Chapter 6 - BLESSINGS OF MARRIAGE, BIRTH AND DESTINY

Still, he married her. A small ceremony with fewer than fifty guests. They moved into university housing a three-bed bungalow with a basement workshop where Li Chen built strange machines for a future he hadn't admitted to anyone yet. Ten months later, I was born. Li Leboa Changhua. Nicknamed Cheng Cheng. My first breath in this life was taken under the watchful eyes of warriors and elders. My grandfather Warlord Zulu Mandla stood at the door of the birthing house, towering, unreadable. Women who had known war, hunger, and exile held their breath as my mother laboured. And then I arrived small, quiet, with winter-white hair instead of the midnight hair typical among my paternal kin. A child born of paradox, again. My mother held me close, her voice trembling between love and fear. "He's a Bahati," one of the midwives whispered. "No… a Banati." A silence fell so heavy it seemed to darken the lamps. A Banati was more than rare. A Banati changed the tide of dynasties. A Banati could birth daughters, Bahati, and the impossible a male heir who inherits nature affinity and strength. A Banati was a blessing to a people who needed hope and a curse in the eyes of kingdoms who wished the Leboa tribe wiped from history. My father placed a hand over my tiny chest. "He is ours," he said softly. "And we will protect him." It was a promise he would spend the next twenty years fulfilling by hiding everything about me, my gender, my strength, my bloodline. Then they started to train me. For twenty years. In every art. Every science. Every language. Every weapon. Every mystic craft. Because one day, they knew they would lose control of my fate.