Two days lost. Four golems risen. And something ancient, something patient, still watching from the shadows of Il??-ìp??yà (ee-leh ee-peh-yah - the spiritual realm).

  The heat of morning rolled over Neo-Ajegunle in waves, a suffocating bnket woven from sweat, exhaust fumes, and the metallic tang of desperation. It felt like spirit-breath, hot and heavy, exhaled from the city itself, coating everything in a greasy film. Sunlight, fractured and harsh, shimmered off cracked zinc rooftops, turning them into shimmering mirages, and glinted off the crooked sor chimneys that sprouted from hab-blocks like skeletal fingers. Afobi blinked slowly, his eyes gritty and unfocused, as he pushed himself up from where he y—half-hidden behind a mountain of discarded crates outside a shuttered recharge station—his breath shallow and ragged, his bones aching with a deep, unsettling weariness. Every nerve ending screamed in protest against the city's assault.

  The st thing he remembered with any crity was the House of Masks, its impossible geometries and whispering echoes. The Witness, cloaked in shadow and mystery. The pulsing orb of power. The golems bowing before him as the temple dissolved into pure, blinding light.

  And now—back.

  Back in the grime and grind of Ajegunle, the city's relentless energy a stark contrast to the Temple's ethereal stillness.

  But everything felt wrong, distorted, as if a fundamental dissonance had been introduced into his perception. Too loud, the city's symphony of suffering a cacophony of pain. Too sharp, the edges of buildings and objects cutting into his vision. Every sound bit at him like shards of gss, each scent a chemical burn. The familiar cmor of the city was no longer a comforting pulse, a sign of life—it was an assault, a brutal attempt to erase the divine whispers still clinging to his skin. His body twitched and spasmed, rejecting the oppressive pull of gravity, yearning for the weightlessness of the Temple. Divine stillness had been brutally repced with the relentless chaos of the mortal realm.

  He sat up slowly, wincing as a wave of nausea washed over him. The glyph on his left palm still glowed faintly, a dark spiral edged with gold, but now it felt different, heavier, pulsing with a more insistent rhythm. A heartbeat under the skin, a constant reminder of the power he now carried. The faint shimmer of à?? (ah-sheh - the raw essence of creation) around it was more visible in this reality, a subtle distortion in the air that only he seemed to perceive.

  “Afobi?”

  Taiwo’s voice cracked through the haze of his disorientation—a mixture of disbelief, relief, and underlying rage. Then the boy himself skidded into view, breathless and frantic, his eyes wild, a cracked tablet clutched in his trembling hands, its screen fshing with error messages.

  “Your comm-tag ftlined for two days, Fo! Two days! I traced your signal to the edge of the Scrap Quarter, then… nothing. Bio-signs vanished, energy readings went haywire… I thought you were dead, bro.” Taiwo’s voice cracked, revealing a vulnerability Afobi rarely saw. He quickly ran a diagnostic scan with his tablet, his brow furrowed in concentration as he muttered about anomalous readings and system interference.

  Afobi coughed, then winced as the city's noise stabbed at his skull. “I… I wasn’t gone. Not entirely. It’s hard to expin, Tai.”

  Kehinde followed close behind, her face etched with worry, but her eyes, sharper than her brother’s tech-enhanced vision, scanned Afobi with an intensity that made him feel dissected. She clutched a bundle of herbs, their pungent fragrance momentarily cutting through the city's stench, their leaves still damp with morning dew. “No. You were taken. I felt it, a ripple in your à?? (ah-sheh - divine essence, the sacred force that shaped creation), a disturbance in the àiyé (ah-yeh - Earth). Something… divine.” Her voice was low and certain, hinting at a sensitivity Afobi didn’t fully understand.

  Taiwo crouched beside him, his fingers still dancing across the tablet, his expression skeptical but concerned. “I traced a massive energy surge to this block. Thought it was MoDA finally ying a trap. But there’s no residual tech-signature… nothing that makes sense. The readings are all wrong.”

  Afobi’s hand went instinctively to the mask at his chest, the worn wood still warm and humming with a faint energy that resonated with the glyph on his palm. “It wasn’t bait. It was real. The temple, the Witness, the power… All of it.” He struggled to find the words to convey the impossible reality he had witnessed, the weight of the destiny thrust upon him.

  They helped him stand, their support a familiar comfort in the overwhelming chaos. His legs trembled beneath the weight of something he couldn’t name—an ancient power stirring within him, a responsibility that felt both terrifying and exhirating.

  “There was a pce,” he whispered, his voice hoarse, his gaze distant. “A temple full of masks, older than time. The Witness said I was chosen. A Divine Disciple.” He tried to describe the vastness of the temple, the whispering pilrs, the floating masks, the feeling of walking on memory itself, but the words felt inadequate, failing to capture the true essence of the experience.

  Taiwo blinked, his usual bravado faltering, his fingers still twitching with the urge to analyze and dissect. “A temple? Like… like a building? Made of what? Code? Energy? This is way beyond my understanding of physics, Fo.”

  Kehinde’s eyes widened slightly, her breath catching in her throat as if she’d glimpsed something beyond the veil of reality. “Afobi… the power I felt around you… it was ancient. Older than this city, older than any technology.”

  Afobi nodded slowly, his mind still reeling. “And they marked me.” He opened his palm, the glyph glowing with a soft, pulsing light that seemed to respond to their presence.

  And then—the àiyé (ah-yeh - Earth) answered his unspoken call.

  At first, it was faint, a low rumble that vibrated through the soles of their feet, like the distant echo of ancient drums beating beneath the city's concrete skin. Then dust stirred in the alley, rising in swirling eddies, the air thick with the scent of disturbed earth and the raw, untamed power of à?? (ah-sheh - divine essence, the sacred force that shaped creation). Cracks, thin as spiderwebs, began to web across the cracked psteel floor, spreading outwards from the glyph on Afobi's palm, the fissures glowing with an eerie light.

  And from the broken earth, they rose.

  Four massive forms, sculpted from ancestral cy and living elements, their presence radiating an awe-inspiring power that silenced the city's cmor. Towering figures, radiant with an inner light, alive with a force that felt both ancient and primal, yet strangely familiar.

  —One’s form shimmered with a heat haze, the air around her swirling with a miniature hurricane of dust and energy, glyphs glowing with blinding intensity amidst the vortex. The air crackled not with lightning, but with raw kinetic force, pushing outwards in a tangible wave that buffeted them with surprising strength. Oya, the warrior-goddess of wind and change, her power a tempest of motion and transformation.

  —Another burned with molten seams that glowed beneath ptes of obsidian-dark armor, heat radiating from him in visible waves, the air thick with the smell of brimstone and the metallic tang of molten iron. Sango, the thunder god, his power a raw, untamed inferno contained within a cy vessel.

  —A third cnked with heavy ptes of hammered bronze, gears and pistons moving smoothly and silently beneath his articuted limbs, his movements precise and powerful, the sound of his passage a rhythmic symphony of ancient engineering. Ogun, the smith-god, his presence a testament to creation and destruction, his touch imbued with the power to shape and destroy.

  —And the st flowed beside them, her form fluid and ever-changing, rippling with sea-foam and the luminescence of deep-sea creatures, her presence a calming counterpoint to the others’ raw power, a reminder of life's boundless potential. Yemoja, the mother-goddess, her power a boundless tide of life and memory.

  They stood in silence, their massive forms dwarfing the alley, their presence a stark contrast to the decay and desperation of Neo-Ajegunle, yet somehow feeling more real, more alive.

  Taiwo cursed softly under his breath, his eyes wide behind his cybernetic enhancements, his fingers twitching with the urge to analyze and dissect. “That’s not code. Not anything I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen glitches, system failures, even sentient AI… but this… this feels like the gods themselves are sending a warning. Or… or answering a call. And I don’t understand any of it.” He ran a hand through his hair, his mind struggling to process the impossible reality.

  Kehinde bowed her head, her voice hushed with reverence. “They weren’t summoned, not in the way you think, Fo. They remembered. They recognized the à?? (ah-sheh - divine essence, the sacred force that shaped creation) within you, the spark of divinity you carry. They answered a summons older than words.”

  Afobi stepped forward, drawn by an irresistible pull to these ancient beings. “They came from the soil, from the àiyé (ah-yeh - Earth) itself. Not from the temple. They were waiting. Waiting for me?” A shiver ran through him, a sense of destiny mixed with dread.

  He reached out a hesitant hand toward Sango’s burning form, his palm meeting the surprisingly warm and smooth surface of the golem's cy skin.

  Energy thrummed through him, a jolt of raw power that felt like thunder cracking open a sky inside his chest, expanding his awareness beyond the confines of his own body.

  Visions flickered behind his eyes: the rhythmic beat of ancient drums, the blinding fsh of fire consuming the night, a bde of lightning splitting a colossal tree in two. Emotions surged through him—rage, power, creation, destruction—a symphony of the divine pying out within his mind.

  “They’re not machines,” he breathed, his voice filled with awe and a touch of fear. “They’re alive. Pieces of the past given form. The power of the Orisha (oh-ree-shah - Yoruba deities) made manifest.”

  The golems bowed in unison, their movements fluid and graceful despite their immense size, a gesture of respect and acknowledgement that resonated with a power that shook Afobi to his core.

  And then—they dissolved.

  Their forms crumbled into dust that swirled upwards in a miniature vortex, the dust motes catching the city's light like tiny stars. The sound of their passage faded into a profound silence that seemed to amplify the hum of à?? (ah-sheh - divine essence, the sacred force that shaped creation) lingering in the air.

  For a heartbeat, time itself slowed, stretching into an infinite moment. The echo of ancestral drums lingered in the silence, an unanswered call that both haunted and beckoned, pulling at something deep within Afobi's soul.

  He stood alone as the echoes faded, the glyph on his palm dimming but not disappearing, a constant reminder of the power he now wielded. He closed his eyes, his chest tight, his breath catching in his throat. Tried to breathe, to ground himself in the familiar reality of Ajegunle.

  Why me? The unspoken question echoed in his mind, a mixture of fear, wonder, and a profound sense of inadequacy.

  What if I can't hold them again? The doubt whispered, a chilling premonition of failure.

  In that moment, the silence was a hollow echo of his past, a reminder of the emptiness left by his mother's absence, a stark warning that even divinity, like memory, could fade into nothingness, leaving him alone once more.

  They retreated to the second-floor ft above Afobi’s old home, a forgotten tailor’s shop with rusted signage and the ghosts of countless stories baked into the walls. Taiwo, ever cautious, locked the entrance with a magnetic seal, his fingers flying across his wrist-comp, his expression grim. Kehinde, her movements deliberate and ritualistic, lit a bundle of bitterleaf and ash bark, the smoke curling upwards in thick tendrils, carrying the scent of protection and ancient blessings. She whispered words of power, an oríkì (oh-ree-kee - praise poetry) for the ancestors, her voice low and resonant, her eyes closed in concentration.

  Afobi knelt beside his mother’s old prayer mat, its worn fabric bearing the faint impression of her knees, a testament to countless hours spent in quiet devotion. He could almost see her there, her hands stained with henna and engine grease, a testament to her dual life as both artist and mechanic, bowing low, her lips moving in silent prayer, whispering names older than Ajegunle itself.

  ?m? mi, maa gbagbe èni tí ìw? j?…

  My child, never forget who you are.

  The memory of her voice tightened his throat, a sharp pang of grief and longing piercing through the awe and fear he still carried from the temple.

  He remembered the day she made akara (ah-kah-rah - bean fritters) by candlelight, their small room filled with the warm, comforting scent of frying dough, during a bckout that sted two days, plunging Ajegunle into an eerie darkness. How she said divine darkness reveals more than false light ever could, her eyes gleaming with an inner strength that defied the chaos outside. How she smiled, even as sirens wailed in the distance, her faith unwavering, her love a constant beacon in the storm.

  She believed in remembering the past, honoring the ancestors, drawing strength from the roots of their culture, and finding the divine in the mundane.

  Now, so would he.

  He gnced around the room, taking in the familiar details with a newfound intensity—photos with half-faded edges, capturing moments of ughter and loss, circuits and wires soldered into the wall as makeshift offerings to the Orisha of technology, a cy jar filled with dried hibiscus and feathers, tokens of remembrance and protection. Sunlight streamed through stted windows, its rays thick with dust motes that danced like ancestral spirits drifting mid-air, their silent presence a comforting reminder of continuity.

  A shadow, dark and elongated, passed quickly across the windows, a fleeting glimpse of something unseen.

  Taiwo grunted, his gaze fixed on his wrist-comp, his fingers flying across the holographic keyboard. “Drone sweep. Low orbit. Probably MoDA.”

  “MoDA?” Afobi asked, his voice sharp with suspicion.

  “Could be. Could be harvesters too. The air's been thick with bad omens tely, Fo. Even the algorithms are predicting unrest. There's a tension in the city, a feeling that something's about to break.”

  Afobi pced his palm against the wall, his fingers tracing the faint outline where his mother once wrote a prayer in chalk, her writing faded but still imbued with her essence.

  ??mí ayé, má bà mí j??.

  Spirit of life, do not spoil me.

  “I miss you, Mama,” he whispered, the words a silent plea carried on the dust-den air.

  The glyph on his palm pulsed once, a steady, reassuring thrum that vibrated through his hand, a comforting presence in the face of uncertainty.

  “I’m not ready for this,” he murmured, the weight of his destiny pressing down on him.

  Kehinde crouched beside him, her hand resting gently on his arm, her eyes filled with a quiet strength that belied her youth. “No one ever is, Fo. But you are. You have to be.”

  Taiwo sat across the room, meticulously sharpening a piece of scrap metal he had fashioned into a crude but effective bde, the rasping sound a counterpoint to the city's distant roar. “When life doesn’t wait, you either move or you burn. And we’re not burning.”

  Afobi smiled faintly, a flicker of warmth in the chill that had settled over him. “That’s… not exactly comforting, Tai.”

  “Wasn’t meant to be,” Taiwo replied, his gaze unwavering, his hand steady as he honed the bde.

  Hours passed, the tension in the room thickening with each passing moment, the city's relentless rhythm a constant reminder of the world outside.

  Then—

  A tremor, subtle but unmistakable, shook the building, rattling the makeshift offerings and causing the dust motes to dance with renewed vigor.

  The lights flickered, casting long, distorted shadows across the walls. The scent of corrupted à?? (ah-sheh - divine essence, the sacred force that shaped creation), a metallic tang mixed with the acrid stench of iron dust and burned pstic, swept through the air, a harbinger of violence and decay.

  Taiwo’s wrist-comp chimed, its screen fshing with frantic data streams. “Pulse spike. South quarter. Junkmarket grid. High energy reading, unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And it’s not tech-based, not MoDA or harvesters.”

  Afobi stood, his heart pounding with a mixture of dread and anticipation.

  “The first trial,” he said, his voice low and resolute, accepting the inevitable.

  “You’re not going alone,” Taiwo said, his hand tightening on his makeshift bde, his eyes fshing with a protective fire.

  “I have to,” Afobi replied, his gaze sweeping across their faces. “The portal calls to me. The glyph on my palm. The golems… They’re keyed to me. They won’t answer anyone else.”

  Kehinde took his hand in hers, her grip surprisingly strong. “Then let us walk with you, Fo. If this is divine, it must be witnessed. And if it’s dangerous… then we face it together.”

  Taiwo pocketed his bde, his expression softening slightly. “And protected. We’re in this together, remember?”

  They moved through Ajegunle’s arteries, the city's byrinthine streets and alleys pulsing with a frenetic energy that felt both familiar and alien. The city pulsed with coded prayers fshing across digital billboards, street-preachers shouting prophecies of doom and salvation into rusted loudspeakers, their voices amplified by distorted megaphones. Repulsor-powered Keke Napeps (futuristic three-wheeled vehicles), their energy fields shimmering above the flooded alleys, zipped past, their drivers shouting coded routes. Neon signs blinked and flickered, advertising everything from synthetic food stalls to virtual reality brothels. Vendors hawked bck-market impnts and memory chips from behind hacked drone shells, their voices a constant drone of enticement and desperation.

  A young boy, no older than seven, sold stolen memory chips beside a makeshift shrine made of bicycle spokes and co cans, his face hardened by the city's harsh realities. A woman, her face painted with intricate glyphs of power, whispered an oríkì (oh-ree-kee - praise poetry) for è?ù (eh-shoo - the trickster god), her fingers glowing with the faint blue light of low-voltage current, her voice a hypnotic chant that blended ancient tradition with the city's technological hum.

  A man on stilts, his face painted with the vibrant colors of Ogun (oh-goon - the god of iron and war), chanted a prayer in binary code, his voice a distorted electronic whisper. Street dancers, their bodies adorned with augmented masks that flickered with ancestral sigils and projected holographic illusions, moved in a mesmerizing rhythm, their movements a blend of traditional dance and digital artistry.

  And none of them saw the subtle shimmer in the air, the distortion in reality that heralded the arrival of the impossible.

  At the edge of the Junkmarket, tucked behind the skeletal remains of a colpsed sor rig, the ground folded in on itself, the concrete and metal twisting like fabric.

  A portal.

  The air trembled with heat and color, the very fabric of reality seeming to fray at the edges. Ribbons of golden light, pulsing with raw power, spiraled upwards like rising smoke, their glow casting dancing shadows on the surrounding buildings. The air crackled with energy, smelling of ozone and something ancient, something that resonated with the core of Afobi's being. The portal hummed with a low, resonant tone, a sound that seemed to vibrate in his bones.

  Afobi stepped forward, his body drawn by an irresistible force. The glyph on his palm bzed with an intense light, its bck spiral consuming the st vestiges of gold, its energy surging through his veins.

  The mask against his chest fred hot, its surface pulsing with a frantic rhythm, as if responding to an unseen command.

  He hesitated, his heart pounding in his ears, a battle raging within him between fear and a sense of destiny, a conflict between the familiar and the unknown.

  A breath. A beat of silence in which the city's cmor seemed to fade away, repced by the echoing whispers of the Temple.

  The weight of the glyph on his palm felt heavier than his own skin, a burden and a promise. Memory bloomed behind his eyes, vivid and insistent—his mother’s voice singing a lulby, the soft chant of oríkì (oh-ree-kee - praise poetry) under the hiss of suya (soo-yah - grilled meat) fires, the unnerving chill of starlight in the House of Masks.

  Then a voice, memory-ced and feminine, whispered in his mind, warm and familiar:

  ?m? mi…

  My child…

  Another drumbeat, ancient and powerful, not heard but felt, resonating deep in his ribs, a summons and a challenge that echoed with the rhythm of his own blood.

  Then another voice, something vast and unknowable, something between human and divine, thundered in his consciousness:

  “Call what you’ve earned.”

  He raised his palm, his hand trembling but resolute, channeling the power that pulsed within him.

  àiyé'm?, gb?? à?? mi—jé k'á?? s??r??…

  O Children of Earth, heed my power—let the à?? (ah-sheh - divine essence, the sacred force that shaped creation) speak, and let the nd remember its ancient song…

  The ground beneath their feet split wide with a deafening roar, the concrete and metal shattering like gss, the air filling with the scent of ozone and the raw power of à?? (ah-sheh - divine essence, the sacred force that shaped creation). A geyser of dust and debris erupted into the sky, obscuring the Junkmarket in a swirling cloud, the city's energy grid flickering in response.

  And they returned.

  The golems.

  Reforged. Resplendent. More powerful and awe-inspiring than before, their presence warping the very fabric of existence, their forms shimmering with a power that felt both ancient and technologically advanced.

  —Oya’s wind whirled around her limbs, a miniature hurricane of dust and energy, glyphs glowing with blinding intensity amidst the swirling vortex, the air crackling with raw kinetic force.

  —Sango burned with molten seams that glowed beneath ptes of obsidian-dark armor, heat radiating from him in visible waves, the air thick with the smell of brimstone and the metallic tang of molten iron.

  —Ogun stood broad as a fortress, gears and pistons moving smoothly and silently beneath his pted skin, the sound of his passage a symphony of ancient engineering, his touch imbued with the power to shape and destroy.

  —Yemoja flowed beside them, her form fluid and ever-changing, rippling with sea-foam and the luminescence of deep-sea creatures, her presence a calming counterpoint to the others’ raw power, a reminder of life's boundless potential.

  Two remained distant, their forms indistinct, their glyphs dim and inactive, hidden in the shadows of the portal. Dormant and waiting, their purpose unclear.

  And two that waited, their presence heavy with an unspoken power, not in loyalty or obedience—but in judgment. Their stance rigid, their energy cold and unyielding, their forms radiating a chilling sense of ancient authority.

  Taiwo’s eyes, narrowed and wary, scanned the rooftops of the Junkmarket, his hand resting on his makeshift bde, his wrist-comp dispying frantic readings. “We’re not alone. I’m picking up multiple heat signatures, moving fast. And they’re not human.”

  Kehinde’s tone turned solemn, her gaze fixed on the swirling portal, her hand clutching the mask at her throat. “The ancestors whisper through these cracks, through the very fabric of this city, through the very à?? (ah-sheh - divine essence, the sacred force that shaped creation) that binds us all, urging us to remember who we were meant to be. To recim our heritage.”

  The portal pulsed with an almost sentient energy, its golden light intensifying, drawing everything towards its center, a vortex of the impossible.

  A surge of wind surged outwards, scattering sand and paper, causing lights to flicker and sputter, the force of its passage enough to knock over a lesser being, a wave of power and anticipation.

  A drumbeat, ancient and powerful, echoed from within the portal, faint but rhythmic, a summons and a challenge that resonated with Afobi's own soul, a call to adventure and a warning of impending danger.

  The air tasted like lightning, sharp and invigorating, filling Afobi with a strange sense of purpose and a chilling premonition of what y ahead.

  Afobi turned to his friends, his expression resolute, his fear tempered by a newfound determination.

  Taiwo grinned faintly, his usual bravado tinged with a hint of fear and a deep-seated loyalty. “Don’t make this some lone-wolf nonsense, Fo. Come back with answers. And come back alive.”

  “Or don’t come back alone,” Kehinde said, her hand resting on her chest, her eyes filled with a fierce determination that mirrored his own, a promise of unwavering support.

  He took one st breath, filling his lungs with the charged air of the Junkmarket, bracing himself for the unknown journey that awaited him.

  Then stepped forward, his heart pounding with a mixture of fear and anticipation, a sense of destiny pulling him forward.

  The golems followed, their massive forms bending reality around their stride, their presence warping the very fabric of existence, a bridge between the ancient and the future.

  As he crossed the threshold, the world shimmered and dissolved into a kaleidoscope of light and color, a transition between worlds, a step into the heart of the impossible.

  And this time—

  He did not fall. He did not stumble. He answered the call, embracing his destiny. And somewhere beyond the veil, the forgotten remembered him back, their voices a chorus of welcome and warning, their power surging to meet his own, a recognition that transcended time and space.

  The Witness's command still echoed in Afobi's mind: Remember. What do you think he is meant to recall from the past to face the challenges ahead? And what technological wonders and ancient dangers do you foresee the trials will unleash?