[Unknown Location, Southern Louisiana]
Deep in the Louisiana bayou, in what could only be described as little more than a shack, a woman sat before a flickering altar. Her eyes were both wide and glassy, and her body trembled like the last leaf on a storm-shaken cypress tree.
The shack groaned around her. And with each breath of humid wind, its walls bowed with the signs of both age and decay. The air was thick, pungent, and electric with an energy that only a select few in this world could ever hope to understand. In the skies above, the full moon hung low, bloated and yellow, while casting pale light that barely pierced through the Spanish moss.
Inside the shack, over a dozen candles flickered around a voodoo altar. One that was adorned with bones, feathers, skulls, and jars filled with things better left unnamed. All of it encircled by chalk symbols scrawled feverishly on the warped floorboards.
The woman sat hunched over, her eyes wide and unblinking as images of the unknown danced throughout her mind.
Her skin was as dark as fresh river mud, gleaming with sweat under the dance of the multicolored flame. Her matted dreadlocks fell around her shoulders like tangled roots, some adorned with beads and bones, others slicked to her temples from the oncoming fever. Her lips moved, dry and cracked, whispering to no one and everyone all at once.
The flames before her danced in unnatural hues—blue, green, violet, and a shade of crimson that seemed to hum. They flickered and snapped, as though responding to something unseen. And the woman rocked back and forth as a low moan spilled from out of her throat.
In the heat of the ritual, the woman's body began to convulse. Her spine began to arch. Her mouth flew open, teeth bared like an untamed animal. And from deep within her chest came a voice that sounded far older than the bayou itself.
She was in the grip of something. Visions, voices, a storm of knowledge that others couldn't see.
Suddenly, she screamed.
The sound cut through the trees like a warning bell to the spirits she knew. And her body convulsed once more while spasming in violent jerks. The candles then flared, casting monstrous shadows on the warped wooden walls.
"A druid!" She howled, her voice cracking like thunder. "Cursed with a frozen shadow that walks his every step! Cold as a grave, yet burning within! The link between two worlds is within his grasp!"
Foam began to well at the corners of her mouth, but she did not stop. Not even when her limbs began to twist unnaturally. Her fingers splaying as though grasping at something only she could see.
"The champion! The avatar of a kingdom no longer drawn on maps...the lost empire, her feathered crown is kissed by the sun itself!"
The unnamed witch clutched her chest, gasping, choking on air that seemed suddenly thick with the voice of the spirits.
"A woman! One who dances with the western winds at her back!" Her voice turned guttural, almost inhuman. "She battles broken lightning atop the sky! She dares the storm to break her!"
The flames flickered once more, and this time they pulsed in rhythm with her breath
"A girl... a warrior!" Her head snapped sideways, as if listening to a voice in the dark. "Her mind, it rages! She is the bull who tramples courage and fear alike! She herself is chaos made flesh!"
The woman collapsed forward, catching herself on her elbows as bile spilled from her lips, thick and green. Something shatters behind her, one of the jars on the altar exploded from within, scattering ash across the broken floor.
"Two worlds!" She screamed into the floorboards. "They will collide! The fracture between man and the chosen few grows stronger!"
The shack groaned, and the flames danced faster, almost as if they too were reacting to the witch's mad revelations.
She then lifted her head slowly, her eyes now glowing. No longer white, but radiant with the inner fire that she held so dear.
"The boy... that boy... surrounded by towers of concrete and ambition! His body beats like a drum with the rhythm of Earth itself...!"
The flames roared as if in approval. Outside, the wind howled through the trees, bending branches that had not moved in decades.
A silence then fell, one that was as sharp as it was absolute.
The woman sat back, shivering with sweat and salt running down her neck. The altar's fire dwindled, and the colors faded into an unnatural gray.
For a moment, her lips trembled. Then came the final whisper, soft as a breath of death.
"...the Child of Light has finally set his plan into motion..."
Her eyes fluttered, and her body slumped to the floor like a marionette without its strings. Her head hit the dirt with a muted thud. And for a moment, all was still.
But then, just before darkness claimed her fully, she murmured one final, fractured sentence:
"A new age... it begins... the world will not be the same.... All the pieces are finally in place...."
And with that, the woman of the shack, the seer, the witch, the mad prophet, slipped into unconsciousness. And the last of the flames curled into a wisp of smoke.
Outside, the bayou kept its secrets.
At least for now....