The space between worlds tasted like copper and dying stars.
Uwana stepped through the portal and immediately understood why mortals weren't meant to travel this way. The Threshold didn't just exist in a different location—it existed in a different *grammar* of reality. Up and down were suggestions. Left and right were philosophical debates. Time moved in spirals, and gravity couldn't decide if it was a law or a polite request.
His stomach tried to turn itself inside out.
"First time?" Zuberi's voice came from somewhere that might have been beside him or might have been three hours ago. The prince's hand was still gripping Uwana's wrist—an anchor in the chaos, though Uwana could feel the burns from his scarred skin continuing to blister the older man's palm.
"Obviously." Uwana forced his eyes open, immediately regretted it.
The Threshold stretched in every direction and also somehow folded in on itself. Buildings grew from the sky like stalactites, their windows glowing with light that had forgotten how to illuminate properly. Streets curved upward into themselves, creating impossible loops where a person could walk in a straight line and end up on their own ceiling. The architecture was a fever dream—Gothic spires merged with mud-brick compounds, glass towers sprouted wooden balconies, and somewhere in the distance a pyramid floated upside-down, bleeding purple waterfalls that fell *upward*.
People walked on every surface. Some strolled along walls as casually as sidewalks. Others hung from floating platforms, their hair and clothes defying gravity in directions that hurt to look at. A few moved through the air itself, swimming through space like it was water.
"Where are we?" Uwana managed.
"The Inyenzi District. Refugee sector." Zuberi pulled him forward—or possibly backward, orientation was a myth here—onto a street that felt solid enough. "The Threshold attracts anyone who doesn't fit cleanly in one realm or another. Outcasts, fugitives, people born between worlds." His gold eyes scanned the crowd with practiced wariness. "Also monsters, criminals, and things that used to be human before they got creative with divine possession."
As if summoned by the word, something shambled past them that definitely wasn't human anymore. It had too many joints in its legs, too few eyes in its face, and skin that rippled like it couldn't decide what texture to settle on. The thing noticed Uwana staring and smiled with a mouth that unzipped vertically instead of horizontally.
Uwana didn't flinch. After what he'd done to Okpara, after what he'd *become* in those flames, the merely grotesque didn't register anymore.
"How long until we reach the Citadel?" he asked.
"Three days if we walk. Six hours if we pay for a Rift-Runner." Zuberi steered them around a street vendor selling what looked like crystallized screams in small jars. "But we're not going straight there."
Uwana's eyes narrowed. "You said—"
"I said I'd take you to where the gods hide. I didn't say I'd throw you into the deep end unprepared." Zuberi stopped at an intersection where five streets met at angles that shouldn't geometrically exist. "The Citadel isn't just an academy, Uwana. It's a prison disguised as a school. The Masters there—the teachers—they're not educators. They're wardens. They take students with potential and hollow them out, making room for gods to wear them like clothes."
"Then why are we going?"
"Because it's also the greatest concentration of divine essence outside the Outer Realm itself. If you want to hunt gods, that's the hunting ground." Zuberi's scarred face was grim. "But if you walk in there smelling like the Supreme Source, you'll be dead—or worse, possessed—before sunset. So first, we're going to teach you how to hide what you are."
"I don't hide."
"You do if you want to survive long enough to get revenge." Zuberi's grip on his wrist tightened. Not threatening, but insistent. "I've spent fifteen years screaming in a frozen moment, unable to save anyone. I won't watch you die because you're too proud to be smart."
They stared at each other. Uwana's void-black eyes against Zuberi's gold-and-darkness gaze. The street moved around them—people, creatures, things without names—but in that moment they were the only two points of stillness in the chaos.
Finally, Uwana nodded. Once. Sharp as a blade.
"How long?"
"Two days. Maybe three. Enough to teach you the basics of suppression, combat theory, and how to survive when everyone around you is sharing headspace with something that wants to eat your soul." Zuberi's smile was sharp. "I know a place. Old safehouse from my first mission to the Threshold. If it's still standing, we can use it."
"And if it's not?"
"Then we get creative." The prince released Uwana's wrist finally, examined his blistered palm with academic interest. The burns were already healing—not because of magic, but because Mo'huni physiology was built for punishment. "Come on. We need to get off the main streets before someone notices you're not registered."
"Registered?"
"The Threshold keeps records. Everyone who lives here, passes through, or exists for more than six hours gets catalogued by the Watchers." Zuberi gestured subtly to the shadows. Uwana looked closer and saw them—figures that weren't quite there, existing in the gaps between moments. Observers wearing human-shaped holes in reality. "They report to the Citadel Council. If they scan you and realize you're un-owned divine essence walking around in mortal skin, you'll have every god-hungry fool in three realms trying to claim you."
"Let them try." The words came out cold enough to frost the air between them.
"They will. And you'll kill them. And then the Citadel will send the *real* hunters, and those won't be fools." Zuberi started walking, confident Uwana would follow. "Save your rage for when it counts. Right now, we're ghosts. Understand?"
Uwana understood survival. He'd survived fifteen years in a village that hated him. Survived his parents' deaths without breaking completely. Survived the awakening of power that should have consumed him.
He could survive two more days of restraint.
Probably.
They moved through the Inyenzi District like shadows, Zuberi navigating the impossible geometry with the confidence of someone who'd walked these streets before time tried to trap him. The buildings grew stranger as they went—one had windows that showed different time periods (Uwana glimpsed what looked like a battle, a wedding, a funeral, all happening simultaneously in the same room), another seemed to be slowly digesting itself, brick by brick.
"Don't stare at the Chrono-Pub," Zuberi warned. "The owner gets offended, and his offense involves trapping people in time-loops until they age to death."
Uwana stopped staring.
They turned down an alley that existed at a ninety-degree angle to normal space, climbed a staircase that spiraled through seven different gravities, and finally stopped at a door that looked almost aggressively normal. Plain wood, iron handle, no markings.
"This is it?" Uwana asked.
"Safest place in the Threshold is the one nobody notices." Zuberi pressed his palm against the door. Dark flame flickered across the wood—not burning, but *testing*, like a dog sniffing for familiar scent. After a moment, the door clicked open. "Still keyed to my essence. Good. Means nobody's found it."
Inside was a single room that had clearly been abandoned for years. Dust coated everything—a narrow bed, a table with two chairs, shelves lined with books whose titles had faded to illegibility. But the space felt solid. Real. Like someone had carved out a piece of sanity and hidden it here.
Zuberi closed the door behind them, spoke a word in a language Uwana didn't recognize, and suddenly the room was *sealed*. Uwana felt it—the way the outside world stopped pressing against his senses, the way sound died at the threshold, the way even the Watchers' attention slid off this space like oil on water.
"Privacy ward," Zuberi explained, already moving to the shelves. "Military-grade. Cost me three months' salary and a favor I'd rather not discuss. But it means we can talk freely without every deity in earshot knowing what we're planning."
He pulled down a book—miraculously, this one's title was still legible: *Suppression Techniques for Unwilling Hosts*—and dropped it on the table with a heavy thud.
"Lesson one," Zuberi said, settling into a chair that creaked under his weight. "You're not just hiding your power. You're hiding your *nature*. Right now, you smell like..." He paused, searching for words. "Like if the concept of 'god' gained sentience and decided to take a walk. It's not subtle. So we need to teach you how to make yourself seem empty."
"I don't want to seem empty. I want them to know what's coming."
"And you will. When the time is right. But right now?" Zuberi's expression was grim. "Right now, you're a weapon that doesn't know its own reach. The Citadel has students who've been training since they were five years old. Masters who've been possessed for decades. And all of them will see you as either a threat to eliminate or a prize to claim."
He leaned forward, elbows on the table.
"So we hide you in plain sight. Make you look like every other desperate kid who came to the Citadel hoping to bond with a god and gain power. Let them underestimate you. And when they do..." His smile was all teeth. "That's when you show them what the Source can do."
Uwana pulled out the second chair, sat, and met Zuberi's eyes across the scarred table.
"Teach me."
---
**THREE HOURS LATER**
Uwana was discovering that suppression was infinitely harder than expression.
"Again," Zuberi commanded, circling him like a drill sergeant. "Push the power down. Don't fight it—that just makes it fight back. You're not trying to cage it. You're trying to... to fold it. Make it smaller without making it weaker."
Uwana closed his eyes, reached for the vast Nothing inside him—the place where Ni'mimi's essence lived, where the Void touched his soul—and tried to compress it. Immediately, it surged, pushing back like a living thing that didn't appreciate being confined.
His scars flared hot. The air around him rippled.
"Too aggressive," Zuberi said. "You're treating your power like an enemy. It's not. It's you. You don't fight yourself. You just... decide to be quieter."
"That's not helpful."
"Then try this." Zuberi manifested a small flame in his palm—black fire no bigger than a candle. "Dark Flame responds to will, right? If I want it bigger, I want harder. If I want it smaller..." The flame diminished until it was barely a spark. "I want *softer*. Same intensity, less presence."
Uwana watched the demonstration, then tried again.
This time, instead of pushing the Nothing down, he imagined it *condensing*. All that power, all that divine essence, folding inward like a star collapsing into a black hole. Smaller. Denser. Still there, but compressed to a single point deep in his chest.
The scars on his skin stopped glowing.
The pressure in the air eased.
When he opened his eyes, Zuberi was nodding slowly.
"Better. Much better. Now hold it there." The prince dismissed his flame, walked around Uwana in a slow circle. "Let me test it."
He reached out and pressed two fingers against Uwana's sternum. Dark Flame flickered from the contact point, spreading across Uwana's skin like searching tendrils—not attacking, but *reading*. Diagnostic magic.
After a long moment, Zuberi withdrew his hand.
"I can still feel it," he said honestly. "But I have to be looking for it. To a casual scan, you'd read as... quiet. Unremarkable. Maybe a low-grade potential, nothing worth claiming." His smile was approving. "That's exactly what we need."
Uwana let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The suppression took constant effort—like holding a breath or flexing a muscle. He could maintain it, but it was exhausting.
"How long can I hold this?"
"With practice? Indefinitely. Right now? Maybe a few hours before you slip." Zuberi moved to the shelf, pulled down another book. "So we practice. Suppression until it becomes second nature. Then combat theory. Then—if we have time—I'll teach you the basics of Flame Manifestation."
"You said that was Mo'huni magic. I'm not Mo'huni."
"No, but you're the Source. You can learn any magic if you understand its principles." Zuberi opened the new book—this one filled with diagrams of fighting stances. "And more importantly, you need to learn how to fight without relying on the Law. Because the moment you speak a command in the Citadel, every god within a mile will know exactly what you are."
That made sense. Frustrating sense, but sense nonetheless.
"How long until I'm ready?"
"For the Citadel? Two days of hard training." Zuberi's expression was grim. "For what comes after the Citadel? Years. Maybe decades. But we don't have that kind of time, so we'll cheat."
"How?"
The prince's smile turned dangerous.
"I'm going to train you the way the Mo'huni train princes. Fast, brutal, and with the assumption that if you can't learn it in two days, you'll die in three." He tossed the book to Uwana, who caught it reflexively. "Read chapters one through seven. Memorize the forms. At dawn, we spar. If you can last five minutes without me putting you on the ground, I'll consider you ready."
"And if I can't?"
"Then we stay here another day and try again. And again. Until you *can*." Zuberi moved to the narrow bed, sat heavily. "The Citadel doesn't forgive weakness. Neither do the gods. So we make you strong enough that when you finally drop the suppression and show them what you really are..."
He didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.
The unspoken words hung in the sealed room like smoke:
*...they'll already be dead.*
---
Uwana read until his eyes burned and the words on the page started swimming. Combat theory, defensive stances, how to kill someone three different ways with nothing but your hands and the willingness to break bones.
Around midnight—or what passed for midnight in a realm where time was negotiable—he finally set the book down and looked at Zuberi.
The prince was sitting on the bed, both of his signature blades manifested across his lap. He was cleaning them—not that weapons made of Dark Flame could get dirty, but the motion seemed to calm him. *Ndoto* and *Kumbukumbu*, Dream and Memory, gleaming like frozen starlight.
"Why are you really doing this?" Uwana asked.
Zuberi's hands stilled on the blades.
"Doing what?"
"Helping me. Betraying your father's mission. Risking everything to train someone you just met." Uwana's void-black eyes were steady. "You said you failed before. That you spent fifteen years trapped. But that doesn't explain why you knelt to me in a burned village. Why you're here instead of dragging me back to your king."
Silence, broken only by the faint hum of the privacy ward.
Then Zuberi spoke, and his voice was older than his face.
"Because I saw what they wanted to make you. A weapon. A solution to a war that's been going on for three thousand years." He set the blades aside, met Uwana's gaze. "And I thought—fuck that. Fuck prophecies that treat people like tools. Fuck gods who demand sacrifice. Fuck kings who measure children by their utility."
His hands clenched into fists.
"You want to kill the gods who let your parents die? Good. I'll help. Because maybe if we burn enough of them, the ones who remain will remember that mortals aren't just pieces on their board. We're people. And people deserve the right to grieve, to rage, to choose violence when violence has been done to them."
He looked away, jaw tight.
"I knelt because you're the first person I've met in fifteen years who isn't asking permission to be angry. You just... are. And that's the most honest thing I've seen in any realm."
Uwana absorbed that. Turned it over in his mind like a stone he was considering whether to throw.
Finally, he said: "When this is over—when I've killed every god on my list—I'm not going to stop being angry."
"I know."
"I'm probably going to become something worse than the things I'm hunting."
"I know that too."
"And you're still going to help me?"
Zuberi picked up his blades again, their edges catching the dim light.
"Until the end, brother. Whatever that looks like."
It wasn't a promise. It was a fact, spoken with the certainty of someone who'd already made peace with dying for it.
Uwana nodded once. Then he lay down on the floor—the bed was Zuberi's, and he wasn't about to argue over comfort—and closed his eyes.
His last thought before sleep claimed him:
Two days. Then the Citadel. Then the gods learn what it means to be hunted.