That night, she did not offer him prayers from a book. She offered him a technology. To disarm a trap, she said, you must first see its mechanism.
She sat him on the worn floorboards, a single white candle flame dancing between them. Close your eyes, Marcus. Breathe. See your blood not as a list of names, but as a river of light flowing back through time.
He resisted, the cynicism of the street a hard shell around his spirit. Then, he let go. Darkness. Then, flickers. He saw his father, a photograph come to life, a man whose eyes were always looking for an exit. He saw his grandfather, a monument of bitterness sitting in a stale room, the air sour with wine and regret. Then, further back, a man he did not know—his great-grandfather, Elijah. He stood on the porch of a shack, his powerful hands, meant for building and nurturing, were clenched into useless fists at his sides. The air around him vibrated with a profound, impotent shame. A protector who could not protect. A provider who could not provide. The man's head was bowed, not in prayer, but under a weight that was meant to break him.
I see you, Marcus whispered, the words a fracture in his own armor. I acknowledge your pain.
The vision tore open. He was no longer an observer; he was in it. The stench of vomit and despair, the groaning of a ship's timbers, the cold press of naked bodies. A lash cracked against his back, and the pain was a white-hot brand of humiliation. He was running, his heart a frantic drum, the baying of hounds a promise of death at his heels. The terror was not his, the rage was not his, but they lived in him, coded into the very helix of his being, a frequency of pain passed down like a cursed inheritance. He saw the dormant oath, a vow signed in the blood of the un-mourned: I will never be powerless again. And he saw, with horrifying clarity, that every fight, every act of dominance, every bullet he had ever fired, was not his own will, but the compulsive reenactment of that ancient, unhealed script. He was not a man making choices. He was an echo.
He opened his eyes, tears carving clean paths through the grime of the street on his face. It is a loop, he rasped, his voice raw. A wheel. We are all just spinning.
Mama Ayo's nod was a slow, deep current. The ritual was broken. The death was never made sacred. The spirit was never given water to guide it home. So it stays, a hungry ghost, and it finds a new throat to scream through. Your throat.
She led him in the Bloodline Re-Tuning Ritual. With a bowl of sea salt, sharp and clean, and a glass of clear water, he stood as a bridge between the wound and the healing. I revoke the dormant oaths, he declared, his voice finding a timber of sovereignty he did not know he possessed. I dissolve the contracts of shame and rage. I cancel the debts I did not incur. As he spoke, he felt a subtle, profound unclenching in his spirit, a chain he had carried since birth falling away, link by rusted link.
But the sickness was not only within. The land itself was wounded. Mama Ayo took him to the corner where he had taken a life. The air was a stagnant pool, heavy with a grief that was decades old. She called it a necromantic vein, a ley line of unresolved anguish running beneath the city's concrete skin.
This ground is a ledger, she murmured, handing him a bottle of clean water. It remembers every cry, every drop of blood. It is thirsty for a different kind of prayer.
He walked the perimeter of the vacant lot, a cemetery of broken glass and discarded futures. As he poured the water onto the cracked, thirsty concrete, he spoke to the spirits of the place, his voice a low murmur. I honor your presence. I acknowledge your pain. I offer this cleansing to soothe the memory of blood. He visualized the water not as liquid, but as a wave of brilliant, high-frequency blue light, washing through the dark, tangled energies, dissolving the old curses. For a single, suspended moment, the oppressive weight lifted, and the air felt lighter, almost breathable.