The first sensation was the cold. It was not the clean, sharp cold of high atmospheric plains where he had once dueled a rival wind spirit, nor the bracing chill of a celestial river. This was a sodden, invasive cold that seeped up from the waterlogged earth, through the thin, ruined fabric of his tunic, and into the very marrow of his bones. It was a cold that spoke of mortality, of vulnerability, and it was this, more than the agony in his side, that dragged Amadioha back to consciousness.
He lay on his back, eyes closed against a darkness punctuated by the relentless drumming of rain on a canopy of leaves. Each drop was a tiny, cold hammer against the broad, tropical foliage above—pat-pat-pat-tat—a rhythm that was both chaotic and monotonous. The smell was a thick, organic soup: the loamy perfume of wet, decaying leaves, the sharp tang of petrichor rising from the churned soil, and beneath it all, the coppery, unmistakable scent of his own blood.
He tried to move, and a lightning bolt of pure, white-hot pain lanced from his right side, arcing through his entire body and locking his jaw so tight he thought his teeth might shatter. A groan, ragged and utterly foreign, escaped his lips. It was a weak, pathetic sound, swallowed by the forest's aqueous cacophony.
Where is my armor? The thought was a flicker in the storm of his confusion. The divine, sun-forged iron, etched with the lightning sigils of his station, that should have been fused to his skin—it was gone. In its place was a simple, coarse linen tunic, now soaked through and plastered to his skin, offering less protection than a spider's web. He ran a trembling hand over his chest, feeling the hard plane of his pectoral, the ridge of his ribs. Bare, human, fragile.
His gaze, blurred with pain and rain, drifted downward to the wound. Just below his ribcage, a dark, ugly stain bloomed on the wet linen. It was not the clean, cauterized mark of a energy blast, but a ragged tear, a puncture. A wound made by crude, physical force. He remembered… a spear? A wooden spear, tipped with jagged obsidian, wielded by a shrieking, painted mortal whose eyes burned with a faith that was not his own. The memory was a shard of glass in his mind. It should have been impossible. That spear should have shattered against his divine aura like kindling against granite.
Ignoring the fresh wave of nausea, Amadioha, God of Thunder and Lord of the Sky, focused his will. He reached inward, to the core of his being where the storm always raged, where the power of the tempest coiled, waiting for his command. He sought the crackle of lightning, the resonant hum of power that could mend flesh and bone in the space between heartbeats.
"Ndo," he whispered, the word a command, a plea to his own essence. Be healed.
Nothing.
A faint, sputtering crackle, like the last ember of a dying fire, sparked at his fingertips. A pale, sickly yellow light flickered for a moment, illuminating the grimy skin of his hand, before it died with a hiss as a fat raindrop extinguished it. The effort left him breathless, his head spinning. The great reservoir of his power, once an ocean, was a dried-up well. He was empty.
Panic, cold and sharp, began to prickle at the edges of his consciousness. This was not mere injury. This was… descent. A fall.
His hand, clumsy and cold, scrabbled at his side, and his fingers closed around the familiar, worn leather of a hilt. Mmaagha Kamalu. The Shining Justice. His sword. A sliver of relief, thin and brittle, cut through the fear. This, at least, remained. This symbol of his authority, the blade that had carved thunderstorms from clear skies and split the earth asunder to swallow his enemies.
He tried to lift it, to draw the blade and see its celestial light push back the oppressive gloom of this mortal forest.
It wouldn't budge.
It was not stuck. It was just impossibly, incomprehensibly heavy. The familiar weight of the weapon, a comfortable, balanced presence at his hip for millennia, had become an anchor. He strained, muscles corded in his neck and shoulder screaming in protest, his wounded side shrieking a fresh anthem of agony. With a final, grunting heave, he managed to slide the sword a few inches from its scabbard.
What he saw made his heart stutter in his chest.
The blade, which should have gleamed with a captured piece of the noonday sun, was dull and dark. It was the color of tarnished lead, of old, forgotten iron. The intricate inlays of celestial brass that once swirled like captured lightning were now muted, almost black. There was no hum of power, no thrum of contained energy. It was just… metal. Cold, dead, and impossibly heavy.
The last of his strength fled. The sword slid back into its sheath with a dull, final thud. Amadioha collapsed onto his side, his face pressing into the wet, cold mulch of the forest floor. The smell of damp earth and decay filled his nostrils. He could feel the individual grains of soil, the slick softness of a rotting leaf against his cheek. The sensory detail was overwhelming, vulgar. As a god, he perceived the world in its grand patterns—the flow of winds, the gathering of clouds, the tides of human devotion. He did not lie in the mud and feel its gritty, intimate kiss.
"How…" he croaked, his voice a raspy ruin. "How can this be?"
The forest had no answer but the rain.
---
Time became a syrupy, painful thing, measured not in the passage of suns or moons, but in the rhythms of his own suffering. He drifted in and out of a feverish haze. In his dreams, he was whole. He stood astride a thunderhead, the gale whipping his cloak of storm clouds, Mmaagha Kamalu a bolt of pure, white lightning in his hand. Below, his people chanted his name, their voices a rising tide of faith that filled him with invincible strength.
"Amadioha! Ogba egbe igwe!" they cried. Amadioha! He who carries the thunderbolt!
He raised his sword, and the sky split open.
Then the dream would curdle. The chanting would become screams. The face of the spear-wielder, contorted in fanatical rage, would swim out of the darkness. The spear would plunge, and the shocking, vulgar pain of it would jolt him back to the cold, wet reality of the forest floor.
During one lucid moment, the rain had softened to a drizzle. The pain in his side was a constant, grinding presence, a dull fire that had settled deep into his viscera. He was thirsty, a deep, cracking thirst that parched his throat and made his tongue feel like leather. He remembered the sweet, cool nectar of the divine orchards, the wine brewed from the first rains of the season. The memory was a fresh torment.
He focused on a single leaf, a giant, heart-shaped thing dangling just above his face. A droplet of water, clear and perfect, gathered at its tip, swelled, and then fell. It landed on his forehead with a cold, gentle splash.
It was water. Just water. But it was also a lifeline.
With a monumental effort that cost him another wave of dizziness, he tilted his head back, opening his mouth. He watched, his entire world narrowed to that leaf, that droplet. The gathering was slow, agonizing. He could see the tiny world reflected in the nascent bead—the inverted, emerald green of the canopy, the gray smear of the sky. Finally, it fell.
It was the most exquisite thing he had ever tasted. It was cold, and clean, and it washed the taste of blood and dirt from his lips. It was a single note of purity in the symphony of his decay. He had commanded deluges that drowned valleys, and yet this one, anonymous drop of rain held a significance they had all lacked.
He tried again, repositioning his head with painful slowness. The process was humbling. The Lord of the Sky, reduced to catching stray drops of his own element like a fledgling bird.
A twig snapped.
The sound was sharp, alien, cutting through the forest's white noise. Amadioha froze, his mouth still open. His senses, though diminished, screamed a warning. He was prey. He was weak, wounded, and lying in the open.
He heard the soft, squelching tread of footsteps in the wet earth. Slow. Deliberate. He strained his eyes, trying to pierce the tangled wall of green and shadow.
A figure emerged from between two massive, moss-covered trees.
It was a man, old and lean, his skin the color and texture of weathered teak. He was dressed in simple, homespun cloth, a cloak of woven reeds shedding water from his shoulders. In one hand, he carried a long, walking staff of dark wood. But it was his eyes that held Amadioha. They were not the eyes of a frightened villager or a fanatical warrior. They were old, deep, and held a calm, unnerving knowledge. They saw everything—the fallen form, the wound, the dull, heavy sword at his hip.
The old man stopped a few paces away, his head tilted. He did not speak.
Amadioha found his voice, though it was weak and laced with a pride he no longer felt. "You… you who stand before me. Do you know who I am?"
The old man's expression did not change. He leaned on his staff, the end sinking into the soft ground. "I see a man," he said, his voice a low rumble, like stones grinding at the bottom of a river. "A man lying in the mud, bleeding his life into the soil."
A hot spike of anger, the last vestige of his divine pride, flared in Amadioha's chest. "I am no man. I am Amadioha. I am the storm that shakes the heavens. I am the voice in the thunder." He tried to push himself up on one elbow, but the pain flared, and he slumped back down with a gasp.
The old man watched him, unmoved. "The heavens are silent today. There is only the rain. And your voice is weak."
"My power…" Amadioha gasped, "...it is gone. My sword… it weighs more than a mountain."
"Perhaps the mountain was always there," the old man replied cryptically. "You simply never had to carry it before."
He took a step closer, and Amadioha instinctively flinched, a movement that shamed him. The old man was not threatening. He was… assessing. His gaze fell upon the wound.
"The spear of the Nri clansmen," the old man said, not asking. "They coat the tips in pastes made from forbidden herbs and whispered words. It is a poison to your kind. It does not just wound the flesh. It severs the connection."
"My kind?" Amadioha whispered, the truth of it settling on him like a physical weight. "What am I now?"
"You are what you always were, beneath the light and the noise," the old man said. "You are a story. And now, the story has changed."
He knelt, his knees cracking with the effort, his face now level with Amadioha's. He smelled of woodsmoke, dried herbs, and damp earth. A human smell. He reached into a pouch at his belt and pulled out a handful of mashed green leaves, releasing a sharp, astringent scent that cut through the decay.
"This will not heal you," the old man said, his tone matter-of-fact. "Not the true wound. But it will keep the flesh from rotting and the fever from burning out your mind. The rest… the rest is a path you must walk alone."
Before Amadioha could protest, the old man pressed the poultice against his wound.
The shock was instantaneous and blinding. It was not the clean, divine fire of his own healing magic. This was a raw, herbal agony, a drawing, pulling sensation that felt as if the very poison were being dragged from his flesh. Amadioha cried out, a raw, animal sound that echoed briefly in the clearing before the forest absorbed it. He arched his back, his hands clawing at the mud.
The old man held firm, his grip surprisingly strong. "Breathe through it, dibia," he murmured, using the term for a wise man, a healer. It felt like both an instruction and a title bestowed. "The pain is a part of it. You can no longer wish it away. You must endure it."
Tears, hot and shameful, mingled with the rain on Amadioha's face. He was a god, being schooled in the fundamental mortal art of enduring pain. He focused on his breath, as the old man had said, drawing in ragged gulps of the wet, cool air, exhaling in shuddering sobs. Slowly, the sharpest edge of the agony receded, leaving behind a deep, throbbing ache, but the fire of the fever in his blood seemed to dampen slightly.
The old man sat back on his haunches, wiping his hand on a leaf. "You will live. For now."
"Why?" Amadioha managed, his body trembling with exhaustion. "Why help me?"
The old man looked at the sword, Mmaagha Kamalu, his gaze lingering on its dull, heavy form. "A sword that heavy is either a great curse," he said, "or a greater purpose. I am curious to see which it will be."
He stood, the movement fluid and effortless. "The stream is that way," he pointed with his staff. "Follow the sound of the water. There is a cave in the red rock cliff beside it. Shelter. You will not make it far in the open."
"Wait," Amadioha called out, a sudden, desperate fear of being left alone in this vast, indifferent world gripping him. "What is your name?"
The old man paused at the edge of the clearing, a silhouette against the deep green. "I am called Tobe," he said. "I am the keeper of this part of the forest. And I have watched the sky grow dark for many days."
And with that, he was gone, melting back into the trees as silently as he had arrived.
Amadioha was alone again, but the encounter had left a new and unsettling imprint on his soul. The poultice on his side was a tangible, painful reality. The old man's words echoed in his mind. A story that has changed. A mountain you must now carry.
He looked at his hand, lying palm-up in the mud. He remembered the weak, sputtering sparks. He remembered the impossible weight of his sword. He remembered the taste of that single, perfect drop of water.
Slowly, with a resolve that was born not of divine power, but of a desperate, newfound mortal will, he began to move. He rolled onto his less-injured side, every muscle protesting, his side screaming a fresh warning. He got his knees under him, the cold mud squelching beneath his weight. The world swam in and out of focus. He reached out and gripped the hilt of Mmaagha Kamalu, not to draw it, but to use it as an anchor.
The weight of it threatened to pull him over. It was like trying to lift a tree trunk. He gritted his teeth, a low growl rumbling in his throat. He would not die here. He would not be ended by a patch of mud and a forgotten wound.
Using the sword as a crutch, he pushed.
He rose.
He stood, swaying, legs trembling, his body a constellation of pain. He was upright. He took a single, shuffling step, then another. The sound of the stream, which he had not noticed before, now came to him—a faint, musical gurgling through the trees. Tobe was right. It was to the west.
He began to walk, each step a victory, each one an agony. The forest seemed to press in on him, the branches clawing at his arms, the roots snagging at his feet. The air was thick and heavy to breathe. He was a giant reduced to a stumble, a force of nature learning to navigate the world on its own terms.
He did not look like a god. He looked like a wounded, lost man, clutching the hilt of a sword that was now his burden, following the sound of water towards an uncertain shelter. The weight of the sword was not just in his hand; it was in his soul. It was the weight of what he had lost, and the terrifying, unknown weight of what he might yet become. The story had indeed changed. And the first chapter was written in rain, blood, and the profound, crushing weight of iron.