The first rule the Snake Mother taught Chukwudi was this:
> When gods begin to hunt gods, children bleed first.
---
She came to him at the border of a dead land where nothing cast a shadow.
The air thickened, scales whispering beneath skin, and the earth bowed before her presence. Chukwudi felt her before he saw her—the familiar pressure in his chest, like the ground remembering his name.
"Mother," he said, rising.
She was not fully human now.
Her eyes no longer blinked. Her shadow coiled even when she stood still. The grass beneath her feet darkened, poisoned by ancient memory.
"You have been heard," she said. "By things that should not know your name."
Chukwudi swallowed. "The red woman."
Idemili Ọbara.
The Snake Mother's jaw tightened.
"Yes," she said. "She has sent her hunger ahead of her."
---
They did not have long.
The first vessel arrived at sunset.
He came limping from the west, a man stitched together by charms and old scars, his mouth smiling while his eyes screamed. Cowries were sewn into his flesh. His shadow moved backward.
He bowed low.
"Child of soil," the man said, voice layered with another beneath it, "our mother calls."
Chukwudi stepped back.
The Snake Mother lifted her hand.
The earth did not kill the man.
It opened him.
His skin peeled like wet bark. A red-scaled thing burst from his chest, shrieking as it tried to flee.
The Snake Mother crushed it between her fingers.
"Tell Idemili," she hissed into the dissolving flesh, "that this child is not hers."
The ground drank the remains.
---
That night, Chukwudi learned what he truly was.
Not chosen.
Forged.
They traveled beneath the earth, through tunnels that pulsed like veins. The Snake Mother pressed her palm to stone and the ground softened, swallowing them whole.
"Listen," she commanded.
Chukwudi closed his eyes.
He heard bones dreaming.
He heard rivers remembering blood.
He heard unborn things crying in the dark.
"You do not command the earth," she said. "You negotiate with it."
She cut her palm with a claw and pressed it to his chest.
Pain exploded.
The serpent mark burned like fire.
"Speak," she ordered.
Chukwudi screamed.
The ground answered.
A mountain miles away cracked open.
---
They found the others at the place where the world had once broken.
Children.
Six of them.
Each wrong in a different way.
A girl whose tears turned into ash.
A boy whose reflection aged instead of him.
Twins who spoke only in whispers from graves.
A child with no shadow at all.
Cursed.
Abandoned.
Feared.
They stared at Chukwudi with eyes too old for their faces.
"You hear her too," the shadowless one said.
"The earth," Chukwudi replied softly.
The Snake Mother watched them, sorrow flickering through her monstrous calm.
"These are the debts of gods," she said. "And Idemili will come for them."
As if summoned by her words, the sky bled.
---
Idemili Ọbara did not arrive alone.
She came riding human bodies.
Villagers. Hunters. Missionaries.
Their eyes were red. Their mouths chanted in unison:
"Ọbara! Ọbara! Ọbara!"
Blood rose from the ground like mist.
Idemili stepped from it—tall, radiant, terrible. Her coils dragged rivers behind her. Her smile split the night.
"Sister," she purred to the Snake Mother, "you grew sentimental."
"You grew greedy," came the reply.
The earth screamed as the alụsị collided.
Roots shattered mountains. Rivers reversed. Children covered their ears as reality tore.
Chukwudi felt the pull.
Idemili turned to him, eyes burning.
"Come to me," she whispered. "I will make you king of what crawls."
The cursed children screamed as blood-snakes slithered toward them.
Chukwudi stepped forward.
"No," he said.
He placed his hands on the ground.
And for the first time—
The earth did not answer alone.
It answered through him.
---
The land rose.
Not to destroy.
But to choose.
Idemili recoiled, laughing even as her vessels burned.
"Oh, little god," she hissed. "You have learned too quickly."
She sank back into blood and shadow.
But not before promising—
"This war has only begun."
Silence followed.
The cursed children stared at Chukwudi in awe and terror.
The Snake Mother looked at her son.
And for the first time since his birth—
She bowed.