Before returning to Safuu...
SEENEE looked once more at the civil war.
Not at the generals.
Not at the people whose names would eventually enter history.
At the people history usually forgot.
In Wollega, the fields were full.
And yet people were starving.
Meti's family had worked the fertile land for generations.
Her parents had farmed it.
Their parents had farmed it.
And now she and her husband, Kenesa, were supposed to do the same.
But that season, the maize remained untouched.
It stood in the fields until it began to rot.
Every time Kenesa prepared the plow and tried to leave the house...
gunfire echoed from the nearby hills.
Sometimes it lasted minutes.
Sometimes hours.
Nobody knew when it would begin.
Nobody knew where the next bullet would land.
The choice became brutally simple.
Stay inside...
and slowly starve.
Go outside...
and possibly never return.
For days, Meti watched the food in their home disappear.
Then she watched her children's portions become smaller.
And smaller.
Until one night...
there was almost nothing left.
They fled.
No harvest.
No possessions.
No time to prepare.
Only the clothes they were wearing.
Hours later, Meti sat beneath a plastic sheet in a temporary camp far from the village she had called home.
Her children were hungry.
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But that was not the cruelest part.
The cruelest part was knowing that somewhere behind them...
their own land was full of food.
The maize existed.
The soil was fertile.
The harvest had been there.
But war had transformed their granary...
into a battlefield.
SEENEE watched.
Then his attention moved elsewhere.
Under a great Odaa tree stood an old councilman named Ifa.
Alone.
In his hand was a ceremonial staff.
A symbol of peace.
Law.
Unity.
A reminder of the Gadaa order that had existed long before the people standing around him had been born.
Then—
gunfire erupted from the forest.
Ifa closed his eyes.
He knew who was fighting.
That was what hurt most.
These were not foreign soldiers invading Odania.
They were not strangers.
They were young men who had grown from the same land.
Some wore government uniforms.
Others wore rebel field jackets.
Some of them belonged to the same communities.
Some had known each other as children.
Now they aimed weapons at one another.
Ifa remembered another time.
A time when the words of the elders could stop violence before blood touched the earth.
A time when men carrying weapons would still lower them when the right voice spoke beneath the Odaa tree.
Ifa raised his staff.
“Enough!”
His voice traveled through the trees.
The gunfire answered.
Ifa stood there silently.
His staff remained raised.
But his authority had become smaller than the sound of a rifle.
And perhaps that was the deepest wound of the civil war.
Not simply that people died.
Not simply that homes burned.
But that something once considered almost unthinkable had become ordinary.
Odania blood was being spilled by Odania hands.
The bonds that were supposed to survive disagreement...
had broken.
SEENEE looked away.
And now...
back to Safuu.
The battlefield was almost unrecognizable.
General VAREK was dead.
ZARQEN was dead.
Minister NAREV was dead.
But the true danger had finally revealed itself.
NAREZEN.
Holawaka.
The Condemned Being.
Safuu stood opposite it.
The air around her still carried the pressure of her fully manifested Origin.
Her will had become almost physical.
The ground beneath her feet trembled.
NAREZEN watched carefully.
It had waited for this.
Planned for this.
Manipulated three men toward this exact moment.
Safuu looked at NAREZEN.
Then she sighed.
“I don't have time for you.”
NAREZEN's expression changed slightly.
Safuu spoke one word.
“Now.”
Two voices answered behind her.
“As you wish, our Queen.”
Safuu turned her back on NAREZEN.
NAREZEN moved immediately.
There would be no dramatic pause.
No conversation.
No opportunity for Safuu to finish what she was doing.
Because NAREZEN knew something the others did not.
Safuu's full Origin was still manifested.
And if she was allowed to deactivate it now...
NAREZEN's plan would collapse.
It could not allow that.
NAREZEN crossed the distance.
Its hand moved toward Safuu.
Then—
a silent flash split reality.
A portal cracked open.
Something stepped through.
NAREZEN stopped.
A man stood between them.
The first knight.
Armor covered his body.
But it was not forged from ordinary metal.
It looked as though falling stars had been captured, broken apart and forged around him.
Fragments of light moved across its surface.
In his hand was a spear.
The weapon vibrated.
Not with heat.
Not with electricity.
With something that felt like law itself.
Order.
Balance.
The knight lowered the spear toward NAREZEN.
He was known by a title older than many of the systems now governing Odania.
THE RIGHTEOUS FIRSTBORN.
The Knight of the Spear.
He had not come for glory.
He had not come to be remembered.
He had come because something had disturbed the balance.
His spear struck the ground.
The battlefield trembled.
His voice followed.
“We are certain of our judgment.”
NAREZEN stared at him.
The knight continued.
“You have violated the balance.”
The spear began vibrating harder.
“And now...
judgment has fallen.”
NAREZEN moved.
But before it could reach Safuu from another direction—
the earth beneath the battlefield cracked.
Not from destruction.
From growth.
Ancient black roots exploded from the ground.
They twisted around one another.
Thicker.
Higher.
Faster.
Until they formed the shape of another person.
A woman stepped from between them.
The second knight.
She carried a shield unlike anything on the battlefield.
Its surface looked like ancient bark.
Odaa.
Not an imitation.
Not decoration.
Something connected to the sacred tree itself.
The shield represented something older than the battle around them.
Truth.
Law.
Memory.
Roots.
She stood beside the first knight.
THE GUARDIAN OF THE ROOTS.
The Knight of the Sacred Odaa Tree.
The roots beneath her spread through the ruined ground.
They passed beneath blood.
Beneath broken weapons.
Beneath the bodies left by the civil war.
But they did not attack.
They held.
Protected.
Remembered.
NAREZEN looked toward Safuu again.
The second knight raised her shield.
Her voice came like an echo carried through generations.
“You tried to bury our Queen once.”
The black roots rose behind her.
“But you forgot something.”
She stepped forward.
“Roots do not disappear because you bury them.”
The earth shook.
“They drink from something deeper.”
Safuu continued walking away.
She did not look back.
Behind her stood the two royal knights.
The Knight of the Spear raised his weapon.
The Guardian of the Roots raised her shield.
NAREZEN stared at them.
For the first time since revealing itself...
the path toward Safuu was blocked.
Two knights.
One Queen.
And a plan that could collapse if NAREZEN lost even a little more time.
NAREZEN moved.
The two knights moved with it.
And the battle began.