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After Umu-Ọchịchịrị vanished, the world did not end.
It remembered.
---
Chukwudi walked alone.
No path guided his feet, yet the earth always knew where to carry him. Grass bent before he stepped. Stones shifted aside. Thorns curled away like frightened insects.
He was nine years old.
He had no village.
No father.
No name spoken without fear.
Behind him, the forest sealed itself, swallowing the last traces of Umu-Ọchịchịrị. Ahead lay cursed lands—abandoned farms, broken shrines, places where the earth had once drunk too much blood.
The wind whispered as he walked.
"Nwa ala… Child of the earth."
Chukwudi covered his ears.
"Leave me alone," he muttered.
The earth did not answer.
It listened.
---
The first people he met were hunters.
Five of them, armed with dane guns and charms tied with red cloth. They had followed rumors—of a child who walked out of a dead village, of snakes that bowed, of ground that swallowed men whole.
They found him by a dry riverbed, crouched and drinking water with his hands.
One hunter spat.
"That is him."
Another loaded his gun, hands shaking. "He is small."
"All curses begin small," the leader replied. "Shoot."
The gun fired.
The bullet struck Chukwudi's chest.
And fell.
It hit the ground with a dull sound and rolled to a stop.
Silence.
Chukwudi stared at the men, eyes wide—not angry, not glowing.
Just tired.
"I didn't do anything to you," he said quietly.
The ground cracked beneath the hunters' feet.
Snakes burst from the dry earth, wrapping around legs, climbing chests, sliding into mouths.
Screams tore the air.
"Tụfuo egbe! Drop the gun!"
"Ala ewere anyi! The earth has taken us!"
Chukwudi turned away.
When he left, the riverbed was quiet again.
Too quiet.
---
Word spread faster than harmattan fire.
They called him many names.
Nwa-ala – Child of the Earth
Agwọ Mmụọ – Spirit Snake
Ụmụaka chi ọjọọ – Demon Child
Soon came the missionaries.
They wore white and carried crosses that burned the air when they prayed. They said the land was cursed and that the boy was the root of it.
One night, they surrounded him as he slept beneath an iroko tree.
"By the blood of Jesus—"
The ground screamed.
The tree's roots rose like arms and snapped necks cleanly.
Chukwudi woke to blood soaking the soil.
He vomited.
"Stop," he whispered to the earth. "Please."
The ground stilled.
He fell to his knees and cried for the first time since his village died.
---
That was when she felt it.
Far away, beyond rivers and iron hills, something ancient stirred beneath a forgotten shrine.
Idemili Ọbara.
The Red Serpent of Flowing Blood.
A rival alụsị.
She had slept while the Snake Mother guarded balance alone. But now the earth had chosen a son, and that power rippled through the spirit world like a drumbeat.
Idemili Ọbara smiled beneath the ground.
"So," she hissed, "she has broken the law."
---
That night, Chukwudi dreamed again.
But this dream was not his.
He stood on a river of blood. The sky was red. The trees were stripped of leaves and flesh hung from their branches.
A woman rose from the river.
Her body was beautiful.
Her shadow was endless coils soaked in blood.
"Child," she said sweetly, "your mother has grown weak."
Chukwudi shook his head.
"You are lying."
The woman laughed, and the river screamed with her.
"She bound herself to one land," Idemili Ọbara whispered. "I will bind the world."
She reached for him.
Chukwudi screamed—
And the earth answered violently.
---
Far away, the Snake Woman opened her eyes.
Her scales rattled.
"Idemili," she whispered.
The war of the alụsị had begun.
And Chukwudi stood at its center—
a child-god wandering lands that no longer dared to forget.