Chapter One: The Sparks
The grove was alive with the hum of forgotten tech, the kind that whispered secrets from a time when Nigeria's soil still remembered the stars as ancestors. It was 2085, and Tobi Adeyemi everyone called him Masque, though he never asked why, picked his way through the underbrush like a ghost in his own life. His dreads swung loose, beaded with cheap glow-threads scavenged from old drones, and his clothes was torn at the edges from too many close calls. The scar on his chest itched, a reminder of the shards buried there, but he ignored it. Hustling was all that mattered now. "Abeg, make this scrap pay," he muttered, kneeling by a crashed drone, its circuits fried but salvageable.
The ground trembled then, subtle at first, like the earth's heartbeat skipping. Leaves rustled overhead, and the air thickened with a blue haze. Tobi froze, his sharp eyes narrowing. "Na wa o. Which kind trouble be this?" He stood, brushing dirt from his hands, as the Anya Oju gate a massive, obsidian arch etched with adire patterns that pulsed like veins flared to life. It wasn't supposed to do that. Gates like this were relics, portals tied to old myths, Yoruba whispers of eyes in the sky watching from other realms.
From the gate's maw slithered something unnatural: a river spirit, lesser Orisha in the flesh or whatever passed for flesh these days. Its body coiled like mist made solid, eyes glowing like cracked kola nuts, red and hungry. Water surged from it, flooding the grove in spectral waves that uprooted nano vines and drowned the floating market stalls in the distance. Tobi leaped back, his boots splashing in the rising tide. "Omo, you wan drown me? I no be fish wey you go catch!" He laughed, but it was forced, a smirk to mask the fear gnawing at his gut.
Memories hit him like a punch flashes of that night seven years ago. Ife, his sister, her face lit by ritual candles in a hidden shrine. She was the strong one, always had been, chanting words from their roots to bind power to him.
"This will make you unbreakable, Tobi," she'd said, her voice steady as a river's flow. But the shard had twisted, energy exploding in a backlash that consumed her. Her scream echoed in his head: "Don't... break..." He blinked it away, grief twisting into anger. Not now. Not here.
The spirit lunged, waves crashing like a scorned lover's fury. Tobi's chest burned, the star crest awakening with a roar he felt in his bones. Obsidian threads erupted from his palms Emi-Ogú, the soul-harvest power, born from that cursed ritual. This thing was lesser, a whisper of a god, so he went for the bind. The threads snaked out like living shadows, coiling around the spirit's core, caging its emi, its soul, in a spectral prison that drained its essence drop by drop. The creature thrashed, hissing in tongues older than the grove, water whipping into a vortex that shattered nearby drones in explosions of sparks.
Tobi danced through the chaos, his body moving on instinct dodging surges, flipping over flooded roots. He bounds soul into a mist whip, lashing at the spirit's eyes. "You slow pass tortoise for road!" he taunted, his wit a shield against the panic. But as the cage tightened, his face hardened, cold as a harmattan wind. The spirit begged in its dying hiss: "Mortal... release..." Tobi's grip clenched, the threads crushing like iron fists. "Release? Nah. Your soul na my own now." The emi(soul) shattered in a burst of prismatic light, water evaporating in a steam cloud that lit the grove like a fleeting dawn. The spirit dissolved, its essence tattooing Tobi's arm in a faint, coiling river pattern a tool for later, if he survived that long.
The grove fell quiet, save for the drip of lingering mist. Tobi exhaled, the Shard pulsing with a dull ache, another vision flickering: Ife's ghost, smiling sadly through the haze. "You're changing, brother..." He shook it off, rubbing his scarred chest. "Not yet. Not till I settle this."
Footsteps crunched behind him. A woman emerged from the shadows Nneka, her skin marked with glowing uli tattoos, gauntlets humming with hacked codes. "Chai, Tobi! You just kpai a god like e be small chops? Mad skills, o!" She grinned, awe mixing with mischief in her eyes. A holographic map flickered from her gauntlet: "This gate dey leak Zuciya Kishi, envy wey go swallow the world whole if we no stop am."
Tobi smirked, wiping sweat from his brow. "Then make we swallow am first. Who you be, anyway?"
"Your new troublemaker. Clan exile, but I hack juju like nobody's business." She extended a hand, and Tobi took it, feeling the weight of alliance settle like a proverb unspoken.
In the distance, a cloaked starship hummed, a shadowy figure watching through scopes. "The God-slayer stirs... as we intended." The gate pulsed once more, a promise of storms to come.
The harvest had begun, but every sickle swing cut a little deeper into the wielder.