The ground did not tremble.
The sky did not warn.
The world of Ayesha simply knew.
Something monstrous was coming.
The Ikanbi did not come for war.
They came to erase.
Ben stood at the head of the western column, eyes black with calm, shoulders loose as if he were taking a walk through his forge. But there was nothing gentle in his step. Behind him: Kael and a wall of warriors, their breath shallow, their silence violent.
To the east, Mala led her force—Jaron and Enru at her side, flanked by disciplined killers. Not a single order was spoken. They already knew the mission.
Burn everything. Kill everything. Leave nothing that breathes.
This was not retaliation.
This was correction.
Twa Milhoms walked in two places, splitting his form across the forested expanse of Ayesha. One stride behind Ben. One behind Mala. No words from the god. No divine commands. His presence was permission enough.
And in that moment, all of creation recognized him as death incarnate.
The Moo's Blood Tribe was first.
They were not caught off guard.
They were not unprepared.
But preparation meant nothing.
Ben didn't send scouts ahead. He was the warning.
A child was the first to see them. She opened her mouth to scream—her head rolled before sound escaped. A warrior rushed forward and found only her body twitching, eyes frozen in fear.
Then the massacre began.
Kael tore through bone huts like parchment. One swing—three bodies cleaved together. Mothers trying to flee with infants were crushed under sharpened iron. A group of elders raised their arms to surrender. Kael did not even look—he chopped through them like vines.
Ben walked into the central hut of their god-priest.
There were seven children inside.
He locked the door.
He lit the fire.
He stood outside until the screaming stopped.
Mala burned the nurseries.
Enru slaughtered every runner.
Jaron impaled six warriors on the same spear.
They didn't kill out of cruelty.
They killed because this was the law of Ayesha.
If you attack Ikanbi—you forfeit your right to exist.
The gods of the Moo's Blood and Reb Gang tribes watched.
They felt the presence of Twa Milhoms, and they recoiled.
They had pushed their people to feed their own power.
Now they could do nothing but watch their flesh be devoured.
Twa Milhoms did not roar.
He did not rage.
He simply walked—
—and the souls of the dead followed him.
The rivers ran red.
Smoke danced above trees like ghosts.
The smell of blood was so thick the birds choked and died mid-flight.
Pregnant women were gutted and left to rot.
Infants were nailed to trees as warnings.
Fathers who begged were broken in front of their sons, then the sons killed too.
There were no prisoners.
There were no screams for long.
Only the sound of meat being split and bone being shattered.
When they reached the Reb Gang tribe, there was no resistance.
Only hiding.
It didn't matter.
The Shadow Blades had already mapped every underground hole and escape tunnel.
Jaron lit them with fire.
Kael smoked them out.
Ben sealed the entrances and burned everything inside.
It took three hours to kill an entire civilization.
And when the last survivor was dragged out—a blind elder with no teeth—Ben looked him in the eyes.
"You were born in the wrong tribe."
Then the blade fell.
The blood had not dried.
The ash still clung to bone and burnt flesh.
The tribes were no more—bodies left where they fell, smoking in silence.
But Twa Milhoms was not finished.
He raised his hand, fingers spread wide toward the sky, and the wind halted.
Then, without a word, he reached into the void—beyond flesh, beyond spirit, into the blackened space where only gods dared dwell.
The skies above tore.
A tear—silent, cosmic, and absolute—split the air above the massacre.
Two shapes were ripped from it.
The gods of the Moo's Blood and Reb Gang tribes were not monstrous in size, nor radiant in divinity. They were like bloated shadows stitched in bone and rot. Wriggling limbs of starved hunger. Half-mad eyes. They screamed not words, but instinct—the sound of predators knowing they had been hunted in turn.
They did not bow.
They did not beg.
They tried to run.
Twa Milhoms watched.
Then crushed one with a single grip, bones snapping like reeds beneath a heel. The other fled in a blur of ancient speed—
—but Ben moved.
One step. One slash.
The fleeing god was cut in half. Not down the middle. Across the soul.
It took no more than ten seconds.
Two gods. Two executions.
No warning. No forgiveness.
As their divine remains faded into smoke and bone dust, Twa Milhoms turned to his warriors.
"Now," he said. "It is finished."
Ben looked once at the pyre of two tribes. Then turned away.
"Ikanbi marches home."
And all of Ayesha trembled.
The fire was gone.
Only silence walked beside the Ikanbian warriors as they returned—step after step through blackened soil, ash-touched skin, and the weight of loss.
Twelve had fallen.
For the first time since its birth, Ikanbi had lost warriors in battle.
They were not weak.
They had not hesitated.
They fought until their last breath was spent cracking ribs and tearing throats.
Their bodies were carried home—not like burdens, but like kings.
Ben led the procession, his eyes forward, the blood of gods still drying on his arms. Behind him, Kael and Mala held the stone-marked shields of two who had died under their command. Jaron, grim and silent, supported a younger warrior's wrapped corpse. Enru carried the smallest—barely a three-ring—his jaw clenched to the point of shattering.
There was no music.
No chant.
No drums.
Just the hush of a tribe in mourning.
At the edge of Ikanbi, where the ground touched the sky, Ben chose the place. Stone by stone, earth was cleared and hollowed. Each body was wrapped in fiber cloth. Their markings preserved, their weapons placed across their chest.
Sema carved their names.
Mia brought food, but no one ate.
Children sat in silence beside mothers who had never spoken a prayer. Even the animals did not make a sound.
And when the twelfth body was lowered, Ben knelt and whispered something no one else heard.
Then, Twa Milhoms appeared.
Not in thunder. Not in fire.
He stood beside the first grave, barefoot, without weapon or cloak. He raised one hand.
And the ground beneath each body turned warm, the way old firestones remember flame. A gentle heat that would never cool—a divine mark to keep them from decay.
"They are not lost," the god said. "They are claimed."
He looked to the tribe—not as a god above men, but as one who had fought beside them.
"Let their blood be the stone upon which Ikanbi stands forever."
The people raised no cry.
They lowered their heads in solemn unity, hands over hearts, over ring marks, over the quiet places where grief rested.
From that day forward, the edge of Ikanbi bore its first sacred site—the warrior's line, a burial ground reserved only for those who gave their life in true battle.
A new rule was whispered through the tribe: "To die for Ikanbi is to live forever in its stone."
And beneath that sky, the people believed more fiercely than ever—in Ikanbi, in the warriors who defended it, and in the god who now walked among them not as myth, but as death's rival.