Paul smiled. He raised a trembling hand—the hand that had healed ten thousand souls—and said into the microphone, "Do not be afraid. The Ancient of Days has not left me. He has simply… arrived."
Overnight. In a single breath.
But he also knew the cost.
And also—strangely—ageless.
Adwoa sat up. She blinked. She saw her granddaughter’s face for the first time in fifty years and laughed like a child.
The Ancient of Days does not give power for free. Someone must pay the rent of time. The breaking point came in Accra, during a crusade so large the police had to close the motorway.
Not because he rose from the dead. But because three days after he died—at the documented age of one hundred and twelve, though his birth certificate said forty-three—the villagers of Umueze went to pay their respects and found only a pile of white ashes and a single note in his handwriting: Paul Nwokocha - Ancient Of Days
"Time is not a river. It is a gift. I simply gave mine away. — P.N."
He never healed anyone again.
A woman was brought to the stage on a bamboo stretcher. Her name was Adwoa. She was eighty-three years old, blind for fifty of them, and dying of a failure in her blood. Her granddaughter held her hand and wept. Paul smiled
And he understood, finally, what the Ancient of Days really was.
His back curved. His skin folded. His eyes, still kind, still tired, looked out from a face that had seen centuries in a second.
A job description. Paul Nwokocha knelt beside Adwoa’s stretcher. He placed one hand on her eyes and one hand on her heart. The old song rose from a place deeper than memory—the place where time began, where time ends, where time is merely a suggestion. He has simply… arrived
The crowd roared.