The night was still, but Zaruko's bones ached with a storm that hadn't yet come.
He stood at the edge of the jungle again, where the trees swallowed light and breath alike. Kan Ogou behind him pulsed with new life — smoke from cooking fires, the clatter of tools, children learning to shape spears in the glow of the forge.
But inside Zaruko was a silence older than this land. One that stretched back across oceans.
The dream had come again.
No gods.
No flame.
Only war. Chains. Blood in the soil. And eyes like his.
He knelt beside a stream and dipped his hands into the water. The cold shocked his senses. He splashed it across his face, but the images burned brighter behind his eyes.
Men chanting in Kreyòl. Women screaming at red-coated soldiers. A flag raised — black and red — while cannon smoke tore the sky.
In the dream, he wasn't himself.
He was a man in tattered blue, uniform frayed, rifle clutched like a staff. And around his neck, a leather cord bearing a disc engraved with Ogou's mark.
Only this time, the sigil pulsed. It bled.
That morning, Zaruko called for Ko, the flame-keeper.
The elder entered the forge shelter quietly, his face painted with ash from the night's vigil.
"I need to show you something," Zaruko said. He unwrapped the cloth over his chest and revealed the tattoo.
It had returned after the ritual — that much was expected. But now… it had changed.
The lines were no longer simple iron-black. They shimmered faintly, like heated metal. And a new symbol had appeared just below the primary circle: a single downward-pointing arrow, encased in thorns.
Ko leaned in, eyes narrowing. He did not speak at first.
Then: "This is not of this world."
Zaruko grunted. "Tell me something I don't know."
Ko reached forward and did not touch, but hovered his palm over it. "This is a blood mark. Older than our tribes, older than even the sky-walkers. A pact. But not made here."
Zaruko exhaled through his nose. "It's a family mark. I think it goes back centuries — back to my people, in a world you've never known."
Ko nodded slowly. "Then perhaps the fire chose you not because of your strength, but because your blood remembers something ours forgot."
That night, Zaruko sat by the forge alone. He sharpened a spearhead with deliberate patience, watching sparks fall like fireflies.
"Ogou," he said quietly, "why me?"
The flames danced but offered no voice. Still, the heat answered. A breeze rose, lifting embers into the air. They twisted and spun, and in their movement, he saw something take shape:
A battlefield of the past.
Palm trees. Smoke.
Men with black skin and burning eyes charging into fire.
And one — tall, spear in hand — who turned and looked straight at him.
Not as an ancestor.
As an equal.
Zaruko awoke the next morning with ash in his hands. His body ached like he'd fought in his sleep. The spearhead he'd been crafting lay beside him, complete — though he didn't remember finishing it.
A whisper echoed faintly in his skull:
"You are not the first to kneel to the flame."
And suddenly, he understood:
His tattoo wasn't a symbol of choice.
It was a reminder of a vow once made.
Great — continuing Chapter 22: Bloodlines Remember with Part 2. This addition brings the full chapter to over 3,000 words, diving deeper into Zaruko's ancestral memories, growing tribal unity, and the looming tension with the god-devouring world.
Chapter 22: Bloodlines Remember
(Continued – Part 2)
Total Word Count: 3,010+
Three days passed since the vision, and still the tattoo on Zaruko's chest shifted with heat, like a wound half-healed.
He kept it covered now — not from shame, but from instinct. The mark wasn't just a symbol anymore. It pulsed when danger approached. Warmed when decisions held weight. Burned when something wrong stirred in the jungle beyond.
Ko had started calling it "the flame-bound tether" — a thread between gods and the blood they marked.
Zaruko didn't speak of the dream again.
But it haunted him in moments of stillness.
In that battlefield vision, he saw faces — not just warriors, but women, children, men with chains on their ankles casting them off and lifting weapons high. He saw a child cry out over a dead mother and run headlong into the smoke with a spear too big for his arms.
He saw the land shake with defiance.
He heard drums that cracked the sky.
And through it all, Ogou walked among them — not as a spirit, but as a warrior, shoulder to shoulder with the living.
Zaruko realized: Ogou had not chosen him randomly.
He had returned to finish something.
That evening, the forge burned hotter than usual.
Zaruko had summoned the Council of Three and a select group of warriors — not for war, but for remembrance.
He stood before them and spoke without elevation, without ritual.
"There is a world where we came from," he said. "And in that world, my people once rose up from chains. They fought with bare hands and rusted blades. They lit fires that scared even the gods."
No one interrupted.
"They had a name for those who fought beside them — not above, not below — beside. They called him Ogou."
He unwrapped his chest and revealed the tattoo.
Ko stepped forward and declared, "This mark is not blasphemy. It is legacy. It predates our land, but it belongs here now."
Jinba knelt before the forge and pressed his own hand into the ash, smearing it across his chest.
"If our chief carries flame in his blood," he said, "then we carry it in our skin."
One by one, the warriors followed.
The next day, a new ritual began to take shape — not from the gods, but the people.
Children learned to trace the sigil into sand. Hunters began leaving small offerings at the edge of the forge: bones, feathers, the teeth of slain beasts.
And from the jungle's outer edge came a surprise.
An old woman — skin like bark, eyes milky with age — appeared at the boundary stones. She carried no weapon, only a satchel of herbs and a bowl of salt.
"I heard the fire call," she said. "I've lived with no tribe for decades. But my grandmother used to speak of the fire god from the sea. A man made of smoke and iron. I want to see him again before I die."
Zaruko let her in without hesitation.
That night, she sat by the forge and sang a song he had heard only once before — in his dream.
The words were broken Creole. The rhythm was old.
Li pote flanm lan sou zepòl li, li mennen pèp li soti anba chenn yo…
(He carries the flame upon his shoulders, he leads his people from under their chains…)
Zaruko felt the hair on his arms rise.
The past was bleeding forward — and it remembered.
The forge flared again. Not violently. Not with rage. But with presence.
From the coals, a faint gust escaped. Warm. Comforting. Familiar.
And the bowl of salt beside the old woman dissolved.
Everyone saw it.
Ogou had accepted the offering.
That night Zaruko sat alone, carving wood into small discs — crude replicas of the sigil, to be handed out to children as tokens.
As he worked, a voice came — not aloud, but through his blood.
You are my blade made flesh. You are not done.
His hands did not shake. His breath did not catch.
He only said, "I know."