The blade hovered inches above Zaruko's heart.
His chest rose and fell slowly, bound in thick ropes slick with old blood. The chants of the cannibal tribe pulsed around him—low, rhythmic, ancient. A feverish trance overtook the painted warriors, their eyes wild with devotion. Smoke coiled toward the stars. The high priest raised the ceremonial blade higher, invoking their god's name in a tongue long buried by ash and bone.
Zaruko's eyes closed. Not in surrender. In patience.
Then the sky screamed.
A blinding streak of lightning tore through the heavens and slammed into the earth beside the altar with a force that shattered the wooden posts and hurled half the warriors backward like dry leaves in a storm.
Flame turned to smoke, and smoke turned to silence.
And out of the rent sky stepped Ogou.
Not as a whisper. Not as a sign.
But as a god.
His boots cracked the earth. His bare chest pulsed with heat and power. His eyes burned with warlight. Every breath he took was the weight of judgment, every step a nail in the coffin of those who dared draw blood from the one under his protection.
The priest fell backward, mouth trembling.
Ogou raised his hand.
"You call to a god of hunger."
His voice did not rise. It didn't need to.
"Let me show you who answers."
He clenched his fist and pulled—not from the air, but from realms unseen.
From the cracks in reality, the cannibal tribe's god was dragged screaming into the open.
It was no divine figure. No noble deity. Just a mass of rot, eyes stitched shut, teeth that never stopped chewing, wrapped in decaying muscle and the cries of those it had devoured.
The tribe gasped. Their god had never shown itself before.
Now it had no choice.
Ogou did not speak again.
He walked forward and, with one swing of his open hand, tore the god apart. Not its body, but its existence — unraveling every belief, every sacrifice, every stolen soul until only a wailing, shivering spirit remained.
"Maman Brigitte," Ogou called calmly, "this soul is yours."
A tear in the air opened—green flame licking the sky, and from it came a whisper of bones, of veils, of judgment waiting.
Ogou tossed the spirit like trash into the fire.
Then, he turned to the stunned warriors.
"You, who feast on flesh… will now feel what it is to be devoured."
He opened his arms.
And from the shadows of the forgotten planes—where gods buried the creatures too cruel to exist—came the Hounds of the Burning World.
They stepped into the clearing, mouths open, eyes blind, bodies of ash and molten bone.
They did not bark. They devoured.
Warriors screamed. Some begged. Some ran.
But the hounds ran faster.
They tore through the tribe like a storm of hunger given form—leaving nightmares etched into the trees themselves. No plea was heard. No mercy granted. Flesh was unmade. Bones became ash. Not even children were spared, for the gods had passed their sentence.
When the final scream faded, Ogou stood alone with the souls.
He gathered them — still trembling, still clinging to the memory of their pain — and dragged them through fire.
On the other side stood Maman Brigitte, veiled and silent.
She looked upon them with no pity.
"Guilty," she said. "All."
Ogou nodded.
"One hundred years. In the Forge. Let them feel the pain they carved into others."
And so it was done.
The forest, once screaming, fell into deep silence.
Zaruko, now free from his broken bindings, stepped down from the altar's ruin. He looked not at the ashes. Not at the blood.
But toward the sky, now whole again.
He said nothing.
He did not thank Ogou.
He knew better.
As he walked away, the green fire flickered behind him, swallowing the last echoes of the cursed tribe.
"Where gods walk," the wind whispered, "mercy does not always follow."
The blood of judgment still lingered in the air when Zaruko crossed the final ridge, leaving the smoking ruin of the cannibal tribe behind him. The forest did not mourn them. The soil drank their ash. The birds returned in silence, as if no screams had ever echoed here.
He didn't speak.
He didn't stop.
Each step forward was like walking off the edge of a map written by fire and wrath.
The terrain shifted—richer, damp with life. Vines hung heavy. Trees grew dense and low. The air grew thick with mist and the constant hum of insects. Threads of silk stretched between branches, catching the sun in strange patterns. First one. Then many. Then entire walls of web, pulsing faintly in the wind.
Zaruko's eyes narrowed.
He had heard whispers from wandering tribes: a place far east, where eight-legged gods watched from the trees, their worshipers offering blood and obedience in return for protection and fertility. A tribe who believed that all life was spun from silk… and all death returned to it.
He kept walking.
Closer.
Careful.
The trees grew taller. The webs thicker.
And somewhere, in the high branches above, something moved.
The deeper Zaruko walked, the quieter the world became.
Even the birds, once a constant presence in the jungle canopy, had grown silent. Only the occasional twitch of a webline or the faint patter of movement high above broke the stillness. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth, resin, and something sweeter — like decay masked with flowers.
He passed trees wrapped in cocoon-like bark, their bases adorned with small offerings: carved bones, dried fruit, even polished stones wrapped in webbing. Altars, perhaps. Or warnings.
The webs grew more intricate now, woven like murals, depicting shapes that resembled both spiders and people—bodies merged, or consumed, or carried away. Some were painted with crushed berries and blood. All pulsed faintly, as if alive.
Zaruko stepped carefully through a tunnel of webbed vines, his blade sheathed, his body loose but alert.
A whisper slid through the trees — not spoken, but felt.
Then, shadows shifted ahead.
Figures emerged. Masked. Cloaked in silk. Their bodies moved with a smooth, unnerving grace.
They did not speak.
They watched.
Zaruko stopped and lifted both hands — not in surrender, but in intent.
"I've come to walk your web," he said, voice firm but low.
A moment passed.
Then one stepped forward, and without a word, gestured for him to follow.
Above them, something massive moved across the canopy — silent, waiting.