The sun over Neo-Ajegunle had barely risen, yet heat already shimmered off corrugated rooftops like spirit-breath rising from iron. Tin sheets reflected slanted rays of morning light. Repurposed biogas chimneys puffed lazy smoke trails into the smoggy air, joining the buzz of tuk-tuks and solar drones weaving between neon signs, crumbling satellite dishes, and graffiti-tagged recharge hubs.

  Afolabi stirred in a narrow alley behind a shuttered recharge station.

  One moment, he had stood before the Witness in the divine temple. The next, he was here—sprawled across warm concrete, lungs burning, the stink of frying oil and diesel thick in the air.

  There was no divine wind. No sacred fanfare.

  Just the low hum of neon and the weight of returning.

  The carved mask around his neck—his mother’s final gift—pulsed faintly. It no longer felt like simple wood. It throbbed with heat and pressure, as though something within it had awakened. When he touched it, a shimmer danced behind his eyes: the obsidian mask from the shrine, half-formed, flickering like memory searching for shape.

  His head throbbed. Muscles ached.

  Then—footsteps.

  “Afolabi?” Taiwo’s voice cracked down the alley, clipped and disbelieving.

  A moment later, he came skidding into view, tablet in hand, eyes wide. “How are you here? Your comm-tag flatlined for two days!”

  Afolabi blinked up at him. “I don’t know,” he said hoarsely. “I just… woke up.”

  Another voice joined them.

  Kehinde stepped into the alley, brow furrowed. “I felt something. A pull. Like a thread tugging my chest. It led me here.”

  “You too?” Taiwo glanced at her, then back to Afolabi. “I tracked a comm-surge. Thought it was a glitch.”

  Afolabi sat up slowly, leaning against a rusted barrel. His joints protested, but there was no wound. Only change. Taiwo handed him a flask. He drank deeply.

  “How do you feel?” Kehinde asked softly.

  A pause.

  “Different,” Afolabi murmured. “Like something inside me is… waking up.”

  Then it happened.

  The glyph on his palm flared with golden light. The air thickened, as if unseen eyes had turned toward him. And from deep below, he heard it—

  Drumming.

  Not from the city. Not from speakers.

  From beneath the soil. Rhythmic. Old.

  When his fingers brushed the earth, something ancient responded.

  Stone cracked. Dust lifted.

  From the grit rose four towering figures—formed of clay, breath, and ancestral memory. They emerged silently, as if they had always been there, waiting beneath the city’s skin.

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  Golems.

  But not hollow. Not simple.

  They radiated presence.

  One shimmered with Oya’s storm—tall and feminine, mask carved in swirling arcs of lightning.

  Another glowed from within, Sango’s flame etched into broad shoulders and molten veins.

  A third was squat and iron-forged, Ogun’s mark alive in every bolt and plated limb.

  The last moved like flowing water, elegant and coiled, bearing the grace of Yemoja—her mask shaped like ocean waves in motion.

  They stood motionless. Silent. But not still.

  Taiwo stumbled back. “What in Olorun’s name…”

  “They weren’t with me before,” Afolabi said. “They didn’t follow me. They came… from here.”

  “They’re not made,” Kehinde breathed. “They’re born. Of something older.”

  Afolabi nodded slowly. “In the shrine, the Witness asked if I was ready. I didn’t answer. I just… endured.”

  He turned his palm upward.

  The glyph still glowed.

  “I think these four are the result. A reward—or a burden.”

  Taiwo circled them cautiously. “Why four?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Afolabi admitted. “But I feel it. This isn’t the end—it’s the beginning. There are others. Hidden. Dormant.”

  “You don’t summon them,” Kehinde said, staring at the water-aspected golem. “You awaken them. They’re tied to you.”

  Afolabi touched the nearest one. The surface pulsed warm beneath his fingers.

  “There’s a stillness inside me now,” he whispered. “Like a sacred drum waiting for its first call.”

  The golems bowed in unison. Then, without warning, they dissolved into earth, scattering like ancestral dust.

  They didn’t linger.

  Residual à?? (divine energy) still clung to the alley like mist. Afolabi insisted they move before curious eyes arrived.

  The three friends made their way through the alleys of Ajegunle, past stacked tenements, digital shrines, and dangling coils of frayed wiring. Tuk-tuks buzzed. Vendors barked prices. Children laughed somewhere far off.

  Eventually, they arrived at Afolabi’s old home—a narrow second-floor unit above a tailoring shop.

  The curtains were still drawn. The mat at the door still stained with red sand.

  It felt like stepping into memory.

  Taiwo took up watch by the window, fingers dancing on his tablet screen. Kehinde lit a bundle of dried herbs and placed them near the doorway. The scent of charcoal and bitterleaf filled the air.

  Afolabi knelt on the prayer mat his mother once used.

  The glyph on his palm flickered gently.

  Hours passed.

  Then came the shift.

  It began as a ripple—corrupted à?? rolled across the district like thunder underwater.

  The sky trembled. Neon flickered. The coded drums silenced.

  Taiwo stared down at his device. “We’ve got a surge. Something’s forming—fast.”

  “Where?” Afolabi asked, already rising.

  “Southern quarter,” Taiwo said. “Near the old Junkmarket.”

  Afolabi flexed his hand. The glyph burned hotter. “This is it,” he said. “The shrine warned me. This is the first trial.”

  “You’re not going alone,” Taiwo said firmly.

  “You can’t come with me,” Afolabi replied. “I don’t think it’ll let you. I think it’s… keyed to me. The glyph. The golems. The portal.”

  Kehinde placed a hand on Taiwo’s shoulder. “We’ll walk with him. Just not through.”

  The streets of Ajegunle buzzed with morning noise, unaware of the divine energy brewing beneath their feet.

  Sizzling akara. Clanking drone carts. Calls for recharge tokens and filtered water. Neon signs blinked over cracked sidewalks. A preacher shouted warnings about rising spirits while standing next to a hacked vending shrine.

  Ajegunle didn’t notice when the air shifted.

  But Afolabi did.

  At the edge of the Junkmarket, hidden behind a crumbling billboard and half-collapsed solar grid, the air rippled.

  A fold in space. A shimmer in reality.

  The portal.

  It pulsed faintly—visible only at certain angles, like heat seen through a mirror.

  Afolabi stepped forward.

  The glyph on his palm surged.

  The air pressed against him—thick, heavy, sacred.

  “It’s responding to you,” Kehinde whispered.

  Taiwo glanced at his screen. “Secondary pulse—like a scan.”

  The mask against Afolabi’s chest pulsed—hotter now, like fire trapped in wood. Then, a voice—not his own—whispered from within:

  “When the trial comes, speak with the earth. Call what you’ve earned.”

  He raised his palm, and the glyph blazed.

  “Aiyé’mo, gb?? à?? mi—jé k’á?? s??r??.”

  Children of the Earth, hear my à??—let the power speak.

  The ground split.

  The four golems returned—stronger now, reformed through resonance. Their forms crackled with restrained elemental energy, their eyes burning with ancestral light.

  Together, they stepped toward the shimmering divide.

  The portal responded.

  It widened.

  And swallowed them whole.