The moment they stepped off the manicured palace grounds and onto the high tiers of Akogwa, the air changed. The sterile atmosphere of the court was replaced by the vibrant hum of a trillion connected things.
Libaax Akoma, still clad in the heavy regalia of the Negusa Nagast, looked overwhelmed. He kept his brown eyes downcast, the weight of the crown seeming to press his shoulders.
"Breathe, my son," Bura instructed, leaning on his staff. His yellow Aura was pulsing gently, filtering the noise. "Listen not with your ears, but with your Moea (Soul)."
They stood overlooking the cascading levels of the capital. Akogwa was a breathtaking sight . It was a cityscape of impossible geometry: floating granite pyramids capped with sapphire domes, walls engraved with glowing Tojo by generations of Asona artificers, and narrow alleys teeming with life.
"The palace," Bura said, "is where bad writing lives. This city? This is the narrative engine."
Libaax finally looked up. "I do not understand what you mean, Tutor."
"You only ever see people from the view of the throne," Bura said. "A throne is a barrier. It tells you what they need, but not what they are. Look at the ground."
They descended into a bustling marketplace. The flow of Ase was deafening to Bura, though Libaax was oblivious. Bura pointed his staff at a large, smooth granite stepping stone.
"Bare consciousness," Bura murmured. "The stone knows it is being stepped on. It knows it is supporting you. It does not have a will, but it is connected through Ase. A humble, unwritten character."
He gestured to a merchant selling gourds of fermented milk, her face an expression of fierce concentration. "Super sentience. Her Dapabie (Mental realm) contains ego and conscience. She knows how her life flows into the community."
Then, a sudden shriek cut through the bazaar's rhythm. A large, wooden cart, pulled by a Dravidian farmer, had broken its axle. Gourds shattered, milk pooled, and the farmer sank to the ground, head in hands.
"The plot hole?" Libaax whispered, recognizing the sudden, illogical event that had disrupted the flow.
Bura shook his head. "No. That is tragedy. A plot hole would be if the cart inexplicably grew wings and flew away. This is just life. The question is, how does this community respond to a broken man?"
The crowd, a mix of Silhouettes, Sanguine vendors, and Brunette shoppers, did not disperse. They converged.
A Yellow Hammer Griot stopped playing his banjo, turning his music not into a sonic blast, but into a low, comforting melody. A nearby Asona merchant quickly etched a reinforcing Tojo into the cart's timber. An old woman, a Saffron phenotype who looked like a Dibia, knelt and pressed her hand onto the farmer's back, a soft green light briefly encompassing them both.
No one asked for repayment. No one negotiated. They simply restored the Sasa (Present) moment.
"Do you see it?" Bura asked Libaax, his voice vibrating with his own literary conviction. "This is Ubuntu. Umntunmuntungabanyeabantu—I am a person because of other people. They don't need a script for this; it's the foundational philosophy of Aye."
Libaax watched, transfixed. "They act without being told. The stone is connected to the ground. The merchant is connected to the farmer."
"Exactly," Bura affirmed. "And all of it is bathed in Ase, connected by the Love of Chi (Agape). But where are you, Negusa Nagast? Where is "the Sky that brings the rain"?"
Bura turned fully to the Emperor, his expression grim. "Your Makoma is to be the sovereign. The unifier. But in the palace, you are a void. A vacuum. You fail to bring the rain because you deny the connection. The Council—those flat, wooden characters—they are blocking your connection to the community, and worse, they are blocking your connection to your own Moea."
Libaax's brown eyes finally met Bura's. The Emperor reached up, touching his heavy crown.
"The prophecy states I am the Sky," Libaax murmured. "But my Dapabie feels like an empty space."
"The empty space," Bura corrected, "is the plot hole the author created when he wrote you as passive. Your Unique Class is King of Beasts. It's not merely about commanding lions; it's about leading with primal, inherent authority. It's about shedding the court's script and following your instinct."
Libaax took a deep breath, his Orange Aura subtly intensifying, shedding its suppressed quality. "If I am the King of Beasts, what should I do about the Osu? The Council wants fire."
"The Osu are taboo-breakers, yes, exiles who reject Ubuntu," Bura stated, glancing toward the north where the Great Green Wall stretched on the horizon. "But their threat is not merely military. It's narrative. The author used them as a simplistic external threat to start a war arc—a boring trope."
He lowered his voice. "We must find a way to write them back into the community, or give the reader (and the character) a better reason for them to be antagonists. And to do that, you need allies with agency. Allies who are not flat."
Bura pointed his staff toward a nearby precinct. "Before we challenge the script of the war, let's look at the script of the peace."
A contingent of Booliska (police) soldiers, dressed in black Dashikis, were marching past. Their faces were grim, and their stride was rigid, more like automatons than peacekeepers.
"The local Booliska captain is an Albino named Kemau Nqobile," Bura stated, drawing on his meta-knowledge. "A Griot of the Unique Class Ijaji Modumela—the Resonance Judge. He is a protagonist waiting for his introduction, but the plot has written him into a pointless patrol loop."
"A patrol loop?" Libaax asked, a flash of actual curiosity replacing his passivity.
"A filler episode," Bura sighed. "Let's interrupt it. We need the judge's resonance, for I fear we are about to meet a truly bad script."