The morning light filtered weakly through the cracked wooden slats of Iyi's room, casting uneven stripes across the worn floorboards. Outside, the city was already awake its usual chaos bubbling up like an ever-boiling pot. Horns blared, hawkers called their wares, children laughed and shouted as they darted past the narrow alleys. But inside the small, cluttered room where Iyi lay, the noise felt distant, as if muffled by an invisible wall.
Iyi lay on his threadbare mattress, his body heavy and his mind heavier still. His eyes were open but empty, staring at the ceiling stained by years of damp and dust. The black envelope he'd received the night before sat on a small wooden stool near the window. The crimson wax seal had cracked, its symbol faintly glowing like embers that refused to die out. But he didn't reach for it. Instead, he lay there, caught between exhaustion and an invisible tension that seemed to hold his very breath hostage.
The weight of what had happened at the crossroads what he had agreed to, even without knowing the full cost weighed on him like a shadow pressing down. Lagos, with all its noise and lights, suddenly felt smaller and stranger. The city he'd known all his life seemed to stretch into places he had never imagined, places that whispered secrets behind the veil of everyday life.
His thoughts were a tangled web: the figure cloaked in darkness, the cold touch of the outstretched hand, the voice whispering of "Ayepegba" and hunger beyond hunger. Could it all have been real? Was he truly stepping into a world that blurred the lines between spirit and flesh?
Before he could answer, his phone buzzed sharply against the wooden floor, cutting through the silence like a knife. He shifted on the mattress and rolled over, grimacing as the sudden movement sent a dull ache through his ribs.
The screen lit up an unknown number. A simple message blinked in glowing text:
I see you've returned. The door is open, but the path is not clear. Listen. Watch. Wait.
Iyi's fingers hovered over the screen, trembling. His mind screamed to ask who was sending these cryptic warnings, but his thumb froze. Was this some cruel joke? Or was it something far more dangerous?
His room was cramped bare walls, a single mosquito net sagging over the mattress, a small cracked mirror hanging crookedly by a nail, reflecting a fragmented version of his face. He stared into that reflection, searching for answers in his own dark eyes.
The buzzing came again. Another message. This time, a link.
He swiped cautiously, the screen opening to reveal an email inbox he didn't recognize, flooded with messages, all bearing the same subject line: ENI OBA.
The name repeated over and over, like a pulse beating at the edges of his mind.
His breath hitched. E̩ni Oba̩… The Witness of Kings… The phrase drifted into his thoughts like a distant echo, one he felt rather than understood.
The emails were strange some warnings, some riddles. One spoke of debts unpaid and promises broken. Another hinted at a hunger that was not of the body but of the spirit, a curse tied to gold and greed. A short video clip showed a figure, masked and standing beneath a stormy sky, speaking in words that twisted like smoke:
"The river bends back on itself. Time fractures. Choose your path, but beware the cost."
Iyi's pulse quickened. He didn't understand any of it, but his instincts screamed that the messages were no coincidence. Someone something was trying to reach him. To warn him. Or perhaps to trap him.
The phone buzzed again this time a message from his mother.
"How are you, son? Eat something today. Don't forget who you are."
The simplicity of her words cut through the fog in his mind. She was the only constant, the anchor that kept him tethered to the harsh reality of hunger and survival. Pride had always stood between them pride and poverty but her love was something he could never escape.
He folded the phone closed and sat up, the room spinning slightly as he rubbed his temples. Outside, the city stretched in every direction an endless web of light and shadow. Lagos was alive with stories, with lives intersecting and colliding like waves in a restless sea. And now, he was caught in the current, pulled toward a destiny he barely understood.
Iyi pushed himself to his feet and walked to the window. The street below was a swirl of color and noise vendors shouting, children chasing stray dogs, motorbikes weaving through traffic like swallows in flight. Somewhere in the distance, a radio played a song he used to know, its melody both foreign and familiar.
He closed his eyes and tried to grasp the meaning behind the name E̩ni Oba̩. The Witness of Kings. A gatekeeper. The keeper of truths.
His mind wandered back to stories his grandmother once told him tales of ancient towns where spirits walked alongside the living, where debts were paid in more than just money, and where names held power.
Had he stepped into one of those stories?
His phone buzzed again. Another message, this time an image a photo of a river bending back on itself, the water flowing upstream as if defying nature. The river was both beautiful and terrifying, like a riddle carved in liquid motion.
Iyi's fingers shook as he stared at the image. What was this place? Was it real? Was it the key to understanding what awaited him?
The day passed in a haze. Iyi moved through the motions of survival the hot, gritty city air pressing down as he bought a small packet of akara from a street vendor, the bitter taste of coffee in his mouth, the relentless chatter of the market around him.
But his thoughts kept drifting back to the crossroads, the black envelope, and the messages that seemed to echo from another world.
That night, as Lagos sank into darkness and the stars blinked awake in the sky, Iyi sat alone on the steps outside his room. The city's distant sounds mingled with a strange stillness that had settled deep inside him.
He pulled the black envelope from his pocket again and traced the cracked wax seal with his thumb.
A soft voice whispered in his mind not words, but feelings.
Fear. Hope. Hunger.
A hunger that went beyond food.
He realized that he was no longer just a boy chasing quick money and fast lies. He had crossed a threshold. The world he knew was shifting beneath his feet.
The path ahead was uncertain and fraught with dangers he couldn't yet see.
But one thing was clear: there was no turning back.
Lagos had sung its call, and Iyi had answered.
The hunger remained waiting to be fed, waiting to be understood.
And somewhere, beyond the veil of the city's noise, the spirits waited too.