimson light flared outward, etching a transport circle across the tiles. Before the doctors could blink, the children and their escorts vanished.
—
They reappeared in a vast chamber carved into some, a hall that breathed like a cathedral of the earth itself. The ceilings arched impossibly high, shadows cooking in the torchlight. At the end, a man waited.
"Primordial Mage" one of the agents said, bowing. "We have brought them."
The man's gaze swept over the unconscious children with unreadable weight.
A circle blossomed to his side, and Victor appeared. The boy dropped to one knee immediately.
"My Lord."
The primordial Mage exhaled, almost weary. "Get up."
He flicked his wrist. The agents vanished back into their circle, leaving only Victor in the silence.
A sudden voice shattered it.
"Move, Warren. Out of my way."
A woman darted forward, her eyes alright with glee. She shoved past the primordial Mage and Victor alike, her confidence unchecked.
Victor smirked at the audacity. "Stupid Warren," she muttered, brushing him aside.
But her excitement dimmed the moment she saw the children. She sighed, shoulders sinking.
"Hnh. Healing this much? It's nothing. I thought it would be worse."
She beckoned to Victor. "Help me move them."
Together they lifted the limo bodies, arranging them on a cold Stone slab that rose from the chamber's heart— an alter carved of concrete and runes.
"Step back." She ordered, her tone leaving no room for refusal.
Victor and Warren retreated into the shadows as she raised her hands. Power rippled through the chamber, the air thickening with the promise of impossible healing.
—
Kendra didn't hesitate. She slit her palm with a small iron blade, the blood running hot and thick. With her fingers she smeared a sigil onto Nas's cold forehead, every line etched with intent. From the leather bag at her side she drew strange shapes... human limbs and organs molded crudely from red clay, each humming with dormant life. One by one, she pressed them to her son's broken body.
Her attire clashed against the ritual's ancient gravity... blue jeans, white sneakers, a black tank top and jacket. But the heavy red beads coiled around her neck, wrist and ankles told a different story: the marking of bloodline, the weight of inheritance.
She began to whisper. Spells in an old tongue. Incantations older than the Assembly itself.
—
Far away, in a vaulted Hall that looked like a court of eternity, seven elders stirred. Men and women with hair like drifting mist, and eyes that burner like fire lifted their heads at once, as though the wind itself had whispered her name into their bones.
A tremor passed through the chamber. The incarnation had reached them.
Across the globe, in mountains, deserts, cities, and hidden sanctuaries, seven others felt it too. Younger than the elders, yet no less formidable, their daily lives halted in unison. One pausing mid prayer, another mid battle, another staring out a rain soaked window, as the surge of power rippled through them. Their hearts recognised it before their minds did.
And in the chamber deep beneath the earth where Warren and the healer stood over the injured children, the same current tore through the air like a silent thunderclap. Warren smirked, tilting his head as if listening to some private song, while the woman's hand froze above the slab, her breath caught in her throat.
They all felt it.
They all knew.
Kendra had spoken again.
One of the seven elders vanished instantly, his voice echoing across the chamber as he dissolved.
"She's back," he said, a smile too wide cutting across his face. "Idia nẹ ovbiẹ ogiso... Idia, the child of the Ogiso."
Warren leaned back as the earth itself shaped a seat beneath him. He interlocked his fingers, smirking, his legs crossed with patient ease.