Chapter 825
A sudden, sharp anger flared in Osita’s chest, hot and difficult to contain. If not for the absolute necessity of their ruse, the need to ensure not a single leak disrupted the plan he would have roared in fury at the sky.
He hated this world for the choices it forced upon him and the impossible positions it put him in. Now, he was a ghost to his own blood, forced to hide from his children and his family when all he had ever truly desired was to be left in peace with them.
Taking a long, ragged breath to steady his racing heart, Osita stood up. As he rose, a shimmering door manifested out of the thin air before him, glowing faintly against the darkness of the borderlands.
He paused at the threshold, his back to his son. "Take care of yourself and your siblings," he said, his voice thick with a father’s heavy command. "And keep a close eye on your sister, Nwadike. Before she pushes herself so hard she breaks."
"As for your mother, leave her to me," Osita added, his voice regaining that steel-edged resolve. "I will save her. I will make our family whole again. Tell your siblings that I am always watching over them and in time, I will be watching over them alongside your mother."
With those final words, Osita stepped through the shimmering threshold. The door vanished as soon as he crossed it, taking his silhouette with it and leaving nothing but the cold wind of the borderlands.
Nwadike remained by the bonfire, a solitary figure against the encroaching night. He stared into the dying embers for hours, the weight of his father’s departure settling into his bones. Finally, he stood up and turned his gaze toward the distant, glowing lights of the capital.
"Time to be a leader," he muttered to the silence. Then, like he appeared, his figure vanished into thin air.
Meanwhile, deep within the heart of the Omadi Kingdom, a sudden wave of shock and celebration swept through the palace halls. A single proclamation had changed everything "The Queen was pregnant"
The palace erupted in joy, the news spreading like wildfire through the corridors. While the timing was sudden, few were truly surprised, for the past several months, the King had kept the Queen closer than ever before, a constant inseparable presence that the court had only just begun to adjust to.
Hearing that the Queen was expecting another child, the common folk and the court saw only a blessing. To them, it was the natural progression of the royal line.
But Nwadiebube sat in a heavy, stifling silence when the news reached him. Contrary to the expectations of his subjects, there was no joy in his heart. He alone carried the weight of the secret behind his Queen’s existence.
She was a vessel, a woman housing two conjured souls. The question that gnawed at him was which of those spirits was truly the mother of the child she carried. Yet, even knowing the terrifying abnormality of her condition, Nwadiebube found himself physically and spiritually unable to distance himself from her.
A dark, suffocating possessiveness had taken root within him. He hadn’t even noticed how much he had changed until his sister confronted him with a chilling truth, he had been cursed.
The realization hit him hard but was an accepted blow. He finally understood the source of his erratic character and this obsessive pull toward the Queen. But this was no ordinary hex that could be broken by a priest or a simple ritual. The source of this curse was woven by the hand of an Origin God.
He was trapped in a divine snare, forced to love and protect a woman who was a walking mystery, while the fruit of her womb grew as a testament to a power he could not control.
Even knowing the truth of his cursed state, Nwadiebube was powerless against it. The obsession was a tide he could not stem, he found himself drowning in it, lost to a possession that defied logic. He knew he should distance himself from his changing wife, that her transformation was a warning, yet he could never bring himself to leave her side and now, she was carrying a child.
The curse was only one thread in the web. The other was the Queen herself.
The presence of the soul of Osita’s wife had fundamentally altered her, refining her grace and sharpening her allure in ways Nwadiebube hadn’t realized he craved. But the true "nail in the coffin" was their nightly conversations. In the quiet of their chambers, when he spoke of the tangled issues of the court, the change was most profound.
Previously, his Queen had shown no interest in the mechanics of power, offering little more than a polite ear. Now, her insights was amazing. The way she spoke, the brilliance of her advice, and her deep understanding of human nature opened his eyes. For the first time, Nwadiebube felt he had a true partner, a peer in mind and spirit, rather than just a princess chosen for her political standing.
But with the pregnancy, the curse flared with terrifying intensity. His obsession over the Queen and the unborn child spiked, turning his protective instinct into something more volatile. The mere thought of Osita, the man whose wife’s soul now inhabited his Queen ever drawing near to them sent a jolt of madness through his veins. He would burn the world down before he let that being reclaim what was now, by all right, his own.
Nwadiebube’s paranoia reached its breaking point when the official report from the Osita Kingdom finally landed on his desk.
At first, he stared at the parchment in pure disbelief. The news sounded utterly absurd, preposterous even. To hear that Osita, a man who had built his kingdom with his own hands and ruled for centuries, had been banished by his own son seemed like a fever dream. No ruler of Osita’s caliber fell so easily, and no son like Nwadike would cast aside such a father without a catastrophic reason.
But as the days bled into weeks and the reports remained consistent, the chilling truth began to crystallize in Nwadiebube’s mind. He saw through the veil once the truth stuck with him. He realized the elaborate game Osita and his son were spinning in plain sight of the world.
It was a masterstroke, a plan no one could possibly comprehend unless they knew the secret of his Queen’s soul. Only Nwadiebube knew that the second soul conjured within his wife was that of Osita’s own Queen.
The realization struck him like a physical blow. The banishment was a liberation. By being cast out, Osita had severed the shackles of his crown. He was no longer bound by the diplomatic responsibilities of a king or the territorial interests of a nation. He was now a ghost, a free agent with no borders to respect and no throne to protect.
Osita now had the absolute freedom to come for his Queen. And when he finally struck, Nwadiebube wouldn’t even be able to point toward the Osita Kingdom as the culprit. Osita had burned the bridge behind him, he was an exile, a rogue, and a man with nothing left to lose and everything to reclaim.
The curse within Nwadiebube roared in response, his possessiveness twisting into a frantic, desperate need to hide his pregnant wife from a man who was now more dangerous than an entire invading army.
As soon as this realization took root, Nwadiebube acted with a frantic, cold precision. He issued a royal decree that plunged the entire Omadi Kingdom into a state of total mobilization. Omadi was a land forged in iron; it was a militaristic society where every citizen, regardless of gender, was a trained combatant. Within hours, the rhythmic clanging of smithies and the marching of boots replaced the quiet hum of commerce. The kingdom was suiting up for a war without a visible front.
No one questioned the king’s sudden order to mobilize, such action has been done most of their lives with it mostly to keep them alert and made sure their training never waned.
While the nation armed itself, Nwadiebube gathered the Paragons, the elite powerhouses of his realm to deliver an order that left them bewildered. Only his sister, Nwadimma, who knew the dark truth of the Queen’s condition, understood the terror behind his words.
The King’s command was as simple as it was grave: "The Queen and her unborn child are in mortal peril. A formidable enemy is coming to snatch them from under our very watch. From this moment on, you are to be her shadow. Do not let her out of your sight."
To the Paragons, the order seemed paranoid and strange until they turned their ascended sight toward the Queen. As they peeled back the layers of the mortal veil to inspect her essence, they recoiled in shock. They did not see the singular, flickering light of a human soul. Instead, they saw a swirling, iridescent anomaly, a soul with two distinct faces looking back at them from the same vessel.