The Fall of Aziza
For three days, an unnatural, paralyzing silence lay upon the Western Kingdom of Aziza. The bustling trade that once choked the Great River ceased entirely. Market chatter vanished mid‑sentence. Barges drifted idle, ropes slack against the docks. Even the coastal wind seemed to hold its breath, as though the world itself feared to speak.
This calm was not peace.
It was the suffocating stillness that precedes a god's judgment.
In his royal chamber, King Oba lay propped against carved ivory cushions. His body was frail, hollowed by an unnamed wasting sickness that gnawed at his strength day by day, yet his mind remained painfully alert. Every shallow breath scraped his lungs. Every heartbeat felt counted.
He felt the silence as a crushing weight upon his chest.
She has come, he thought, not with panic, but with a weary certainty.
The Immortal Queen never announced her conquests. She erased opposition first—sound, hope, resistance—until fear was the only language left. Oba had heard the stories of the ImmortalQueen: cities conquered without siege cries, armies broken without battle songs. He had prayed Aziza would be spared.
He had prayed wrong.
Across the chamber, Queen Iyabo prepared for the inevitable. She was no gentle consort but a formidable witch of a violent, ancient bloodline—one that drew power from stone, bone, and the deep veins of the earth itself. Her lineage was whispered of in half‑forgotten grimoires, feared more than celebrated.
She stood barefoot on the cold floor, chalk sigils carved into her skin, blood and ash smeared across her arms. Her face was locked in furious concentration as she drew upon the deep earth‑force, summoning the transformation spell—a brutal metamorphosis that would thicken her bones, harden her skin into living war‑hide, and compress her body into something dense enough to challenge Nkema's air‑and‑void magic.
It was agony.
Iyabo welcomed it.
Then the voice came.
It did not travel through air, nor echo against stone. It thundered through the leylines beneath the kingdom itself, through roots, rivers, and buried bones.
"The price of defiance is dust."
Nkema did not appear.
Instead, the temperature plunged. Breath fogged in the halls. Servants fell to their knees, clutching their heads as though ice had formed inside their thoughts. Beneath the silence came another sound—the distant, synchronized thunder of a million unseen feet marching toward the capital.
The outer walls fell within moments.
The Breaking of the Shield
Aziza's resistance was not unprepared.
Witches and warlocks from rival kingdoms—ancient enemies who shared neither culture nor crown—had gathered in secret, drawn together by shared terror of the immortal woman. They stood shoulder to shoulder now, old grudges buried beneath raw necessity.
As Nkema's legions poured into the city, a massive shield erupted around the palace district. River‑force surged upward from the Great River. Sea‑current twisted and coiled through it. Earth‑blood rose from the bedrock below. Together they braided into a glowing dome of desperate brilliance.
It had held before.
Against lesser armies.
From an impossible distance, Nkema watched.
She felt the strain in the shield, the tiny inconsistencies where rival magics refused perfect harmony. She had no desire for a prolonged duel. Duels required focus. Focus required time.
She had armies for this.
Queen Iyabo screamed a battle‑cry and unleashed her spell. Power tore through her body. Bones thickened with a sickening crack. Flesh hardened, skin darkening into layered war‑hide. The transformation burned like molten iron poured through her veins—
—and then a blinding flare of sterile white light struck her mid‑change.
Far away, Nkema gasped.
A neutralizing counter‑spell always cost her. A sharp, fractional loss of stolen life‑force flared through her immortal being, carving a brief line of magical scar tissue across her consciousness.
The cost was irrelevant.
Iyabo's transformation collapsed inward. Her magic unraveled. She screamed as the earth‑force was torn from her bones, ripped away so violently that her body convulsed. She crashed to the floor, bloodied and shaking.
In a single instant, she was reduced to flesh alone.
Soft.
Mortal.
A target.
The shield flickered. Cracks raced across its glowing surface.
With Aziza's greatest defender neutralized, Nkema issued her command—cold, unseen, absolute.
"Witness your new ruler."
The Allegiance of Thousands
Destruction did not fall as fire or steel.
It came as pressure.
A vast, invisible weight of immortal will descended upon the capital, bending thought itself. In the central square, thousands of Azizan soldiers—men who had sworn their lives to King Oba only moments earlier—felt their sense of self begin to fracture.
Resistance became agony.
Some screamed. Some clutched their heads and vomited. Others fell to their knees as memories twisted—oaths rewritten, loyalties burned away like parchment in flame.
Nkema's voice entered their minds as one.
"Your King is mortal. Your Queen is weak. I am eternal."
Weapons clattered uselessly against stone. Hardened warriors wept openly as devotion to Aziza was ripped from their souls and replaced with a horrifying reverence. The pain of resisting became unbearable.
Thousands fell to their knees in perfect, synchronized surrender.
Cries of devotion to Aziza dissolved into guttural vows of obedience to the Immortal Queen.
Nkema did not take their lives.
She took their allegiance.
The act drained another fraction of stolen vitality, but the reward was absolute. In a single breath, Aziza's entire standing army became her legion.
The King's Last Command
King Oba was dragged from his chamber, his feet scraping uselessly against the floor. He was forced to watch as his warriors bowed before another throne.
He felt no hatred.
Only failure.
Failure as a king. Failure as a father.
As brutal hands closed around him and darkness pressed in, he gathered what little strength remained. He reached beyond flesh and breath, beyond pain, and unleashed one final telepathic cry—raw, paternal, desperate.
"Do not come back. Do not come back.
The Heir to the Lion Throne of Oloran is the only future."
The Monument of Failure
Queen Iyabo was dragged into the shattered throne room. She could still feel her magic—just out of reach, like a limb that no longer answered.
With a simple twist of Nkema's unseen finger, stone crawled up Iyabo's body. Calcified magic encased her in place, freezing her scream in her throat.
She was not killed.
She was preserved.
A monument to failed defiance.
Forced to watch, Iyabo bore witness as former Azizan soldiers—now bearing Nkema's black sigil—systematically looted and desecrated the city they once vowed to protect.
Then, like a whirlwind, the Immortal Queen departed.
Aziza was left hollow.
Ashes on the Horizon
Miles away, Prince Odion's hidden war fleet finally reached the capital's coordinates.
They found only smoke.
Black, oily plumes clawed into the sky. The air tasted of ash, ozone, and despair. Flames consumed the royal docks, collapsing into the river with hissing screams.
Captain Ugo lowered his spyglass, his hands trembling despite decades of war.
"The King is gone," he said quietly. "Aziza is dust."
Silence followed—heavy, grieving.
"Withdraw," he finally commanded. "Our mission is no longer defense. It is preservation. Trace the Prince's last known course toward Makeni."
The fleet turned away from its burning homeland, sails heavy with guilt and resolve.
The Whisper Across the Sea
Far from Aziza's shore, the Spear of Aziza cut through restless waters near Makeni. Dara's shadow fleet had vanished, leaving only unease behind.
Then the whisper reached Prince Odion's mind.
" Do not come back. The Heir to the Lion Throne of Oloran is the only future."
Odion stiffened.
He knew instantly.
Aziza had fallen.
He lifted his gaze to the sky, then to Queen Nkemesit pacing the deck—one hand resting unconsciously on her swelling belly. His eyes met those of his younger brother, Prince Nnamdi.
Grief, duty, and destiny tightened into one unbearable truth.
And memory pulled him backward—into the moment this path had first been chosen.