The Mark of the Orisha
A Vision in the Waters
The stars whispered before they spoke.
They stirred in their endless orbits, burning runes of fate into the fabric of the universe, shaping destinies long before those who bore them had names. Beneath their gaze, on a world untouched by time, where the sky burned with twin suns and the rivers ran like molten silver, the prophecy awakened.
The air here was thick with life, humming with the pulse of creation. The land, vast and ancient, knew no shame, for the body was sacred—sculpted by gods, a living sigil of divinity. Flesh bore no burden of concealment; it was a thing of reverence, worn like a prayer.
And among the chosen, one was marked.
I. The Call of the River
Adé had always known he was different.
The signs had been there since birth—the way the elders spoke his name in hushed tones, the way the river seemed to sing only for him. He had felt the call long before he understood it, thrumming in his bones like a drumbeat beneath his skin.
But the dreams came later.
A golden woman, radiant as the dawn, rising from the depths. Her eyes, twin burning suns, watched him through the veil of sleep. Her presence was not a question, not an invitation. It was a summons.
Come.
Each night, she appeared. Each night, he awoke with his breath stolen, his body slick with sweat, his pulse thrumming like a war drum. He ignored it for years, pressing the visions down into the quiet spaces of his mind. But the call did not fade. It grew louder. It wrapped around his soul like the weight of a coming storm.
Tonight, the pull was unbearable.
The world lay in silence, the village cocooned in the hush of pre-dawn. He rose from his mat without thought, his breath steady, his body moving as if compelled by unseen hands. The heat of the eternal suns still lingered on the earth beneath his feet, wrapping around him in waves.
He passed the great stone totems carved by those who had come before, their faces worn smooth by time and prayer. He moved beyond the sacred pools where the elders whispered to the before-gods, their voices carried away by the wind. He walked past the dying embers of the night’s last offerings, the scent of burned resin clinging to his skin.
The river lay ahead, waiting.
It stretched before him, vast and knowing, its surface smooth as obsidian beneath the twin moons. The reeds along the banks bent, their bodies swaying in unseen hands. A current rippled, slow and deliberate, as if the water itself had turned to watch him.
Adé stepped forward.
The river met him eagerly, curling around his ankles like a living thing, tendrils of silver lapping at his skin. It was neither warm nor cold but something in between—something sentient, something awake.
He waded in deeper.
The water rose to his knees, his waist, pulling him forward with a force that was gentle but insistent. The air thickened, the night pulsing with something unseen. Then, as the last breath of stillness stretched across the cosmos, the water stirred.
And she rose.
II. The Golden One
She emerged like a goddess ascending, her body sculpted from the very fabric of creation. The light of the moons slid across her skin, painting her in celestial fire. Her hair, thick and coiled like the roots of the first trees, floated around her shoulders, shifting with unseen tides.
Her eyes burned.
Not with fire, but with something deeper, something older than the stars themselves. They fixed on him, unblinking, radiant and infinite. And in that moment, the river stilled.
The universe held its breath.
“You have come,” she said.
Her voice was a thing of power, vibrating through the very marrow of his bones. It was not a question. It was not even a statement. It was truth, spoken into the fabric of existence itself.
Adé did not bow. He did not look away. He had known her for eternity, though this was their first meeting.
“You called,” he answered.
A flicker of something passed through her gaze—approval, amusement, recognition.
The river stirred around them, whispering in a language older than the gods.
She lifted a golden hand.
Her fingers hovered inches from his skin, close enough that the air between them trembled. Time stretched, folding into itself, a single moment expanding across eternity.
And then—
The river was gone.
The land was gone.
The stars vanished, swallowed by a darkness deeper than the void.
III. The Between-Place
Adé was no longer standing, no longer floating—he simply was, suspended in the space between what had been and what was to come. The world he had known—the village, the river, the twin suns—was a distant memory, dissolving into shadow.
“You have always belonged to me,” she said.
Her voice did not echo, for there was nothing for sound to touch. There was no sky, no ground, no time. Only her. Only him.
Something vast stirred in the distance, unseen but undeniable.
A presence.
A force.
A truth too great to name.
Adé’s breath came slow and steady, his pulse an anchor in the nothingness. He did not fear this place. He did not fear her.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She smiled—not with her lips, but with something deeper, something that reached into the very fabric of his being.
“You already know.”
And then, the darkness shattered.
The stars returned, blazing brighter than before. The river roared back into existence, water crashing around him in waves of light. He was no longer in the void. He was standing at the river’s edge once more, the sky streaked with fire as dawn broke across the land.
But he was not the same.
The mark had been placed.
The prophecy had begun.
The Mark of the Orisha
The Elders’ Warning
The sky burned violet when the elders summoned her.
Night had not yet surrendered to dawn, and the twin suns still lurked beyond the horizon, painting the heavens in streaks of fire and shadow. The village lay wrapped in the hush of pre-dawn, but within the sacred council chamber, silence was a living thing—thick, pulsing, expectant.
At the center of the gathering stood the Golden One.
She had no name yet, not in the way mortals understood names. She had always been, and yet, she was only just beginning. The river had whispered her purpose, had wrapped it around her like a second skin, but she did not yet know what it meant to carry divinity in her veins.
The elders sat before her, a half-circle of figures carved by time and wisdom. Their bodies bore the sacred markings of those who had seen beyond the veil, their eyes shadowed by knowledge too heavy for most to bear. Each of them had once stood where she stood now—before the threshold, before the choosing.
But none had been chosen.
Not like this.
The eldest among them, his skin the color of midnight, his voice like the rustle of wind through ancient trees, was the first to speak.
“You have seen her, have you not?” he asked.
She did not need to ask who he meant. The vision of the river goddess still pulsed in her memory, still wrapped around her like a second heartbeat.
“I have,” she answered.
A murmur rippled through the elders, not of surprise, but of confirmation. They had known. The moment she had been called to the water, they had felt the shift in the air, the weight of something vast pressing against the fabric of their world.
“You stand at the crossroads,” another elder said, his voice brittle with age but sharp as flint. “The blood of the Orisha runs in you, but divinity is not a gift. It is a burden. And if you choose to carry it, the trials will come.”
The Golden One did not flinch. “What trials?”
The eldest leaned forward, the firelight catching the deep grooves of his face. “The same trials faced by all before you. The trials of the first gods. The ones who rose—and the ones who fell.”
The wind stirred through the chamber, carrying the scent of burning resin and something older, something metallic—like the taste of storm-winds before the rain.
Another elder, her skin lined with the ink of generations, lifted her gaze to meet the Golden One’s.
“Long before the stars settled in their orbits, before the first stories were written into the bones of the earth, there were the Before-Gods. They were raw, unshaped, as wild as the rivers and as endless as the sky. They did not yet know what they were, and so they fought to define themselves. They devoured. They created. They unmade.”
She traced a line in the air, and the fire at the center of the chamber flickered, twisting into shapes unseen before by mortal eyes—figures of light and shadow, shifting and writhing.
“It was the Orisha who tamed them,” she continued. “Who forged the first order from chaos. But order is never without cost.”
The fire twisted again, and suddenly, the figures of the Before-Gods crumbled. Some vanished into smoke. Others shattered into a thousand burning fragments, falling like dying stars.
“The ones who could not bear the weight of divinity were unmade. Their names lost, their light scattered across the void. Only those who endured—who embraced the trials—became Orisha.”
The Golden One watched the flames, unblinking.
“And now,” the eldest elder said, “the trials come for you.”
Silence.
Outside, the first rays of the twin suns broke the horizon, painting the chamber in gold and crimson. The elders did not move, their eyes locked on her, waiting for her answer.
The Golden One breathed in the firelight, the weight of prophecy settling into her bones.
She could feel it now—the river’s call, the shifting of fate, the echo of those who had come before.
She could turn away. She could let the waters forget her name, let the gods choose another.
But that was not why she had been born.
She lifted her chin, her voice steady, unwavering.
“I accept.”
The fire roared.
The elders closed their eyes. Some in sorrow. Some in reverence.
None in doubt.
For the trials had begun.