THE LAST ATTOH

The air in the village of Attoh didn't just hang; it vibrated. For ninety-nine years, the legendary "Sun-Fire" in the blood of the villagers had been dormant. The warriors were now farmers; the lions had become sheep. But as Kitah labored in the heat of the midday sun, the atmosphere shifted. The birds, usually melodic at this hour, fell into a sudden, eerie silence. Inside the clay-walled hut, Shuttah the Seer sat by the hearth. Her eyes, clouded by cataracts but sharpened by the spirit world, jerked open. She didn't see the room; she saw a Great Iroko tree being struck by blue lightning. She heard the ancestors whispering a name that hadn't been spoken in a century: Attore. "She is coming," Shuttah whispered, her voice like grinding stones. "The silence is breaking." Outside, the village was under siege by anticipation and fear. King Zokar, the ruler of the neighboring Iron Kingdom, sat atop his black stallion, surrounded by a hundred guards. He had watched the moon turn a bruised crimson the night before—the sign he had dreaded. He rode to the center of Attoh, his spear pointed at the elders. "Where is the child?" Zokar bellowed. "Your seers have been silent for a hundred years. If a warrior is born today, the treaty of peace is ashes!" Beluda, Attore’s father, stepped forward. He was a tall man, built like the statues of the old gods, though he carried a harvest sickle instead of a khopesh. "There is no warrior here, Great King. Only a mother in pain. Your seers saw nothing, did they not?" It was true. Zokar’s own mystics had been blinded by a strange, blue fog in their visions. Frustrated and paranoid, the King gestured to his men. "Search every hut. If the child’s eyes are the color of the sky, kill it. Kill them all." Inside the hut, a cry shattered the silence. It wasn't the thin wail of a babe, but a resonant, haunting sound that echoed like a war horn. Kitah gasped, clutching the newborn. As she wiped the birth-blood away, the infant opened her eyes. They weren't brown like her mother’s or black like the earth. They were a piercing, electric firely blue. "The Attoh has returned," Shuttah breathed, quickly throwing a dark cloth over the child's head. "Kitah, you must move. Now!" The door was kicked off its hinges. Beluda blocked the entrance, his eyes meeting Shuttah’s for one final heartbeat. He knew. He saw the blue light peeking from the cloth. "Run!" Beluda roared. He turned his sickle into a weapon of desperation, striking the first guard. But he was one man against an army of iron. As Kitah and Shuttah slipped through the rear thatch of the hut into the tall tropical grass, the sound of steel piercing flesh tore through the air. Beluda fell, his blood watering the soil of his ancestors, his eyes fixed on the silhouette of his wife disappearing into the savanna. King Zokar walked over the fallen father, looking toward the horizon where the sun was being swallowed by a strange, blue-tinted dusk. "Find them," he hissed. "The Good Luck Charm of the kingdoms must not live to see the sunrise." Under the shadow of a distant Iroko tree, two women and a child of prophecy began a flight that would change the world forever.