But deep down, Paul Nwokocha knew the truth.
But Paul placed his small palm on her chest and whispered the song his late grandmother used to hum—the one about the One who was, who is, who is to come. Beatrice opened her eyes. She sat up. She asked for water.
The crowd roared.
And every night, Paul laid hands on them, closed his eyes, and called upon the Ancient of Days.
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."
Not dramatically—not like a Hollywood curse. But a day here, a week there. A crease beside his mouth. A knuckle that ached before rain. His thirty-year-old face now looked forty. His hair, once thick as oiled rope, began to thin at the crown.
He told himself it was stress. The burden of ministry. The sleepless nights on planes to Toronto, Johannesburg, Dubai.
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:
The first time Paul Nwokocha healed someone, he was seven years old and didn’t understand what he’d done.
But the camera operator zoomed in on Paul Nwokocha as he stood up, swaying.
The tomb of Paul Nwokocha is empty.
And he understood, finally, what the Ancient of Days really was.
But that night, in a small room behind the crusade ground, a nurse found him sitting in a chair, humming the old song to himself. His eyes were closed. His breathing was soft. He looked, for the first time in his life, exactly his age.
Not a title. Not a name.
Adwoa sat up. She blinked. She saw her granddaughter’s face for the first time in fifty years and laughed like a child.
