THE CHRONICLES

OF BAJOU I

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Prologue

 

 

The First Betrayal

 

Kumura was a place unmapped; a realm that could not be found by ordinary means or in ordinary times. It existed neither here nor there, but in the ether; in the sacred in-between.

A world folded between moments, where time stretched thin and memory hung like mist in the air.

Its inhabitants lived in eternal devotion to Kanu’, the Three-Faced God of memory, time, and judgment.

 

Each bore the Onkra; divine sigils etched between the first, second, and third eyes;  a sacred birthright binding them to the god and to the ancient covenant they were sworn to uphold.

Among these faithful, one clan stood apart. 

 

The Malacawa.

Their Onkra shimmered in a deep cobalt blue; a hue so rich it seemed to breathe, steady and unyielding like a heartbeat. Unlike others, their marks never faded. Not with time. Not even with death.

Once guardians of Kanu’s truths, the Malacawa were entrusted with knowledge too sacred for most to speak. They alone rode the wind-gliders; towering birds with wings wide enough to shadow entire ridges.

 

Mounted high above the clouds, they were watchers, messengers, protectors of paths few had seen and fewer remembered. But all of that ended with Ukala.

What transpired during his Eshe’, the sacred trial, was never spoken aloud; only gestured at in silence and sorrow.

Still, the truth coiled through the clans like wind through brittle leaves: Ukala, brightest of the Malacawa, had overstepped. Had broken faith with Kanu’. The judgment was swift. And final.

 

Ukala vanished, and with him, the Malacawa’s favor. The wind-gliders, once loyal, grew restless and turned away. The clan’s right to lead was stripped. Their counsel no longer sought. Their secrets no longer safe.

They became a people marked by memory and suspicion. Disgrace clung to them like the dry dust of a fading season; quiet, bitter, and impossible to outrun.

Other clans remembered. The Chacawa, too, bore cobalt sigils, though theirs lay hidden beneath the skin, dormant until the sacred rising of the seventh moon.

 

During that brief, celestial window; two nights, two days; the veil between realms thinned, and old powers

stirred. It was the only time the Malacawa could invoke their ancient right: to attempt restoration.

 

It was called the Eshe’; a divine rite of spirit and blood. A perilous journey meant to mend the broken line and call Kanu’s favor back into the bones of a fallen people.

 

But the bond had been broken long ago; ten thousand summers past; when Ukala, once a son of promise, reached beyond what was given.

Some say he sought power not meant for any living hand. Others say he defied Kanu’ herself.

 

And for that, the Malacawa fell.

 

The betrayal lingers in half-truths and shadowed silence, passed through whispers and glances, through stories only the old still dare to tell. Its cost still ripples outward. Still shapes the winds.

Now, as the moons begin to align once more, that ancient treason stirs again. The air is thick with memory.

Kumura holds its breath.

And somewhere, in the spaces between myth and marrow, a name waits to be spoken.

Bajou...