Part I: The Echo That Devours
The creatures fell like waves—bone-thin arms and sigil-scarred flesh lunging with silent fury. Zion moved through them with a dancer's precision and a warrior's rage, his blade singing with the weight of three gods' blessings.
Yet they didn't bleed—they unraveled.
With each strike, they came apart like ash soaked in memory, their forms dissipating into the air only to be reborn behind him.
"They're not alive," Zion muttered. "They're tethered."
His third sigil—granted in the Temple—lit with a pulse of light. The world around him flickered. For one breath, Zion saw them not as twisted worshipers but souls chained to something beneath the land.
Something ancient and awake.
Then it moved.
The ground cracked. The altar splintered. Not from impact—but from pressure beneath, like something breathing up through the dirt.
Zion's body went still.
A massive eye—no pupil, only shifting glyphs—opened under the earth.
Not watching him.
Remembering him.
Part II: Nouvo Lakay — The Breathing Gate
At the Temple, Elis fell to her knees. Blood dripped from her nose. Ayomi reached to steady her, but the floor beneath them shuddered.
The Gate—Papa Legba's great lock—flashed white, then dimmed to black.
"He's touched something forbidden," Ayomi said, voice strained. "Something older than memory."
Thalia and Ayola led warriors to form a sacred perimeter around the Temple. No one crossed. No one spoke without purpose.
The sky had changed—colors dimmed, the clouds no longer moved. Even the wind had fallen silent.
Sael whispered to Erzulie's altar.
"If he breaks," she said, "do we still stand?"
Part III: The Heart of Hunger
Zion stood at the edge of the crater that used to be the altar.
The creatures were gone.
The eye had vanished.
Only silence remained—and a single stone, freshly risen from the earth. On its surface: an unknown sigil. Not carved. Grown.
He approached and touched it.
A vision struck:
A god eaten, not killed.
Its essence stolen, not destroyed.
And the thief… not a god, but something that feeds on them.
He staggered back.
"This… isn't corruption," he breathed. "It's predation."
Part IV: The Decision
As night fell in Nouvo Lakay, the Temple doors burst open.
Zion stood there, covered in dust and blood.
He said nothing.
He handed the strange sigil stone to Ayomi.
"Lock it beneath the Gate," he said. "And double the guard. We don't just need to defend the world from what's out there—we need to stop what's out there from getting in here."