The water embraced her like an old lover.
Amarachi knelt waist-deep in the River Elu, the sacred river that curled through Ugbene like a living serpent. Its current whispered against her skin, lapping at her thighs and belly, tugging at the indigo cloth wrapped low around her hips. Her bare back shimmered in the moonlight, carved with sigils passed down through blood and flame. They pulsed now, humming softly beneath her skin, alive with ancestral fire.
Above her, the stars blinked—silent, watchful witnesses to her birthright.
She moved slowly, rhythmically, raising her arms in measured arcs, palms open. Every motion was a prayer. Every breath, an offering.
Her voice rose in a low chant—ancient words taught to her by her mother and her mother's mother, passed down like secret rivers. The incantation was not for humans to hear. It was for the ones who walked between worlds. The ones who had chosen her.
The river began to shimmer. Not just with light—but with presence.
Spirits.
They emerged from the water in ripples and mist. Pale, translucent figures. Some bore masks of fire. Others were shadows with burning eyes. Some were ancestors, and some were older than memory.
They circled her.
"You have seen him," the spirits said, speaking as one.
Amarachi did not open her eyes. "Yes. He has come."
"You are the flame. He is the wind. The Codex stirs."
"I know," she whispered.
They circled closer. The air thickened.
"One path brings death. One brings salvation. He must choose."
Amarachi's hands faltered. "And if he chooses wrong?"
A silence stretched like a blade.
"Then you will burn."
She opened her eyes. The river churned around her, the water now glowing faintly blue. Above, the trees bent as if bowing. The moon hid behind a shroud of cloud.
"He has already seen me," she said, more to herself than to them. "He saw me before he came."
"Yes," the spirits replied. "Because his soul is not untouched. He has been marked before this life. And you… have known him."
Amarachi's heart thudded. A memory surfaced—sharp and blinding—of another time, another place. A pale hand reaching through fire. A kiss beneath stormlight. A death that felt too familiar.
"What is this?" she breathed.
"A cycle," they replied. "And you are near its end."
The river surged. Lightning cracked in the far distance. And then the spirits vanished, drawn back into the water as suddenly as they'd come.
Amarachi stood, the cloth clinging to her soaked body, her chest heaving with the weight of truths too old to bear. She felt exposed—raw—yet something within her had awakened. Her eyes burned with unshed tears and unspoken fury.
She looked toward the path that led to the village and knew he was watching.
Alaric.
The man of her visions. The man the gods had whispered about. The one who stirred something in her far more dangerous than desire:
Hope.
She turned, slowly walking from the river, the moonlight painting silver lines down her wet skin, the sigils along her spine flickering like dying stars.
Behind her, the river spoke one last time, barely a whisper:
"Guard your heart, daughter of fire… for it is the first thing they will try to take."