The northern wind had fallen silent.
Diala felt the pressure in the air shift, as if an icy hand had rested on the neck of the world. Around her, the Donso stopped adjusting their weapons, stopped joking, even stopped breathing too loudly.
Silence settled, heavy and damp and vibrating.
"Captain…" Arbi whispered, his fingers tight around his Fanga-Tiri.
Diala raised her hand, eyes fixed on the horizon.
"Wait."
Beneath their feet, the Root Network pulsed: a slow, deep heartbeat that was almost reassuring. Almost.
The horizon, until now only gray, darkened. As if a strip of night had decided to walk across the daylight.
Diala inhaled.
"They're coming."
She didn't need to shout. The entire line heard her.
"Fanga-Tiri… ready."
The Donso lifted their weapons in unison. Precise. Like a column of breaths ready to strike.
The earth trembled. And the night walked.
They appeared first as broken silhouettes.
Black shapes laced with purple cracks, gliding low over the ground. No shadows cast. No sound of footsteps. No faces.
Only that cold sensation that tightens the heart.
Arbi swallowed hard.
"Spirits…"
Diala didn't blink.
"Aim for the line, not the shapes," she said. "They lie."
The Shadows advanced.
Some dissolved into dark dust, then reformed two steps ahead. Others drifted as if strung by an invisible thread.
The ground beneath the Donso vibrated with the Faama's rhythm. Without that heartbeat, just looking at these creatures would have made a man feel himself disappear.
Diala lowered her hand.
"Fire."
The earth screamed.
Dozens of Fanga-Tiri shot forward, arcs of incandescent blue Nyama tearing through the air. The blasts struck the Shadows like sacred hammers: bursts of light, burning shockwaves, silhouettes thrown backward.
A dozen Shadows shattered into dark fragments. Another was split from flank to flank, then melted into a cloud of black dust.
Cries erupted.
"It works! Again!"
But the cries died quickly.
The fragments gathered. The silhouettes reformed. Their outlines trembled once, as if something inside rippled, then they became whole again.
A Donso stepped back.
"Captain… they're coming back."
Diala clenched her jaw.
"Then we'll bring them down a thousand times. Close the ranks."
The Shadows accelerated, sliding like ink stains across living soil. Some plunged into the ground only to reemerge closer, their bodies vibrating with broken Nyama.
The line held. But the line trembled.
In the capital, beneath the Great Tree, the command hall resembled a war sanctuary.
Light stone walls reflected a soft glow from high openings carved like blades pointed to the sky. Tall pillars rose into an arched ceiling etched with hunts, oaths, and ancient battles. At the back, the heavy banners of Do and Niani fell to the floor, two rivers of fabric facing the same storm.
At the center stood the great polished stone table, its surface inlaid with copper lines forming the northern front. Wooden and metal markers represented units, reserves, battalions, outposts. The entire northern battlefield lived inside that rectangle of stone.
The trunk of the Great Tree passed through the battlefield just behind Faama Bamba. He floated a few inches above the ground, legs crossed, back straight, eyes half-closed. Threads of green and ochre Nyama pulsed from his chest into the bark, linking him to the Root Network.
Above the table hovered a sphere of Nyama, bright at its core and surrounded by shifting rings of light.
The Falcon Eye.
Kani Sira stood below it, hand on her silver armband. Her falcons soared far beyond the walls; with each beat of their wings, images flowed into the sphere.
The light suddenly sharpened.
"Impact confirmed," she said. "First test shot scattered the Shadows… then they reformed."
The officers moved closer.
Sambaké planted both fists on the table.
"We see them burst apart… and they move again as if nothing happened."
General Kéba Dioma frowned. He shifted two markers, tracing an invisible line behind Diala's formation.
"We hit hard," he said. "But what exactly are we hitting?"
Fragments of images spun in the Falcon Eye: the plains, Diala's line, the flare of Fanga-Tiri fire, then the dark smoke gathering again.
Bory leaned over the table.
"Can't we trap them?" he asked. "Force them into a corridor where they can't reform?"
Kani Sira shook her head.
"They glide," she said. "Sometimes they dive into the ground and come out elsewhere. They ignore the traps we set."
Nana studied the sphere silently.
"What we see isn't the whole thing," she murmured. "Their 'bodies' are there, but their Nyama… isn't. It's like trying to strike a shadow on a wall."
Famory, standing at the right of the table, straightened slightly. His gray eyes passed over the images, though his attention seemed to reach deeper—below the stone, into the roots.
"I can feel them in the Network," he said. "Each impact cracks something. Their Nyama breaks in pieces."
A short pause.
"But the pieces return too fast. We break them… without ever truly breaking them."
Across the table, Djata's fingers tightened on the polished stone. His heartbeat followed the silent rhythm of Nyangolo's drums, faint but unmistakable.
He didn't just see the battle in the sphere; he felt it.
"So for now," he said quietly but firmly, "they control the rhythm. They force us to shoot, to spend our Nyama… and they return whenever they want."
Silence answered him. Eyes turned toward the young heir, surprised he spoke, and more surprised by the accuracy of his words.
Faama Bamba slowly opened his eyes.
Green and ochre reflected inside them, as if a greater gaze overlapped his own.
"He is right," the Faama said. "They no longer take our lives. They take our time."
On the upper gallery, Balla shifted his melody. The notes tightened, a steadier heartbeat threading through the hall.
Nana folded her arms.
"If we let them do this, we'll die standing," she said. "Not by a blade, but by shooting endlessly into darkness that reforms."
Sambaké rumbled deep in his chest.
"We can't allow that. Our Nyama reserves aren't endless. Even with the Network, our hunters will eventually falter."
Kéba Dioma closed his eyes briefly, reconstructing the front in his mind.
"If we bring the heavy battalions now… they'll walk onto a battlefield they don't understand. They'll be caught in the same dance."
He opened his eyes again.
"As long as the Shadows reform this fast, any frontal clash is waste."
Famory nodded slowly.
"Until we strike their core," he said, "we only slow them by a single step."
Djata stared at the sphere, jaw tight.
"If we can't stop them from returning immediately… then we must at least force them to return more slowly. To lose beats. So we can breathe between waves."
Nana's eyes brightened with interest. Bory gave a low whistle.
"Stealing heartbeats from the night, huh…"
The Faama lowered his gaze.
"There is the key," he said. "They steal our beats. We must steal theirs."
A voice cut through the room. Calm. Sharp.
"There is something that can do that."
Sirani.
She hadn't raised her voice, but the words sliced the silence like a blade.
Sambaké grinned.
"The serpent found something, I see."
Sirani stepped forward, hands behind her back.
"JARA," she said.
Several talismans vibrated faintly on the chests of her squad.
Kéba Dioma raised a brow.
"The Central Totem Formation," he murmured. "The one you shaped in the deep bush."
"Yes," Sirani answered. "I stand at the core, my squad forms the circle. Our Nyama aligns with my totem."
Her gaze shifted to the Falcon Eye, where another Shadow reformed, untouched.
"JARA has many faces," she continued. "We carved one for enemies like this. The Spiritual Venom."
Bory blinked.
"Spiritual… venom?"
Sirani brought her hands together, as if holding something unseen.
"It doesn't kill them," she said. "It doesn't scare them. It makes their essence vibrate."
Her eyes hardened.
"Their regeneration slows. The cracks in their Nyama stay open longer. And then our hunters don't shoot into nothing… they shoot into the fracture."
Famory studied her closely.
"Illusions? Mirages? Perception distortion?"
"No," Sirani cut. "If we lie to the world, JARA breaks us first. The Spiritual Venom is pure Nyama tuned to their rhythm… to throw it off."
Nana nodded slowly.
"So JARA doesn't win the war," she said. "It opens a window."
"A window, yes," Sirani replied. "Long enough for the Donso to do the rest."
Djata took a deeper breath.
"In other words," he said, "for a moment… we impose our rhythm instead of suffering theirs."
The Nyama threads around the Faama flickered.
"That is correct, Djata," Bamba said.
Then he turned to Sirani.
"If we do not break their cadence, our strength will drain before theirs."
He made his decision.
"Sirani. Prepare JARA. You will deploy the Spiritual Venom from the front. And through the Root Network, I will carry what your squad alone cannot sustain."
A shadow crossed Famory's eyes.
"Faama, that weight will be heavy."
Bamba smiled faintly.
"That is why I am here, Famory. You wield the spears. I wield the burden."
On the gallery, Balla shifted the melody again — tighter, sharper, like a string drawn just before release.
Sirani bowed her head.
"We will join Diala's line," she said. "We'll observe one more wave. At the command signal, we deploy JARA. Not before."
Sambaké placed his large hand on the table's edge.
"When your Venom slows their insides… my heavy battalions will advance. And then we show them what it means to face Do in daylight."
Kéba Dioma allowed himself a brief smile.
"This time," he said, "they won't dictate the tempo."
Nana looked once more into the Falcon Eye, where Diala and her hunters braced for the next wave.
"Then there's only one question left," she murmured.
Bory lifted his head.
"Which is?"
Nana didn't look away.
"Whether we can hold long enough… for JARA to bite."
Beneath his feet, Djata felt the Root Network beating like a second heart.Vespera vibrated faintly at his hip, as if the blade understood that somewhere between the table and the frontline, the true rhythm of the war had just been set.