The village of Umu-Oka had not heard the thunder-drums of the High Priest in three hundred years.
For three centuries, the Great God Amadioha had remained a silent shadow in the clouds, a terrifying memory etched into the red earth and the scorched trunks of Iroko trees. The elders spoke of him in whispers, if they spoke of him at all. He was the King of the Heavens, the Judge of the Skies, but to the mothers of the village, he was the Bogeyman,the one who drank the screams of the dying and wore the intestines of the wicked as a belt of gory triumph.
It was into this fragile peace that Adadiogo was born.
The night was unusually still. Not a leaf stirred. The air was thick, suffocatingly humid, smelling of parched dust and the metallic tang of an approaching storm that refused to break. Inside the small, mud-walled hut of Nnanna and Ugomma, the scent of birth-blood and sweat filled the room.
For ten agonizing years, Ugomma's womb had been a graveyard. Ten years of barrenness, of bitter herbs, of sacrifices at the crossroads, and of the stinging pity of her neighbors. But tonight, the gods had finally yielded.
With a final, earth shattering scream from Ugomma, the silence of the night was broken by a high, piercing wail.
Adadiogo had arrived.
Nnanna, a man of iron and earth, fell to his knees. He didn't care for the tradition that men should remain stoic. He wept. He reached out with trembling, calloused hands to touch the tiny, slick forehead of the daughter he had waited a decade to hold.
"My miracle," he whispered, his voice cracking. "My Adadiogo."
But the gods do not give gifts without a price.
The first cry of the infant had barely reached the rafters of the hut when the atmosphere changed. The stillness wasn't just broken; it was shattered. A low hum began to vibrate through the floorboards, a deep, resonant frequency that made the water in the clay pots ripple in perfect circle
Then came the sound
Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.
It was the staff of the High Priest of Amadioha.
Nnanna's blood turned to ice. That sound belonged to the history books, to the nightmares of the ancestors. No High Priest had walked the village paths since the great-grandfathers of the current elders were in loincloths.
The heavy wooden door of the hut didn't open, it seemed to bow inward as if the very air outside was pushing against it with the weight of a mountain. Nnanna stood, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He stepped outside into the moonlight, and the sight that met him stole the breath from his lungs.
Standing at the foot of their doorstep was the High Priest. He was a man who looked more like an ancient spirit than a human. His skin was coated in white chalk and wood ash, and his eyes were rolled back, showing only the terrifying whites. In his hand, he held the Staff of the Bolt, a gnarled piece of wood that glowed with a faint, unnatural blue light.
The Priest did not speak with a human tongue. When he opened his mouth, the sound that emerged was the roar of a distant landslide.
"The Sky has seen its reflection," the Priest intoned, his voice vibrating in Nnanna's teeth. "The King has found His bride. She who is born of ten years of silence shall be the voice of the Thunder."
He reached out and, with a movement faster than a snake's strike, pressed a finger to the air. He didn't even touch the ground, yet a scorched mark appeared on the threshold of the house, a brand of ownership.
"Adadiogo," the Priest whispered, the name sounding like a death knell. "The Chosen of Amadioha. She belongs to the Heavens. Touch her not with the intentions of men, for the King comes to collect His own."
Then, as quickly as the wind shifts, the Priest was gone. The heavy, pressurized air vanished, leaving behind only the smell of ozone and a terrified silence.
Inside the hut, the joy of birth died a violent death.
Ugomma's wail began low, a gutteral moan of a wounded animal, before it rose into a shriek that could be heard for miles. She clutched the newborn to her chest, her tears falling hot and fast onto the baby's soft skin.
"Not my daughter!" she screamed, her body rocking back and forth. "Anyone but Him! Let her be blind, let her be lame, let her be a beggar but do not give her to the Devourer!"
Nnanna slumped against the doorframe, his face buried in his hands. He knew the stories. Every child in Umu-Oka knew them.
Amadioha was not a gentle god. He was the one said to eat babies as soon as they were pushed from the womb, his hunger for purity never satisfied. The elders whispered that he was the ugliest of all the spirits, a titan with eyes so red they appeared blackened by the soot of a thousand fires, and horns so massive they scraped the very edges of his celestial kingdom. They said his skin was like charred meat and his breath was the smoke of a dying forest.
And now, this monster had claimed his daughter.
"A plaything," Nnanna choked out through his tears. "She is to be a collection. A trophy for a god who wears the intestines of men as adornments."
As the hours passed, the news spread through Umu-Oka like a wildfire in the harmattan. The pity that had once been directed at Ugomma for her barrenness shifted into something far more toxic: fear.
The neighbors who had come to bring yams and palm wine for the new mother stopped at the edge of the compound. They looked at the scorched mark on the doorstep and turned away, whispering prayers to protect their own children from the "Cursed Bride."
By the time the sun rose, the girl who was supposed to be the pride of her father's house had become a pariah.
She was the "Chosen," the "Sacred," the "Cursed."
Adadiogo slept on, unaware that her first breath had been a declaration of war between the earth and the sky.