THE LAST KEEPER

Chapter 357: 357: INTO N’FOLU

Sagiri crossed the ancient boundary marker and entered the lands of the N’folu alone. It was now the end of the second month since he assumed his position as supreme chief. The pain in his body had become bearable, and he could at least function. He could wait a little longer, even so. He had grown restless over the past week. He could feel something brewing, and he knew it could soon be time.

He had asked that no one accompany him for this, even though the council argued that it would be shameful for o go alone, and they would accompany him. Even so, he did not want anyone to accompany him. This was one of those things one has to do alone. He had dreaded the journey, and even though he could make it from Thazir in less than a day on Zaira, he had slowed down, and they had taken a full day.

He could feel the crippling sense of familiarity the closer he got, and he dreaded it more and more. Finally, however, he was in Nkara, the loins of the south, and in Nfolu.

He now stood on Zaira’s head at the edge of the lands.

Before him stretched a vast wasteland so large that the horizon seemed unable to contain it. Once, this had been a thriving homeland filled with villages, markets, laughter, and the countless lives of his people. Now it was nothing but ruins. Burned foundations emerged from the desert like black scars. Entire streets lay buried beneath drifting sand and debris, their outlines barely visible beneath years of abandonment.

The remains of homes stood as charred skeletons, roofless walls reaching toward the sky like the fingers of the dead. Great halls where chiefs once gathered had been reduced to heaps of cracked stone and ash. Everywhere he looked, there were signs that the destruction had not been accidental but deliberate. Even the archive memory of what I once was looked so distant from what his eyes could see now.

Whoever had come here had wanted the N’folu erased from history. The fire had been so fierce that some stones were still blackened despite the passing years. The wind moved through the ruins with a hollow whistle, stirring ash and sand across what had once been roads. No birds sang. No animals wandered the land.

Even the desert seemed reluctant to claim the place fully. The devastation continued farther than the eye could see, spreading across leagues upon leagues of barren ground until it felt less like the ruins of a settlement and more like the grave of an entire people.

Sagiri walked among the shattered remains in silence, past broken walls, collapsed courtyards, and half-buried remnants of lives interrupted, while the empty homeland stretched endlessly around him, a monument to loss beneath the merciless desert sun.

Zaira moved deeper into the ruins of the N’folu homeland behind sagiri, and with every step, the boundary between the present and the Archive grew thinner. At first, it was only flickers at the edge of his vision. A shadow crossing a ruined street. A figure standing where no figure should have been. Then the images became clearer. The empty roads around him were once filled with people.

Mothers hurried past carrying baskets, children racing through courtyards that no longer existed. Merchants called out from stalls that were now nothing but piles of blackened stone. For a moment, the city lived again. Sagiri stopped walking. His chest tightened. The laughter was real. The voices were real.

He could almost believe he had arrived before the destruction. Then the image shifted.

A child running through the street vanished as a flaming arrow pierced his back. The market erupted into screams. The merchants disappeared beneath a wave of armored warriors. Blood splashed across walls that in the present existed only as ruins.

Sagiri staggered forward, but the vision did not stop. Everywhere he looked, two worlds occupied the same space. The dead city and the living city. The past and the present. One moment, he saw a thriving home. The next time he saw the same building collapse beneath fire. Every ruined foundation he passed revealed another memory.

Every shattered wall showed him the life that had once existed there before showing him how it ended. The Archive gave him no mercy. A courtyard became an execution ground. A family home became a tomb. A meeting hall became a pyre. The screams followed him everywhere. They echoed from empty buildings and drifted across barren streets.

He could hear the clash of steel, the roar of flames, and the cries of his people as clearly as if the slaughter were happening around him now. Then he reached the center of the settlement and froze. The thirteen formations were there. Not physically, but the image was so vivid that he could see every warrior standing in position.

Men and women bearing the same markings as his own stood bloodied, exhausted, and broken.

Behind them gathered the survivors, children, elders, and mothers clutching infants. People with nowhere left to run. Sagiri’s breathing became ragged. He knew this place. This was where they had made their final stand. He could feel it. Their fear, their despair, and their acceptance.

The overwhelming certainty that death was coming. Then the Archive forced another memory into him. Warriors in black combat suits with copper markings advancing through the flames.

Tagayia warriors.

The sight struck him harder than any blade. His legs nearly gave out beneath him. Around him, the illusion and reality merged completely. The burning city stood atop the ruins. The dead walked alongside the living. The screams of the past echoed through the silence of the present. And as Sagiri continued walking through the graveyard of his people, every step revealed another memory waiting beneath the sand.

The further Sagiri walked, the more the Archive tore him apart. The ruins disappeared beneath living memories until he could no longer tell whether he was walking through the present or the past.

A roar of agony ripped from his throat and echoed across the empty homeland. He fell to his knees, fingers digging into the sand as tears streamed uncontrollably down his face. The memories became sharper, crueler.

He saw mothers struck down while shielding their children. The Warriors were collapsing one after another as the thirteen formations failed. Homes burned, families slaughtered, and entire bloodlines erased in moments. Every scream entered him. Every death became his own.

He begged for it to stop, but the Archive only dragged him deeper. Staggering forward, half-blind with grief, he crossed streets that no longer existed and passed buildings that rebuilt themselves before collapsing again in fire. Then he reached the heart of the settlement. The place where the Archive had once stood. Even in ruin, it dominated the landscape.

Broken pillars rose from the desert like the bones of a dead giant, while shattered foundations stretched farther than the eye could see. Yet the moment he stepped into its shadow, the vision became complete. The ruins vanished. Before him stood the Archive in all its former glory. Towering structures climbed into the heavens. Bridges connected impossible heights. Thousands of N’folu filled the grounds below. For one heartbreaking moment, he saw what his people had been before the slaughter.

Then the sky turned black with smoke. The magnificent structure began to die. People ran in terror as sections of the Archive collapsed into the streets. Sagiri dropped to one knee, clutching his chest as though his heart were being torn from him. The grief of an entire people crashed into him at once. He could barely breathe.

Sagiri never moved from the ruins. He lay upon the cold earth of his homeland while the Archive poured memory after memory into him without mercy. The entire night passed that way. Sometimes he witnessed horrors so terrible that he felt his soul being torn apart alongside the screams of his people.

Other times, he was shown simple moments of happiness that hurt even more children racing through streets that no longer existed, families sharing meals, young warriors boasting of future victories, elders laughing beneath shaded courtyards, mothers singing to infants who would never grow old.

He wept openly as the good memories mixed with the bad, as life and death became impossible to separate.

As the hours passed, grief slowly gave way to something colder.

By the time dawn finally rose over the shattered homeland, Sagiri sat alone among the ruins with red eyes and a face hollowed by sorrow. The pain of the relics still burned through him, and the grief remained, but something had changed. For months, he had convinced himself there was time to heal, time to recover, time to prepare.

Standing amidst the grave of an entire people, he finally understood how wrong he had been. His enemies had already stolen generations from the N’folu. They had already taken everything worth taking. As the first sunlight touched the broken remains of the Archive, Sagiri slowly rose to his feet and looked across the homeland one final time.

His revenge could not wait any longer.