Zeila was finally breathing again. The ports were louder, the storerooms fuller, and the smell of frankincense rolled through the streets like the place had woken from a long sleep. Kafi watched it all from the shaded balcony of the governor's residence, arms crossed, pretending he wasn't an 11-year-old who'd somehow convinced grown men to trust him with ships, money, and plans too big for the century he lived in.
The elders called him "gifted."
Merchants called him "lucky."
Only Kafi knew the truth.
He wasn't lucky. He was prepared.
While the new trade ships filled the bay, and caravans rolled in and out carrying incense, hides, salt, and coffee plants he insisted on experimenting with, Kafi kept listening. Every merchant arriving from the Swahili coast brought stories. Some were exaggerated. Some were useless. But occasionally, something caught his attention.
Today, it came from an old dhow captain named Bwana Nuru. The man had sailed everywhere from Lamu to Kilwa and treated every tale like a coin to spend.
He leaned in close.
"There is a land far inland," he said, voice low. "Forests that swallow the sky. Rivers so wide you could launch your ship on them. Ivory like you've never seen. Copper in the ground. And villages untouched by any sultan or crown."
Kafi kept his face still, though inside, the information lit up his mind like sparks on dry grass.
"Where is this?" he asked. Casual tone. No excitement. Just curiosity.
"West," Nuru said. "Past the Great Lakes. A place the old caravans call Kongo. No single king. No empire. Just people, land, and more wealth than anyone knows how to use."
The elders behind Kafi chuckled.
"Old man, you've had too much palm wine. The interior is madness. Jungles and spirits."
But Kafi was not laughing.
He already saw the image forming.
Not of conquest. Not yet.
Trade routes pushing inland.
Caravans linking the Horn to the heart of Africa.
A network stronger than any kingdom around him.
A future where Africa lifted itself before outsiders ever dreamed of carving it up.
It wasn't nationalism in his mind. It was pride.
A sense that his continent didn't have to wait for someone else's permission to rise.
After the meeting, he slipped away to his study room. A map lay open on the floor, hand-drawn and uneven. He knelt beside it, marking the Red Sea, Zeila, the Swahili coast, the lakes, and finally the deep green shape of the central forest.
"Not now," he whispered to himself.
"Trade first. Connections first. The foundation comes before the tower."
He tapped the map where Congo should be.
"One day."
Outside, Zeila's harbor roared with life. Workers loaded incense into crates. Sailors shouted orders. Coffee seedlings waited in baskets, ready to be planted in the highlands. The empire wasn't built yet. But the first threads of a web reaching across the continent were forming.
And in that moment, even though he was just a boy, Kafi felt something tighten inside him.
Something determined.
Something vast.
He wasn't just reborn.
He was rebuilding.