The days following the slaver attack were a study in quiet desolation. The air in Ama-udo, once filled with the chatter of daily life and the scent of woodsmoke and cooking, now hung heavy with the acrid ghost of burnt thatch and a deeper, more profound grief. The villagers moved through the ruins of their homes with a hollow-eyed silence, their movements mechanical, their spirits crushed. The twelve empty spaces where sons, daughters, and fathers should have been were louder than any lamentation.
Amadioha remained in Kelechi's hut, a prisoner of his own broken body and his mounting shame. The wound on his side, reopened in the fight, was a raging furnace once more. Kelechi tended to it with the same brutal efficiency, her silence more accusing than any words. She had seen his stand. She had also seen his fall. She had seen the sword that would not glow.
The memory of that feeble, flickering light was a torment. It was proof that some connection to his divinity remained, but it was a sickly, anemic thing, utterly useless when faced with the hardened evil of Priest Dike and his slavers. Mmaagha Kamalu lay against the wall, a dark and brooding presence. He could not bear to look at it. Its weight was no longer just physical; it was the weight of his failure, the weight of a promise broken.
One afternoon, as Kelechi applied a fresh poultice—this one smelling sharply of crushed neem leaves and something else, a bitter root he did not recognize—he broke the silence that had stretched between them for days.
"The priest," Amadioha began, his voice rough from disuse. "Dike. His power… it feels like a void. A silencing."
Kelechi didn't look up, her fingers deftly securing the linen bandage. "He serves a new god. A god of chains and silence. They say he can make the old spirits forget their names. He poisons the connections." She tied the knot with a sharp, final tug. "He is why your sword is mute."
"There must be a way to counter it," Amadioha insisted, a flicker of his old will sparking. "To remember."
Kelechi sat back on her heels, wiping her hands on a rag. Her eyes, when they met his, were not scornful, but held a deep, weary knowledge. "You look for a battle. A blast of lightning to sweep him away. That path is closed to you." She gestured to the sword. "Your thunder is gone. Perhaps you need to listen for a different song."
"A different song?" he echoed, frustrated.
"The carver," she said simply. "Ezeji. He lives deep in the forest, near the place of the talking trees. He still makes ikenga for the few who ask. He remembers the old ways. Not the way of the spear, but the way of the hand and the heart. If any can understand a silenced spirit, it is him."
The name Ezeji meant "King of the Woods." A carver. A shaper of wood. It seemed a preposterous path for a god of thunder. What wisdom could a man who whittled wood hold for him?
But the memory of the sword's dead weight and the villagers' hollow eyes left him with no other options. Pride was a luxury he could no longer afford.
"Where do I find him?" Amadioha asked.
---
The journey was a slow, agonizing pilgrimage. Kelechi had given him directions, a complex series of landmarks: follow the stream until the water runs red, turn where the silk-cotton tree wears a cloak of white orchids, listen for the sound of the axe that does not fell. He moved like an old man, his body a collection of protests. He used a stout branch as a walking staff, Mmaagha Kamalu a heavy, awkward burden on his back, its scabbard thumping against his thigh with every limping step.
The forest here was ancient. The canopy was so high and thick that the light that filtered down was green and submarine, dappling the forest floor in shifting, emerald patterns. The air was cool and carried the rich, damp smell of rot and rebirth. Giant buttress roots sprawled from the trunks of iroko and mahogany trees like the walls of forgotten cities. This was a place of deep, old life.
After what felt like hours, the scent of the air changed. Beneath the loam and leaf-mold, a new aroma emerged: the sweet, resinous perfume of freshly cut wood. Then, a sound. Not the chop of an axe felling a tree, but a lighter, more precise tap-tap-tap of a small hammer on a chisel. The sound was rhythmic, patient, like a heartbeat.
He pushed through a final curtain of hanging lianas and entered a clearing.
It was not a hut, but a domain.
A wide, open-sided shelter, its roof supported by carved pillars, stood against a backdrop of towering, ancient trees. The space was a symphony of wood. Logs in various states of seasoning were stacked neatly. Curls of wood, like fragrant brown ribbons, littered the packed-earth floor. Finished and half-finished pieces stood on rough-hewn benches: a fearsome mask with a lolling tongue, a graceful antelope with spiraling horns, a stool with legs carved into the shape of intertwined serpents.
And at the center of it all, a man was at work.
Ezeji was old, his back bent like a well-used bow, his skin a landscape of deep wrinkles. His head was bald and shone with a faint sheen of sweat. His hands, however, were the hands of a young man—strong, steady, with long, sensitive fingers that held a small chisel with the grace of a king holding a scepter. He was working on a piece of dark, dense wood, his focus absolute. He did not look up as Amadioha entered, his entire being poured into the conversation between his tool and the grain.
Amadioha stood silently, watching. He saw how the carver did not fight the wood, but followed its lead. He would run a hand over the surface, his eyes closed, feeling for the spirit within, before making a cut. It was a kind of reverence he had never witnessed. He, Amadioha, had commanded trees to splinter with his thunder; he had never listened to one.
Finally, Ezeji set down his chisel and mallet. He picked up a piece of dried gourd, dusted the carving, and then, slowly, turned his head. His eyes were the color of dark, polished walnut, and they held a deep, unnerving calm.
"The forest has been whispering your name for days," Ezeji said, his voice a soft, rasping thing, like leaves rubbing together. "It said you were heavy. I see it did not lie." His gaze flicked to the sword on Amadioha's back.
Amadioha limped forward. "I am called Amadioha."
Ezeji nodded slowly, as if confirming a long-held suspicion. "I know what you are. Or what you were. The sky has been quiet. The balance is upset." He gestured to a low stool. "Sit. You are hurting the earth with your stumbling."
Gratefully, Amadioha lowered himself onto the stool, leaning the sword against a workbench. The weight off his back was a profound relief.
"I seek… understanding," Amadioha began, struggling for the right words. "My power is gone. My sword… it is silent. A priest, Dike, he…"
"He pours silence into the world," Ezeji finished, picking up a small carving knife and beginning to smooth the edge of his work. "He is a carver, too, in his way. But where I reveal form, he imposes void. Where I listen, he commands." He looked at Amadioha pointedly. "You are accustomed to command, are you not?"
"I was a god," Amadioha said, the declaration feeling hollow and foolish in this place of tangible, created things.
"Gods are stories we tell to explain the rain and the thunder," Ezeji said, not unkindly. "But the rain is real. The thunder is real. The power that moves through them is real. You were a vessel for that power. Now, the vessel is cracked. Perhaps you were only ever meant to carry one kind of song—the loud one. And now that you cannot, you think you are mute."
He set down the knife and gestured to the towering trees at the edge of his clearing. "Look at them. Truly look."
Amadioha looked. At first, he saw only trees. Then, as he let his focus soften, he began to see the details Ezeji meant him to see. The leaves on several of the oldest, most sacred-looking iroko trees were spotted with black blight, curled and brittle. Their bark was weeping a dark, viscous sap, and a faint, foul odor of decay hung around them, cutting through the clean scent of woodsmoke and resin.
"The sacred grove," Ezeji said, his voice heavy with sorrow. "For generations, I have taken wood only from here, with permission and offering. These trees house spirits. They are the pillars of this place. But now, a sickness is upon them. The same silence that struck you, strikes them. The small, guardian spirits that you—the you of the stories—once kept at bay with the rumble of your passage… they have grown bold. They fester in the silence. They feed on the blight."
Amadioha stared at the blighted trees. He had never considered the small, everyday consequences of his presence. His mere existence, the ambient energy of a storm god, had been a deterrent to these minor corruptions. His fall had created a vacuum, and into that vacuum, decay had rushed.
"I cannot command the lightning to cleanse them," Amadioha said, a profound helplessness washing over him. "I have nothing."
"You have your breath," Ezeji said softly. "You have your hands. You have the life that is in you. Lightning does not just destroy. It purifies. It cleaves truth from falsehood. The energy that lit the sky is the same energy that beats your heart. You have just forgotten how to use it for anything but breaking."
The old carver stood, his joints creaking, and walked toward the largest of the blighted iroko trees. Its once-proud canopy was now a skeletal nightmare against the green sky. The foul smell was strongest here.
"This one was the first," Ezeji said, placing a gentle hand on the diseased bark. "I have tried every herb, every prayer. The silence has taken root too deep." He turned his walnut eyes to Amadioha. "The stories say Amadioha could bless as well as curse. That his touch could make the fields fertile. Was that just a story, too?"
Amadioha's mind raced. He remembered… not the grand gestures, but the small, almost unconscious ones. The way the air would crackle with vitality after a storm he had calmed. The way a farmer's field, struck by a benign bolt, would yield a miraculous harvest. He had never tried to do those things; they were simply byproducts of his nature. He had never focused his power with the intent to create, only to command or destroy.
Hesitantly, he pushed himself to his feet and approached the tree. The stench of rot was overpowering. He could feel a cold, wrong energy emanating from it, a miniature version of the void that surrounded Priest Dike.
"What would you have me do?" Amadioha whispered.
"Touch it," Ezeji said. "Not as a god claiming his due. Not as a warrior with a weapon. Touch it as a healer. Listen for the song beneath the sickness. And if you can find it… sing back to it."
It was the most terrifying thing he had ever been asked to do. Facing the slavers had been a familiar, if hopeless, battle. This was alien. He raised his hands, palms open, and hesitated, hovering just inches from the diseased bark.
He closed his eyes. He tried to shut out the pain in his side, the weight of the sword, the memory of Kelechi' scorn. He tried to reach inward, not to the vast, empty reservoir of his storm power, but to the smaller, quieter spark of life that kept him breathing, that made his heart beat. The spark that had flickered at his fingertips in the rain.
He found it. It was a tiny, guttering flame, a world away from the roaring conflagration of his divinity. It was all he had.
He placed his palms flat against the tree.
The contact was a shock. It was not the inert feeling of wood, but a violent, psychic assault. He was plunged into a realm of screaming dissonance. He felt the tree's agony, its ancient, slow consciousness being eaten alive by the corrosive silence. He felt the chittering, malevolent presence of the blight spirits, like maggots writhing in a wound. It was a pain far more intimate than any spear thrust.
He wanted to recoil, to summon lightning to blast this feeling away. But there was no lightning. There was only the small, stubborn flame of his own life force.
Gritting his teeth, pouring sweat, he did the only thing he could think to do. He pushed.
He pushed that tiny, guttering flame from his own core, down his arms, and out through his palms. It was not a weapon. It was an offering. A transfusion. He poured his own vitality, his own will to live, into the dying tree.
It was excruciating. It felt like he was bleeding light. He felt himself weakening, growing dizzy, the world graying at the edges. He was giving of his own substance, the very energy that kept him alive. This was not channeling power from an external source; this was sacrifice.
He poured memories into the tree—not of storms, but of rain nurturing saplings, of sun warming leaves, of deep roots drinking from the earth. He poured the feeling of the clean, cold water he had drunk from the stream, the taste of Kelechi's broth, the solid feel of the earth beneath his feet. The simple, profound truths of existence.
For a long, terrifying moment, nothing happened. The blight spirits seemed to feed on his offered energy, their chittering growing louder. He was going to fail. He was going to die here, his life force drained into a dead tree.
But then, something shifted.
A single, pure note of green light resonated from the center of the tree, pushing back against the dissonance. The tree's own ancient spirit, weakened and starved, had latched onto his gift. It was a faint echo, a memory of its own strength.
Amadioha redoubled his efforts, pouring every last drop of his will into that connection. He was no longer a god healing a tree. He was one living thing, helping another.
A warm, golden light began to spread from his palms, flowing into the bark. It was not the brilliant, blinding white of his lightning, nor the feeble red flicker of his sword. It was a deep, steady, nurturing glow, the color of sunlight through honey, of life itself.
Where the light touched, the black blight receded like a bad dream before the dawn. The weeping sores on the bark sealed over, leaving clean, healthy wood. The brittle, spotted leaves trembled and unfurled, the black spots fading as a vibrant green color returned, spreading from the veins outward. The foul odor was replaced by the clean, resiny scent of a healthy iroko.
The change was not explosive; it was a gentle, relentless tide of healing. The malevolent presences, the blight spirits, gave one final, silent shriek of frustration and dissolved into nothingness, unable to exist in the face of such concentrated, purposeful life.
Amadioha staggered back, his hands falling away from the tree. He collapsed to his knees, gasping, utterly spent. He felt hollowed out, more drained than he had ever been, but it was a clean exhaustion, not the sickening emptiness of his fall.
He looked up. The great iroko tree stood whole, its leaves rustling in a gentle breeze, its bark clean and strong. It was alive.
And then, a sound from the workbench. A soft, resonant hum.
Amadioha and Ezeji turned as one.
Mmaagha Kamalu, which had lain dark and dead against the bench, was glowing. Not with the angry, flickering red of judgment, but with a steady, warm, golden light. It was the same light that had flowed from his hands. It pulsed gently, rhythmically, like a sleeping heart. For the first time since his fall, it did not look like a dead weight. It looked like a tool. It looked like… hope.
Ezeji let out a long, slow breath. He walked over to the sword, not touching it, but regarding it with the same reverence he gave his wood.
"You see?" the old carver said softly, his voice filled with a profound awe. "You thought your power was only for breaking. You were wrong. The same force that splits the sky is the force that wakes the seed. You have just learned to listen for a different song."
He turned his gaze to Amadioha, and for the first time, there was something akin to respect in his eyes. "The god of carvers is not the one who fells the tree, but the one who hears the spirit within the wood and helps it take its true form. Perhaps you are not just Amadioha, the destroyer. Perhaps you are also Amadioha, the restorer."
Amadioha stared at his hands, then at the cleansed tree, and finally at the softly glowing sword. The lesson was seismic, reshaping the very bedrock of his being. Power was not just about force and dominion. True strength was about connection, nurture, and sacrifice. He could protect by creating, by healing, by strengthening.
He was still weak. He was still wounded. But as he knelt in the carver's clearing, the scent of healthy wood in his nostrils and the warm, steady glow of his sword bathing his face, Amadioha felt a new kind of power kindling within him. It was quiet. It was humble. It was born of the earth, not the sky.
And for the first time since he had awoken in the rain, it felt like enough.