Vines burst from the soil like snakes made of sinew and bark, coiling with impossible speed.
Zaruko ducked the first, severed the second midair with a single slash, and twisted to block the third. It cracked against his blade like stone.
The Emissary didn't move.
He simply watched.
From the clearing's edge, Maela shouted, "Behind you!"
Zaruko dropped, rolled, and came up swinging. His blade cut a vine in half—and watched as it healed instantly, thorn-tipped ends writhing back together like muscle.
"He doesn't bleed," Zaruko thought. "He grows."
He jumped back, shifting tactics.
Iron wouldn't win this alone.
Around him, the warriors engaged with thorns that moved like men — twisting vines with half-formed faces, their mouths full of sap and whispers. Spears bounced uselessly off the bark. One archer loosed three arrows straight into a torso — and the thing just laughed, vines splitting and reforming around the shaft.
One warrior fell screaming, his legs wrapped in briars that pierced through skin, injecting venom.
Zaruko saw Maela strike low, her blade glowing faintly red from a recent blessing, cutting one vine-thing clean in half.
But for every one they cut down, two more rose.
Zaruko's arm burned.
He looked down.
The sigil was changing.
It pulsed red — deeper, brighter. A second ring formed around the first. Inside that ring, new markings spiraled outward in Ogou's sacred script — a language never written in Ayeshe.
He dropped to one knee.
Not from pain.
From pressure.
It felt like a forge had ignited beneath his ribs. His lungs burned. His blood hissed. The mark wasn't just glowing.
It was boiling.
"You are not only a blade. You are the flame that sharpens others."
Ogou's voice came not from the air — but from within.
Zaruko stood.
His blade, once steel-grey, now shimmered with crimson light, as if fire licked just beneath the metal's skin.
He exhaled — and sparks escaped his breath.
The Emissary finally moved.
He stepped down from the stump with unnatural grace, feet not quite touching the earth. His arms stretched outward.
"Show me," he said.
Zaruko did.
He lunged — not like a man, but like a weapon let loose.
The two clashed.
Vine met flame.
And for the first time — the thorns recoiled.
The Emissary blinked in surprise. His body twisted as he countered with a flurry of black vines, each tipped with hardened thorn-spikes. Zaruko dodged, slashed, burned through them with new precision. Wherever his blade touched, the vines shriveled and turned to ash.
Ogou was fighting through him.
And the world knew it.
The warriors fell back, forming a ring, watching as the battlefield changed shape. The vines stopped growing. The air grew hot, dry — as if the breath of a forge had spread into the woods.
The Emissary hissed.
"You brought something foreign into sacred soil."
Zaruko answered with his blade.
Steel met sap.
The sigil flared again — and this time, so did the clearing.
A ring of fire erupted from beneath Zaruko's feet, forcing back the vine-men, searing the grass. Trees caught flame — but did not burn. Instead, they stood motionless, bathed in a red glow as Ogou claimed the space.
"You forge a new land."
"You shape it with fire and discipline."
"But fire must be fed."
Zaruko pressed the advantage, striking faster than before. His blade was no longer just metal — it hummed with Ogou's blessing, with every strike branding the land with divine purpose.
The Emissary tried to retreat into his vines.
But the vines began to wither.
One by one.
Burning from the inside out.
Zaruko chased him through the clearing, each swing cutting paths through plant and curse alike.
The Emissary stumbled, vines retreating.
"You cannot survive here. Your god is not welcome!"
Zaruko stopped five feet from him, blade at the ready.
"No one welcomed me. I made my place. Ogou made his claim."
He raised the weapon.
And the Emissary raised his hand.
A blast of thorn-shards exploded outward — but the fire caught them midair, turning each into dust.
Zaruko lunged forward one last time, and drove the hilt of his blade into the Emissary's chest.
Not killing.
But branding.
The sigil of Ogou burned into the Emissary's flesh.
He screamed.
The vines snapped like bones.
And then he vanished — pulled backward into the trees by unseen roots, screaming curses, leaving only a trail of blackened footprints behind.
The fire ring died.
The air cooled.
And silence returned.
Zaruko turned back toward his warriors.
Maela looked stunned.
She had seen many things — magic, war, blood — but not this.
Not divinity made real.
Zaruko's blade dimmed. The sigil faded back to its resting glow.
He staggered — not from wounds, but from the aftershock of Ogou's power coursing through him.
Maela caught him.
"You… you scorched the clearing."
Zaruko shook his head.
"No. He did. I just held the sword."
They returned to the camp at nightfall.
The others stared in awe as the group arrived — covered in ash, their leader marked anew.
Some fell to their knees.
Others whispered.
But Zaruko said nothing.
He washed his blade, sat by the fire, and looked at the sigil on his arm.
One ring had become two.
And within it now lay a small triangle, etched in fire.
The forge is lit.
The god is watching.
And war has come to Ayeshe.