Morning came slowly, as if the sun itself was unsure whether it was welcome.
It rose over Ife-Nkewa like a witness afraid to testify—thin light slipping through ash, catching on broken towers and collapsed streets. Smoke drifted in tired columns. Somewhere beneath the rubble, something still glowed faintly, the last breath of stolen divinity fading into nothing.
Chukwudi woke to the sound of breathing.
Not his own.
He turned his head with effort. Every movement felt delayed, like his body needed permission to obey him.
Adaeze lay beside him.
Not as the serpent. Not as the half-burning terror the city had seen.
As a girl.
Her hair was matted with dust and blood. Her chest rose and fell unevenly. Cracks like dried riverbeds ran along her arms where scales had once forced their way out. She looked smaller than he remembered. Younger. Fragile in a way that frightened him more than her monstrous forms ever had.
"Alive," he whispered.
His voice sounded strange—too quiet, as if the world had moved farther away.
---
The survivors emerged cautiously.
They did not rush. They did not shout.
They came the way people approach a grave whose occupant might still be breathing.
Men and women crawled from shattered buildings, their clothes torn, faces grey with dust. Some carried the injured. Some carried nothing but shock. Many stared at Chukwudi with eyes that could not decide what they were seeing.
A boy no older than twelve stepped forward first.
He held a broken lantern in his hands, its light dead.
"Is it over?" the boy asked.
No one answered.
Because no one knew what over meant anymore.
---
Idemili appeared near what remained of a fountain, her river-form reduced to a thin, wavering outline. Water dripped from her like blood from a wound.
"This place will never be the same," she said quietly.
Chukwudi pushed himself up on one elbow.
"Neither will they."
Idemili studied him. Her eyes lingered too long on the way the ground beneath him cracked faintly, as if unsure whether to hold him.
"You should not still be alive," she said.
"I know."
That was the problem.
---
By midday, the city had begun to understand what had happened.
The Continuum was gone.
Some had been taken by the Correction when the city collapsed. Others had vanished into the dead zones beneath the streets, swallowed by the very systems they had built. Their machines lay silent now, cracked open, leaking useless light.
People gathered around the ruins of the Severance Chamber.
They whispered.
Some knelt without realizing it.
Others backed away, fear warring with awe.
"He stopped it," a woman murmured.
"He broke the city," another replied.
"No," an old man said, voice shaking. "He stopped the end."
Chukwudi closed his eyes.
He had never wanted this.
When Adaeze finally woke, it was with a sharp gasp, as though she had been drowning.
She sat up too quickly and cried out, clutching her side.
Chukwudi reached for her instinctively—and stopped.
His hand hovered inches away.
For a moment, he was afraid to touch her.
"I'm here," he said instead.
Adaeze looked at him, really looked at him, and something broke in her eyes.
"You held it back," she whispered. "I felt it pulling at everything. And you—"
"I didn't defeat it," Chukwudi said. "I delayed it."
She laughed softly, bitter and tired. "That's all anyone ever does."
They left Ife-Nkewa before nightfall.
Not because they were chased away.
Because the land around the city was dying.
The soil had turned brittle. Trees nearby leaned away from the ruins, their leaves curling inward. Birds circled but did not land. The earth had marked the place as a warning.
Chukwudi felt it with every step.
A dull pressure in his bones.
A reminder.
They walked west, toward lands older than cities and quieter than gods.
The cursed children joined them along the way—those who had survived, those who had hidden, those who had felt the pull and followed it like a scar remembering pain.
Obinna walked beside Chukwudi in silence for a long time.
Finally, the boy spoke.
"They're talking about you."
"I know."
"They're calling you something new."
Chukwudi waited.
"The One Who Stands After," Obinna said. "The thing that comes when gods fail and humans go too far."
Chukwudi stopped walking.
The others halted behind him.
"That's not my name," he said.
Obinna swallowed. "Names don't always listen."
---
That night, they camped beneath a sky bruised with clouds.
No fire.
No prayers.
Just people sitting close together, afraid of what might hear them.
Chukwudi sat apart, staring into the darkness.
The earth beneath him was quiet—but not empty.
It felt… wary.
Like an animal that had been struck too many times to trust a gentle hand.
Adaeze sat beside him.
"You're breaking," she said softly.
He nodded.
"I can feel it."
"Then stop," she said. "Let the world deal with itself."
Chukwudi looked at her.
"And when it doesn't?"
She had no answer.
Far away, in places untouched by the ruin of Ife-Nkewa, gods began to speak to one another again.
Not in arrogance.
In fear.
Humans sharpened new ideas, quieter and more dangerous than weapons.
And deep beneath the land, the Correction waited, patient as erosion, learning from what had resisted it.
Chukwudi lay back against the earth and stared at the stars.
For the first time since his birth, he wondered—not what he was meant to do—
But how long a person could stand between endings
before becoming one.