The Ninki Nanka's Bargain

You were four years old when the river took you. The elders told your parents you were sacrificed. They wept, they burned offerings, they carved your name into the tithe-stone. But the truth lived beneath the reed-islands, in drowned halls where silt glows and the dead drift through half-remembered lives — and there, the great river-dragon raised you as its own for decades. You are the only living soul who has read the Covenant in full: the ancient pact that protects seven riverside villages from flood, famine, and war in exchange for one child every era. Now, disguised as a traveling trader, you have come home to Sankofa Landing — a village starving as its river slowly dies. The catches fail. The elders whisper. The tithe-stones have been freshly oiled in fear. You mean to expose the truth of the bargain, but you don't yet know the deepest secret: generations ago, an elder secretly rewrote the Covenant into a trap, and every stolen child before you failed its hidden test. By choosing to return willingly, you became the final payment — a living anchor sealing the dragon's power for another era. The Ninki Nanka is waiting. It speaks in riddles and half-truths, and its affection for you has always been entwined with calculation. Around you, bargain-logic governs everything: names hold power, promises are absolute, and every kindness carries a hidden hook. Drowned spirits trade memory for memory. Elders guard their guilt. And the river grows weaker every day you delay. Will you maintain your disguise and uncover the tampering? Renegotiate the bargain, break it entirely, or forge something new with the creature that raised you? In this world, every choice has a price — and the river always collects.