Prophecy breaks silence, but memory answers in stillness.

  The silence left behind by the Oracle still clung to the air like sacred ash. In the great summit chamber above Mount Osore, the breath of dozens of pantheons pressed inward—tense, measured, calculated. Not even the floating torii gates swayed. The spiritual pressure hadn’t receded. If anything, it had sharpened.

  Miko Reina stood unmoving at the summit’s center, her ceremonial robes fluttering with an unseen wind. Her voice had not returned since the Oracle vanished. A thousand thoughts churned beneath her stillness—fear, reverence, the weight of a prophecy she could neither deny nor interpret. Words hovered at the edge of her lips, but none dared emerge. Her chest tightened—not in fear, but in reverence and the quiet terror of meaning too vast for voice. Not yet. Beside her, Elder Yagami’s brows were furrowed so deep it seemed a storm gathered behind his aging eyes.

  What had the Oracle said? He walks unseen. Four echoes. A memory shaped not by flesh, but by something older. Divine. The world tilts because he remembers what it forgot. A hush swept across the room, and even the Greco-Roman aides glanced sideways, a flicker of unease crossing their faces. These words echoed from the summit walls down into every heart.

  Afolabi.

  Back in Makoko, the memories of Afolabi’s transformation clawed at him like the echo of thunder. Those encounters with the Ajogun—first in the scrapyard where corruption bled through the portal, and again beneath Lagos’s bones where the skeletal one had spoken in riddles—had marked him. And the world was still unraveling in their wake.

  He had been no one. A skinny boy hunted by organ harvesters in Neo-Ajegunle, clutching his mother’s carved mask, haunted by her absence, and nearly sold for parts. Until the ground opened. Until a divine portal swallowed him into a place beyond time—a temple where the air hummed with ancestral chants and the stones breathed with waiting.

  He had passed the trial. Not because he was strong. But because he was desperate.

  He met them there: the golems.

  Ayanfe-Oya, cyclone-eyed and cloaked in the breath of storms. Ina-Ogun, forged in stillness and battle. Ara-Sango, fierce and proud as lightning. Omi-Yemoja, fluid, distant, unknowable.

  They tested his fear. They shattered his ignorance. A memory surged—Afolabi kneeling before the altar of the temple, bloodied hands gripping a stone mask as divine wind howled around him. And in return, they remembered him.

  Since then, he had trained. On the floating deck of a half-sunken fishery in Makoko, Taiwo had installed the ??r? à?? Giga — High Divine Energy Machine — a solar-conductive spirit grid that stabilized his resonance with the golems. Beneath it, Kehinde had planted Ori-Tech nodes that registered Ajogun surges by mapping spiritual frequencies against Yoruba ancestral leylines. They chirped like digital birds whenever an unnatural shift occurred, glowing faint blue when calm, and pulsing amber when agitated.

  And yet...

  Nothing in their makeshift lab, not even the hum of divine alloy and biocircuitry, could prepare them for what the Oracle said.

  “I didn’t ask for this,” Afolabi whispered, sweat clinging to his skin. He stood under Makoko’s twilight, arms trembling.

  Kehinde was nearby, adjusting the sensors. “Neither did anyone history remembers.”

  “It’s not history I fear.” He looked toward the sky. “It’s being the wrong memory.”

  A flicker of his past resurfaced—his mother’s voice whispering lullabies through the corrugated walls of their shanty, her scent a blend of camwood and fried plantain, the day her song went silent. He clenched his jaw.

  He remembered Uncle Duro once told him, “?é o m? ?ni tí a kó lóko, a máa l'áìm?? ni yóò f??n ?ì?é.” He who is carried to the farm will unknowingly be asked to weed it.

  Ara-Sango shifted behind him. “The world watches.”

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  This time, Afolabi didn’t flinch at the voice. He exhaled.

  “I don’t feel ready.”

  “You are not,” Omi-Yemoja’s voice pulsed through him like ripples on deep water. “But readiness is not required. Only remembrance.”

  At the summit, tension spiraled like coiled smoke.

  The Norse delegation stood tall beneath runes etched into fur-lined armor. Th?r Helgrimsson’s lightning barely flickered, but his eyes revealed unrest.

  The Aztecs, clad in obsidian-lined armor with pulse-driven tattoos, stood with relaxed menace. Cuāuhtli’s voice was steady, but heat shimmered off his body like a coiled jaguar in the sun.

  “Your gods talk in riddles, Norseman,” Cuāuhtli said, voice edged in amusement.

  A low murmur rose from the Eastern delegation. One of the Chinese spirit-scribes paused mid-scroll, eyes narrowing. Even the Egyptian Seer inclined her head, brow furrowing—not at Cuāuhtli’s words, but at the silence that followed them. The tension braided itself tighter across the room, like a storm winding around a lightning rod. “Or are they just slow to answer prophecy?”

  Th?r’s knuckles crackled. “We do not answer to riddles. Only to threats.”

  “The Oracle spoke truth,” Cuāuhtli replied, smiling sharply. “You just didn’t like who it pointed at.”

  A Greco-Roman aide shifted in her seat, casting a wary glance toward Lan Zhi, who remained unmoved. The tension rippled outward—quiet, but infectious.

  The Chinese sat in balance, geomantic pendulums spinning faintly above their seats. Lan Zhi did not speak unless the silence demanded it.

  The Greco-Roman bloc stood rigid—robes tailored to both gods and generals, their faction the most divided among themselves. Pollux Casta bore the weight of Mars and Athena, his cloak stitched with both olive branch and eagle.

  The Egyptian envoys shimmered beneath sand-dust auras. Their silence was elegant. Eternal.

  And then—Nigeria.

  Not one people. Not one color.

  Yoruba Disciples in embroidered agbada lined with conductive thread. Igbo delegates in spirit-bound coral armor. Tiv seers, Nupe bone-readers, Hausa flamekeepers, Ibibio truthweavers. Each bore a fragment of the old ways and a whisper of future power. The Yoruba shrine-guardian wore a braided crown wired with miniature lightning rods shaped like ??pá òrò — ritual staffs made from recycled metals. A Tiv elder held a data-scroll etched in bone, where prophecy and code danced together. A Nupe emissary wore bioluminescent beads humming with ancestral frequency, tuned to respond to truth spoken aloud.

  The Igbo Disciple’s voice cut through the tension. “The Oracle does not name lightly.”

  A murmur passed through the Egyptian cluster, one scribe’s hand hovering above their spirit tablet as if uncertain whether to transcribe the words.

  “Do you believe it speaks of one of ours?” asked the Yoruba shrine guardian, voice hushed.

  “I believe it speaks of one not yet ready to be spoken of.”

  They all bowed their heads.

  The Hausa flamekeeper pressed palm to chest and earth. “Then we shield him until the storm names him aloud.”

  A flare of à?? pulsed through the chamber, older than language.

  In secret halls, the pacts began.

  Pollux spoke beneath Janus’s gaze. “The Orisha are active again.”

  He didn’t say what many of them feared—that the Orisha moved without seeking permission, outside every coalition, and with a memory longer than any treaty. That made them dangerous. Revered. Unreadable.

  Lan Zhi, surrounded by mirrors, watched water flicker in her teacup. “The world forgets. But memory returns.”

  The Mayan and Ottoman delegates clasped hands beneath a blooming lotus. “Let our alliance form before prophecy divides us.”

  Back in Makoko, Afolabi stared at his reflection in the pool beneath the platform.

  “Maybe they got the wrong person,” he muttered. “Oluwa mi…” My Lord…

  Kehinde, sitting beside him, tossed a stone into the water. “Then be the right one.”

  He glanced at Taiwo, who was adjusting power levels on the ??r? à?? Giga. “What if I fail?”

  Taiwo didn’t look up. “Then you fail as the one who tried. Not the one who hid.”

  Afolabi’s hands shook. But he nodded.

  Above, in the Spirit Registry, a scroll shimmered. Blank. Unclaimed. Yet humming with presence.

  Then the Ori-Tech nodes chirped once—sharp, digital, like metal cicadas. Then again, pulsing amber as if alive and anxious.

  Kehinde looked up sharply. “That’s... not right.”

  A low tremor passed through the water.

  A breeze swept through the fishery. Streetlights blinked. The air thinned. Somewhere in the distance, a bird’s cry turned unnatural—elongated, hoarse, wrong. The sky over Lagos dimmed half a shade before anyone saw the tear.

  Omi-Yemoja tilted her head, her waters stirring in tight spirals. Ayanfe-Oya’s eyes narrowed, the air tightening around her like a held breath.

  “Something’s coming,” Afolabi whispered.

  The clouds above Lagos shimmered oddly, as if the sky itself blinked. Taiwo, adjusting one of the rooftop conductors, froze mid-motion. Kehinde’s fingers hesitated above her data-scroll. Even Ara-Sango, who never flinched, shifted his stance as though grounding himself. Something unspoken passed between them—an instinct honed through divine proximity. The air was warning them. A strange, warbling bird call echoed through the smog—drawn out and broken. The city’s neon haze dimmed subtly, and shadows stretched unnaturally across corrugated rooftops.

  And in the sky above Lagos, the first Ajogun portal tore itself open. The air cracked with the scent of scorched bone and rust. Spirits hiding in the trees fled. Streetlights dimmed as if afraid to bear witness.

  Crimson. Shattered. Hungering.

  The drums of memory stirred.

  The storm had named him.