BEFORE THE CREATION OF MAN
Agwunsi opened his eyes.
Light did not greet him the way it would later greet man.
It entered him—quietly, completely—until existence itself made sense.
There was no ground beneath his feet.
No sky above him.
Only one throne.
Agwunsi turned slowly, awareness forming before thought. He did not know what he was, only that he was. Purpose had not yet arrived, but something heavier already pressed on him—expectation.
Then the Presence came.
Not movement.
Not sound.
Presence.
CHUKWU.
It was not something Agwunsi saw.
It was something his existence adjusted to.
Every part of him—formed or unformed—aligned without instruction, like a law he had always obeyed without knowing.
Even the idea of turning did not exist in that moment.
Only recognition.
The power radiating from it was not forceful, Agwunsi's reflex of defence was to immediately fall on his knees bent instantly. His body reacted before his mind could form fear. He bowed, forehead lowered .
That's just it.
And in that moment, memory ignited.
Purpose flooded him.
He saw what CHUKWU intended—to create man.
Fragile.
Limited.
Forgetful.
A being that could not perceive the fullness of the divine without breaking.
So CHUKWU needed a bridge.
Agwunsi was that bridge.
The realization did not come gently.
It entered him all at once.
Every human breath.
Every fragile thought.
Every fear that would one day rise from creatures too small to understand the vastness watching them.
Like a tide pressing against his being.
And he understood—
In the unbearable knowing of what it meant to stand between something infinite—
and something fragile enough to break from seeing it.
He did not define his purpose.
He felt it.
And it was too much.
He was formed not as flesh, not as spirit, but as Divinity given shape—the first interface between the unseen God and the seen world. Where humans could not reach CHUKWU directly, Agwunsi would stand.
Unlike man, the gods were formed from CHUKWU's abstraction, not His breath. They were loyal, but not overwriteable. CHUKWU could guide them, but not replace their will. That made them powerful—and dangerous.
Agwunsi was given more than guidance.
He was given everything.
All divine responsibility toward man passed through him alone. Order. Balance. Health. Sanity. Meaning. His presence shaped how humanity understood the sacred.
For a time, it worked.
But weight accumulates.
Stress is not foreign to divinity—it is simply slower.
Agwunsi began to fracture.
It began quietly.
Not in action—
in perception.
Not outwardly.
Internally.
Duty and stress that should have been separate began to overlap.
He could no longer tell where one ended and another began.
Voices layered over voices.
The strain warped perception. The humans under his influence began to act strangely.
Reason bent.
And slowly—
Agwunsi stopped seeing humans as individuals.
They became weight.
Sickness appeared where none existed.
Minds wandered into places they could not return from.
Whispers followed.
' Agwu na akpa gi ' literally meaning ; Agwu is affecting you.
The phrase spread like wildfire through villages, spoken casually and still use till today. never knowing how close it was to truth.
CHUKWU saw it.
And for the first time, correction was necessary.
Other gods were formed—each given a domain, each carrying a portion Agwunsi could no longer bear. Strength. Thunder. Sun. Land. Mystery. Death.
But divinity itself—the bridge—remained Agwunsi's burden.
The damage, however, had already begun.
And for a moment—
everything held.
PRESENT DAY
The Chief Priest sat before his shrine, eyes marked with white clay, the nzu eye open to the gods.
Villagers knelt before him, murmuring prayers, waiting for answers.
Then the divine flame died.
No wind touched it.
No hand disturbed it.
It simply went out.
At the same moment, the sacred water in the shrine's pot began to boil—violently. Not only there. Across the land, in every shrine tied to the gods, the same thing happened.
People screamed.
Offerings were abandoned. Prayers scattered. Fear ran faster than explanation.
"Something terrible is happening."
The Chief Priest did not move.
He stared at the dead flame, his breath shallow, knowing—without knowing why—that this was not a message.
" Ojadili what have you done " He muttered visibly angry .
It was a symptom.
THE HEAVENLY REALM
Agwunsi stood at the center of the realm, eyes glowing with uncontrolled divinity.
The heavenly guards turned their blades and weapons inward, into themselves.
Suicide.
In mass .
It was not synchronized
.
It was worse.
Each guard moved at a different moment—
First , these Heavenly Soldiers tried to resist but it's impossible.
One drove his blade into his chest—
and paused.
His body refused to fall.
His hand trembled, trying to pull the weapon out—
but another force pushed it deeper.
A second guard screamed as his arm turned against him, muscles locking, forcing the blade across his throat.
There was no enemy.
Only intrusion.
Only control.
And the gods—who had faced war, destruction, and death—
felt something unfamiliar.
Helplessness.
One after another, they drove steel into themselves.
Their bodies did not fall.
They dissolved into divine fire—silent, smokeless, absolute.
Panic spread among the gods.
One guard resisted.
His hands shook. His mind screamed. He dropped his sword, clutching his head as pressure threatened to split him open. Blood streamed from his nose as he forced himself to move,
Pain nearly destroyed him.
But he endured.
Finally break free from Agwunsi disorder.
He ran and start snatching other heavenly guards sword before they use it on themselves.
The first scream did not end.
It multiplied.
Not in sound—
but in repetition.
Another blade.
Another body.
Another failure to stop it.
They gods saw him and that was when the gods acted.
Thunder broke—
not to kill—
but to interrupt.
Stone rose violently, swallowing steel mid-motion.
Hands were torn away from weapons.
Time fractured—
just enough to mislead the dying
Ikenga moved through the chaos, strength unmatched, ripping weapons from possessed grips, holding struggling guards down without killing them.
Mystery bent perception.
Time stuttered.
Guards saw reflections instead of targets, confusion breaking suicidal focus.
Idemili flowed in water , not to draw them but the water pushes them out making them to fall so as not to use their sword on themselves.
And so were the other gods trying to stop the mass suicide.
Still, it wasn't enough.
Then Anyanwu enhanced her power which isn't just about the sun and sunlight but also about ancient knowledge.
She understood Agwunsi plight and perhaps how to help him .
"This is stress," she said, voice sharp. "He is breaking."
She rushed to Agwunsi.
She drew him close—not as a woman, not as flesh—but as the sun returning warmth to a frozen core.
Her light did not blaze.
It softened.
Like something ancient choosing not to overwhelm.
The radiance wrapped around Agwunsi—not as power, but as warmth to his body and soul .
Not as force, but as origin.
For a moment—
the pressure inside him resisted.
The fracture pushed back.
The noise fought to remain.
Divinity folded inward.
Then—
something deeper responded.
Not the broken mind.
Not the burdened bridge.
Something older.
Something that existed before responsibility.
Agwunsi's form trembled—
and then yielded.
Agwunsi's mind regressed—not into weakness, but into origin.
As Agwunsi mouth found healing on Anyanwu breast as he sucks it .
Not as a man.
More than a god.
But as something returned to where it first knew peace.
He fed not on milk, but on solar nourishment older than hunger—memory before identity, warmth before purpose.
The noise inside him did not stop—
it softened.
Like something no longer fighting to exist.
His breathing slowed.
His eyes closed.
For the first time , Agwunsi fell asleep .
The guards collapsed, alive.
Silence followed.
The boiling water in the earth cools.
But the divine flame did not return.
"I thought only I could command the guards," Ikenga murmured. He originally is in command of the heavenly army as he is in charge of war .
" What happened to him just now ? " Amadioha asked ..
"You pushed him," Anyanwu said sharply with the pain in her voice , lifting Agwunsi away. "You all did."
"That's harsh," Amadioha muttered.
The heavens did not scream anymore.
But something had already broken.
And it was not contained above.
EARTH
Ojadili stood alone beneath the quiet sky.
The thunder earlier had not frightened him.
' Chi ' he called through his mind .
The name left his mind heavier than before.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then Chi appeared, standing a few steps away, careful not to come too close after what had just happened.
"What's happening?" Ojadili asked.
Chi inhaled slowly. "It's been handled."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I'm allowed to give," Chi said. "The panic caused by the heavenly realm had ceased .No Chief priest would be told what happened."
Everything is returning to normal.
Ojadili laughed once—a short, broken sound.
"Normal," he repeated. "Is that what you call this?"
Chi said nothing.
Ojadili stepped closer. "You told me I had no power of Amadioha . "
Chi's eyes shifted that's when he understood where Ojadili is going.
" I said you were special " Chi said .
"that I'm just special like the human I am "You lied," Ojadili said.
The word landed harder than thunder.
The word didn't just accuse.
It exposed something.
Every moment he had dismissed.
Every time something felt wrong but he chose to ignore it.
Every blackout.
Every unexplained fear.
Every time lightning answered him—and he convinced himself it was coincidence.
It all returned at once.
Not as memory—
but as betrayal.
Ojadili's chest tightened—not from anger alone, but from the realization that his life had never been his to understand.
And the one person he trusted—
had watched it happen.
"So when I blacked out before—when my body moved without me—when lightning answered my fear—"
Ojadili's voice trembled.
"Did you know? "
"I wasn't with the gods in their meetings to know if ..." Chi said quietly.
" Stop bullshitting me ! Do you know ? " Ojadili asked him seriously .
Chi hesitated and answered .
" I know ...
everything "
" I trusted you like a friend, showed you everyone that I loved and all of my friends but yet you couldn't just tell me the truth about the whole mess you gods put in my life , you still looked at me like I was ignorant," Ojadili snapped. "Like a child who couldn't be trusted with truth."
"I was protecting you."
"No," Ojadili said sharply. "You were protecting the gods."
Silence stretched between them.
Chi took a step forward. "If they knew how much you were awakening—"
"They already know," Ojadili interrupted. "And you helped them keep me blind."
Chi opened his mouth, then closed it again.
For the first time, he looked unsure.
"I thought you were different," Ojadili said, voice lower now.
"You said you were beneath them. That you understood humans. That you were my friend."
"I am still your friend," Chi said quickly.
"Friends don't decide what truths you can survive," Ojadili replied.
" Now Ekwensu would be after me to stop me from fulfilling the prophecy. And that's what my life will be about '
Chi couldn't speak more .
Ojadili nodded slowly, as if something painful had finally settled into place.
He turned away.
"Ojadili," Chi called after him. "If you walk away now, you'll be alone."
Ojadili stopped—but did not turn back.
"I already am," he said. "I just didn't know it until now."
He walked on.
Chi remained where he stood, unable to follow.
As Ojadili moved deeper into the path, the shadows stretched longer than his steps—always half a moment behind.
He could sense them .
He clenched his fist expecting to generate a thunderstorm or thunderbolt .
Nothing answered.
No thunder.
He reached—
and something reached back before.
Not power.
Not resistance.
Just—
absence.
The silence was immediate.
Absolute.
Not like before—when the power slept.
This felt different.
This felt like absence.
Ojadili clenched his fist tighter, forcing it—
calling it—
demanding it.
But there was nothing to respond.
No resistance.
No delay.
Just… nothing.
"What the hell is happening to me?" he whispered to himself.
An echo of an ancient proverb rang from the void .
' Onye buru chi ya uzo , ogbagbue onwe ya na oso ' which translates :
' He who thinks he can out do his gods , ends up in ruins '
For the first time ,he felt smaller than his own fear.