Elsewhere in the capital, in a chamber that seemed to exist outside normal space and time, King Donkeu Sichom faced the All-Knowing Kinte.
The room—if it could be called a room—was more shrine than dwelling. An oval lounge surrounded by sublime sculptures that seemed to breathe with their own life. Some were crafted from gold so pure it seemed to glow from within. Others were woven from bamboo sticks in patterns that hurt the eye to follow, as if they contained geometries the human mind wasn't meant to comprehend.
The sculptures depicted various sacred creatures: serpents coiled in eternal spirals, elephants with trunks raised toward unseen heavens, tigers frozen mid-leap, their wooden eyes somehow alive with predatory intelligence. Mystery and holiness radiated from each piece, making the very air feel thick with spiritual weight.
At the center of this sacred space, seated on an Amacansi mat woven from the greenest grass, sat Divine Ancestor Kinte.
He was ancient—so old that age had worn him down to something almost elemental. His gaunt figure was barely more than skin stretched over bones, his body covered in wrinkles that mapped a lifetime of communion with forces beyond mortal understanding. Yet his eyes—those bright brown pupils that seemed to burn with their own inner fire—held more life and vigor than men a quarter his age.
Those eyes now fixed on King Donkeu Sichom with an intensity that made even a monarch uncomfortable.
"Divine Ancestor," Donkeu said, his voice strained with barely controlled emotion. "I require consultation."
He was a striking figure, the king—tall and slender, draped in cloth-of-gold that shimmered in the strange light of the shrine. His face held the kind of beauty that made poets weep and artists despair, but grief had carved new lines around his eyes and mouth. His hands trembled slightly as he waited for Kinte's response.
The Divine Ancestor said nothing. Instead, he reached his sickly, wrinkled arms toward the leather pouch at his thin waist. Three green stones were produced—each one carved with symbols that seemed to shift when viewed directly.
"Si, Nzambe, Lwa, Ka, Te sa'at," Kinte muttered, his voice rising and falling in a language that predated kingdoms, predated written history. His hands moved in precise patterns—left to right, right to left, tracing sigils in the air that lingered for just a moment before fading.
In the heavy silence, he cast the stones onto the floor.
His eyes closed. His body shuddered, and for a terrifying moment, Donkeu thought the old man was having a seizure. But then he recognized it for what it was—the trance state, when Kinte's spirit left his body and walked between worlds, consulting with ancestors who'd long since passed beyond the veil.
"Oh Ancestors, bring me knowledge," Kinte whispered, his voice somehow both his own and not his own—as if multiple voices spoke through a single throat.
He repeated the casting a dozen times, each throw revealing new patterns, new configurations that only his trained eyes could read. The stones sang their silent songs of past, present, and future intertwined.
Finally, abruptly, Kinte's eyes snapped open.
The king nearly jumped at the intensity of that gaze—pupils that seemed to look not at him but through him, seeing every secret he'd ever kept, every lie he'd ever told, every dark thought he'd entertained in the privacy of his own mind.
"Have you found anything, Divine Ancestor?" Donkeu asked, unable to keep the desperation from his voice.
For a long moment, Kinte simply stared. Then, in a raspy tone exhausted from his communion with the beyond, he spoke:
"She lives."
The king's breath caught. "Reloua? She's alive?"
"She lives," Kinte repeated. "The spirits show her moving through deep forests, protected by shadows that mean her no harm. Her path is uncertain, but her thread has not been cut." His gaze intensified. "If no external force acts, if fate is allowed to run its natural course, she will sit upon your woven mat within a month's time."
Relief flooded Donkeu's features, so intense it was almost painful to witness. "A month. One month and she'll be home."
"If," Kinte stressed the word, "no external force acts. If you allow fate to unfold naturally."
The king nodded eagerly, too overcome with relief to fully process the warning in the Divine Ancestor's tone.
But Kinte was not finished.
His expression shifted, the compassion draining away to be replaced by stern disapproval. "You sent a threat letter to Ankh Kingdom. Did you not?"
Donkeu froze.
"I..." He started, then fell silent under that penetrating stare.
"Your impulsiveness," Kinte said with the weight of prophecy behind his words, "your lack of spiritual awareness, your refusal to consult the ancestors before acting—these traits are a source of great trouble for your people."
The words hit like physical blows. Donkeu's head drooped, his eyes fixed on the floor, unable to meet the Divine Ancestor's gaze.
"When young," Kinte continued, his voice taking on the cadence of teaching, "kings and royals of foreign kingdoms undergo spiritual initiation. They are connected to their ancestors, given protection and power beyond mortal means. They accomplish feats others deem impossible, and thus earn the veneration of their people." He paused, letting the implication hang heavy in the air. "You, Donkeu, instead focused on gold. On material wealth. On the things that can be counted and weighed and traded."
"I have made Gold Land prosperous—" Donkeu began defensively.
"You have made Gold Land wealthy," Kinte corrected sharply. "Prosperity and wealth are not the same thing. Your people have gold, yes, but do they have spiritual strength? Do they have the protection of ancestors? Do they walk in balance with the unseen world?" His expression was grave. "You have built a kingdom of gold on foundations of sand."
Silence filled the shrine, broken only by the soft whisper of wind through the sacred sculptures.
Donkeu Sichom, King of Gold Land, richest monarch in all of Nubia, sat before this withered old man and felt small. Felt exposed. Felt the weight of every choice he'd made since taking the throne.
But pride—that old familiar friend—soon reasserted itself.
"Forgive me, Divine Ancestor," Donkeu said, rising to his feet with carefully controlled dignity. "But I have urgent matters to attend to at the palace. With your blessing, I will take my leave."
Kinte's eyes filled with something that might have been grief, might have been pity, might have been both.
"Go then," he said softly. "But remember this, Donkeu Sichom: the spirits have shown me three paths before you. One leads to your daughter's safe return and continued peace. One leads to war and the death of thousands. And one..." He paused. "One leads to the fall of your house entirely."
"Which path will I take?" Donkeu asked, despite himself.
"That," Kinte replied, "is the choice you must make with every action, every word, every thought. The ancestors can show the paths, but only you can walk them."
Donkeu bowed—perfunctorily, without the deep respect such wisdom deserved—and exited the shrine in haste.
Alone in his sacred space, Divine Ancestor Kinte shook his weak, wispy head from side to side.
"Poor child," he whispered to the spirits that lingered in the corners of the shrine. "Poor, prideful child. He hears the warning but does not listen. He sees the danger but does not believe."
The green stones before him pulsed once with inner light, and in their glow, Kinte saw fragments of futures yet to be:
A princess running through darkness. A young man with royal blood but common clothes. Armies gathering at borders. A woman's smile hiding poison. And blood—so much blood—watering the gardens of Nubia.
"May the ancestors be merciful," Kinte prayed, his voice cracking with age and sorrow. "May they grant wisdom to the foolish and sight to the blind. May they turn fate from its darkest path."
But even as he prayed, he knew the truth that all seers eventually learned:
Mortals rarely chose wisdom when pride offered easier answers.
And so the future rushed toward them all like a river toward a cliff, unstoppable and inevitable, carrying everyone toward the moment when choices would become consequences.
Outside the shrine, the sun was setting over the capital of Gold Land, painting the golden roofs in shades of crimson.
Like blood, Kinte thought.
Like a warning written in the sky that no one would read until it was far too late.