{{NavChap|[[Chapter II - Brotherhood]]|[[Chronicles of the First Crusade#Table of contents|Table of contents]]|[[Chapter IV - Sylvan Exile]]}}

{{Quotation|''Bélénor Nébius, narrator'' • ''Cheng Lai'SuKi, illustrator''|

Pü said these few words while gritting his teeth, squinting to control himself. He left the hut without looking at his family and picked up the sacred basin on the ground, which was emptied and filled with water every evening in anticipation of the great moment. Undressing completely, he knelt down and poured the contents of the well over his head, as the tradition asked. Under normal circumstances, '''the bite of the icy water''' would probably have seemed painful to him. But as the burn of the shoot bruised his face, the sensation of the icy liquid was almost life-saving. Naked as a newborn and washed of his impurities, he was now ready to be reborn during the ritual. But he still had to survive until then. Still kneeling, the young Zorai opened the small chest put next to the now empty basin. It contained two tools that were essential to the sprouting ceremony: a ceremonial dagger and a whistler-stick. Pu put the whistler-stick in his mouth and struggled to his feet. Finally, with the dagger in his hand, he headed for the deeper place in the village: the Ceremonial Square.

Driven mad by the pain, Pü was feeling his jaw joints distend, some of his teeth loosen, and the skin on his cheeks crack as he was managing to force his entire fist into his mouth. With his free hand, he pulled out a clump of blue hair, bleeding. His eyes rolled backwards as he convulsed on the floor. He could feel the bone material tearing at his flesh and growing against his forehead. How could he bear such pain? It was inconceivable, there was no chance of him surviving that. Letting baleful thoughts darken his reason, he was about to give up. It was then that he appeared in front of him, between two spasms: out of nothingness, a Kami of the jungle was now leaning over his body. The protective spirit of Atys, whom Pü assumed had answered the call of the whistle, was in every way similar to the one that had appeared to him four years earlier, in his mother's workshop. Over the past few years, his mother's religious teaching had paid off. Pü had become a devout practitioner, who was feeling a deep and sincere love for Ma-Duk and the Kamis, and absolute gratitude with regard to them. A few months ago, his mother had revealed to him that she and his father had found it very difficult to conceive him, and that everything had changed after Looï had gone to meet the Kamis. A few days later, she got pregnant. So Pü was, more than anyone else, grateful to the Kamis. The child looked at the creature's arm, pointing in the direction of Ceremonial Square, and then at its eyes. Its big white eyes. His big white eyes that, empty four years before, were now filled with shame. '''What miserable image was he giving to Ma-Duk?''' He was besmirching the name of his ancestors. The normally calm young Zorai felt a fierce anger towards himself. He furiously tore his fist from his throat, knocking out a few teeth and expelling nausea in the process. Crawling piteously, he managed to retrieve his dagger and whistle stick, and when he stood up, the Kami was gone. Had he dreamed it, or was it a warning from the Great Originator? Ma-Duk's gaze was on him now, he could feel it. He spat out bile and blood, bit into the whistle, and resumed his descent.

Pü was almost arriving his destination when he saw the first glimmers appearing between the huts, now situated high above him. Finally, he climbed down a ladder, with difficulty, reaching the deepest part of the village. Here the light was scarcer, and the cold of the deep caves was rising to the surface. The Ceremonial Square was a large circular pit about twenty-five meters in diameter, five meters deep, and the bottom was covered with bark chips. Apart from the gigantic totem pole that occupied the center, it was completely empty. The structure was an impressive wooden pylon completely covered with Zoraïs masks tattooed with various pictograms. These tattoos represented the merit of the Zorai. The more a mask was tattooed, the more deserving the Zorai was. The ultimate tattoo consited of a total covering of all the others, the origin of the so revered Black Mask. Moreover, only those tribesmen who had respected the precepts of the Black Cult of Ma-Duk all their lives could hope to appear on the totem pole at their death. '''Surviving alone the growth of the mask was one of these precepts'''. With trembling legs, Pü knelt halfway between the ladder and the totem pole and stabbed his dagger into the ground. His vision blurred by pain, he lingered on each of the faces, invoking the names of his heroes, and seeking in their deadened gaze a way to lessen his torment. He had already repeated his prayer a great  many times when the first member of the tribe joined him in the square, as the sharp growth was beginning to pass his eyebrows. Blinded by the cephalgias and the drops of acidic sweat that beaded in his eyes, the young Zorai did not succeed in making out the newcomer. He had to wait for him to speak.

At these words, his ancestors came to life. Wooden bodies wriggled out of the totemic prison. One after the other, they fell to the ground like disjointed puppets, and once straightened, they charged at him, screaming. Pü spread his arms. One by one, the apparitions plunged into his forehead. Letting the pain consume him, the child lost all concept of reality. And as his eyes were about to be plunged into darkness, perhaps permanently, he thought he saw the large white eyes of the black Kami who was atop the totem pole. Pü read pride in them and fell into a trance.

Around him, his entire tribe was beginning to arrive from the heights of the village, descending the stairs and ladders in religious silence. They gradually placed themselves in a semicircle on the half of the square opposite the one where Pü was kneeling. The last to arrive was Grandmother Bä-Bä, helped by Looï. The old woman was the only one allowed to join the semicircle where Pü was. She stood between the little being and the big totem pole and raised a withered hand. This one contained her famous dice game, which she used regularly to catalyze her power and accurately predict the tribe's future. At his gesture, the few lights still present at the level of the heights of the village flew in his palm, which had become the only source of light. A small phosphorescent ball was now floating there. The Zoraïs, although accustomed, never got tired of this bewitching spectacle. A few long seconds passed, silently, then the witch blew on the small star, which lit up with red and flew to the totem. Upon contact with the ball of light, the building instantly burst into flames and the empty orifices of the masks lit up. Grandmother Bä-Bä then began the ritual that each of those present had experienced as a child. She chanted dark incantations for the next few hours, waving her hands in a strange way, while her children hummed liturgical songs in chorus. Deep in the darkness, somewhere in the huge stump, shadows danced in rhythm. Farther into the jungle, emanating from the gigantic dead sky-tree, one could catch sight of a reddish glow illuminating the sky, and guess at sinister whispers in the wind's complaint. The Cursed Stump, definitely, lived up to its name for the ignorant. The hypnotic ritual seemed never to stop, and none of the Zorais would have risked interrupting it. Tirelessly, they stared at the young child, who, still in a trance, occasionally broke the monotony of the ceremony with his muffled cries. They thought they would lose him for good an hour after the ritual began, when, barely conscious, Pü tore the dagger from the ground and split his mask in line with each eye. But the youngest of Sang and Looï Fu-Tao held on. Everyone there in the pit knew what he was going through. They too had experienced it. All of them had been forced to dive into the abyss. And they had all come out of it greater.

A shrieking twilight abyss was sparkling before Pü's eyes. Again, the black Kami emerged from nothingness. With its great white eyes, it stared at the child, then plunged. Pü had no choice but to follow it, sucked in by a force beyond himself. In full catch of speed in the bubbling vacuum, a development and an acceleration of the vague tonal system announced a paroxysm to come, indescribable and orgasmic. The speed became quickly vertiginous. Unable to breathe, so much the force of push was powerful, Pü felt the air to flay its skin and to infiltrate between its bones. The pain was unspeakable. He was in the process of liquefying, crushed by the endless increase in pressure. Gradually, he lost all consistency. It was then that, reduced to the state of a simple primordial soup, he finally felt it within him. The monstrous explosion of the liturgical chants of his ancestors, which concentrated in their immaculate sonority all the primitive effervescence of the Great Genitor, that which broods behind each fragment of matter. This resonance which springs up in rhythmic reverberations and penetrates attenuated in all the levels of being, and carries everywhere on Atys a terrible significance. Ma-Duk spoke to him, and the Kami took him to meet him in the glittering heart of the world. But all this disappeared in an instant.

{{NavChap|[[Chapter II - Brotherhood]]|[[Chronicles of the First Crusade#Table of contents|Table of contents]]|[[Chapter IV - Sylvan Exile]]}}

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{{Portal|Zoraï}}

[[Category:Chronicles of the First Crusade‎]]