"Who is Ewu?" Tade asked, the name slipping out of his dry throat before he could stop it.
The temperature in the SUV didn't just drop; it plummeted twenty degrees, turning their breath into white mist. Ina's head snapped around with the mechanical precision of a predator, his eyes glowing with a dangerous, unstable orange light that flickered like a dying candle.
"Where did you hear that name, boy?" Ina's voice was a low, guttural hiss.
"Orun... he mentioned it in the vision," Tade stammered, clutching the backpack to his chest. "He said the peace was a house of sand. He said Ewu was moving in the shadows. He seemed... afraid of him."
Tunde looked in the rearview mirror, his face pale and slick with sweat. "Ewu? The name from the old myths? The one they caledl the 'Bringer of Sorrows'?"
"He was no myth," Ina spat, turning back to stare at the darkening horizon. "He was the rot in the heart of the kingdom. The one who broke the Ayanfe from within while we were busy looking at the borders. Ile's power is a mountain, yes—but Ewu was the landslide that took the kingdom down. He was the greatest threat to humanity that ever walked this earth."
The SUV swerved violently as Tunde yanked the wheel to avoid a military roadblock composed of jagged concrete "teeth" and coiled concertina wire. In the distance, the Lagos skyline loomed, but it was a distorted, alien version of the city Tade knew. A massive spire of earth and raw obsidian was rising from the center of Broad Street, piercing the heavy clouds like a jagged, rotting tooth. Around it, the air was thick with dust and the smell of ozone.
As they drove toward the heart of the darkness, Tade looked at the Shard in his lap. He realized then that he wasn't just a witness or a translator. The Shard was weaving him into a tapestry that had begun five hundred years ago—a story of brothers who became monsters, and heroes who were forced to become legends just to survive the fallout.
He looked at Ina, Omi, and Irin. They were the Fire, the Water, and the Iron. But as they neared the Earth-Shaker's location, Tade wondered if even the elements themselves were enough to stop a god who had had five centuries to marinate in his own malice.
"This is as far as we can go by car," Tunde whispered, his voice trembling.
The SUV slowed to a crawl. Ahead of them, the Third Mainland Bridge—the lifeline of Lagos—was blocked by a phalanx of military tanks, APCs, and hundreds of soldiers in tactical gear. But the Ayanfe didn't look at the tanks. They looked at the asphalt itself, which was beginning to ripple like the surface of a pond under the command of their brother-turned-foe.
The blacked-out motorcycles that had been tailing them since Mowe unexpectedly did tight, synchronized U-turns and roared away into the smog. They had served their purpose—they knew exactly where the "cargo" was headed.
Ina started to kick the door open, his skin already beginning to smoke.
"Wait," Irin cautioned, his metallic hand clamping down on Ina's shoulder with enough force to dent the door frame. "What is our battle plan? We are no longer children playing with wooden swords in Ominira. This is a war zone."
"I don't know about you, Iron-Heart, but I plan to go in and battle Ile to a standstill," Ina replied, his hair beginning to flicker with orange sparks.
"To rush headlong into battle without a plan is folly," Irin said, his voice a steady, rhythmic boom. "Orun taught us better than that. Strength without strategy is just a louder way to die."
Ina sighed, the heat receding slightly as he nodded. "Fine."
"Okay, Irin, what's the plan?" Omi asked.
Irin's metallic brow furrowed as if he were visualising the board. "Ile thinks he has us in a 'Osu'—a dead end. He has distributed his men across the street like seeds in a row of houses. He expects a head-on collision, a simple exchange of seeds."
"And we aren't doing that?" Ina asked, his sparks dimming as he listened.
"No," Irin said. "We will play the 'Odun'. First, we need to clear the outer houses. I will use the metal the soldiers carry to sweep them off the board without a single seed being crushed. Once their 'houses' are empty, the path to the centre is open."
Irin continued, "Once the path is clear, the Elder of the Chariot"—he gestured toward Tunde—"will take us across the bridge and closer to where Ile is waiting. Not too close, though. I want the three of you out of the line of fire."
"And how do we take Ile down?" Ina asked.
"The vision on the device shows he has his followers with him," Irin said. "They are his front row. I will 'capture' them by sticking them to their vehicles. We will drain his board until only he remains. Then, we strike simultaneously. We don't just move one seed; we move the entire hand. If we hit him from three sides at once, we 'lap' his defenses. He won't have enough seeds left to counter-move."
"Wait," Tade said. "He turned you into stone five centuries ago. How do you stop him from doing it again?"
"He needs to touch a person to 'sow' his curse," it was Omi who replied. "We will make sure he never gets to drop a seed in our house. We will keep him at bay, moving faster than his hands can follow."
Irin and Ina nodded in agreement.
"Linguist, you will remain with your elders," Irin told Tade, handing him back the backpack. "Hold on to the Shard. It is the thing that he is after. Keep it safe."
Tade nodded, relaying the plan to Tunde and Bisi.
"They want us to stay close enough to support, but far enough to stay alive," Tade concluded.
"Of course," Tunde said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "I don't have a death wish. I just want to get you home, Tade."
With that, the three Ayanfe stepped out into the humid Lagos air.
Irin didn't run; he marched. As the soldiers screamed for them to halt, the Iron-Heart raised his arms. A low-frequency hum vibrated through the bridge. Suddenly, the rifles were ripped from the soldiers' hands by an invisible tide. The massive tanks groaned as their treads were locked to the asphalt, and then, with a flick of Irin's wrist, the armoured vehicles were slid ten feet to the left, opening a perfectly straight path through the blockade.
"Move!" Irin roared to Tunde.
The SUV screamed through the gap, flying toward the heart of Broad Street.
Broad Street was a graveyard of glass and concrete. Ile stood in the centre of the wreckage, his arms crossed over his massive stone chest. Around him, the Sons of the Earth were positioned like a Praetorian guard, brandishing tactical shotguns and Shard-tech resonators.
Suddenly, the air grew heavy. The Sons of the Earth were abruptly lifted off the ground by their own gear. Their guns, their belt buckles, even the steel toes in their boots became magnets for Irin's will. They were slammed against the sides of their own armoured SUVs, pinned there like insects in a display case.
Irin strode through the clearing, his chrome skin reflecting the flickering fires of the city. He engaged Ile in a booming conversation—a distraction of ancient grievances—long enough for Ina and Omi to vanish into the shadows of the leaning skyscrapers.
"You have grown arrogant in your old age, Earth-Master!" Irin rumbled.
"And you have grown soft, serving the ants of this new world," Ile replied, his voice like grinding tectonic plates.
THEN, THE TRAP SPRANG.
From above, Ina descended like a falling star, his fists wrapped in white-hot plasma. At the same moment, Omi burst from a ruptured water main beneath the street, a localised monsoon swirling around her.
The battle was a symphony of elemental violence. Ina struck first, a blazing haymaker that cracked Ile's stone jaw and sent a spray of glowing embers into the air. Before Ile could counter, Omi lashed out with whips of pressurised water, slicing through the Earth-Master's stone skin and freezing the joints of his legs. Irin closed the distance, his fists becoming heavy sledges that hammered against Ile's ribs with the sound of a wrecking ball hitting a cliffside.
In the SUV parked three blocks away, Tunde, Tade, and Bisi were huddled around Bisi's tablet, watching the raw news feed from a drone hovering directly above the carnage.
"It's working," Tade whispered, his hands shaking. "They're actually winning."
Bisi bit her lip. "I need better footage. This is the story of the millennium." She grabbed her handheld camera and slipped out of the car, creeping toward a nearby alleyway for a closer angle.
While alone in the relative quiet of the car, Tade turned to his uncle. "Uncle Tunde... I'm terrified. What if they can't stop him? What if the world ends today?"
Tunde reached over and pulled Tade into a one-armed hug. "I promise you, Tade, I will keep you safe. No matter what happens out there. I didn't take you in two years ago just to let a walking mountain take you away now."
Tade leaned into his uncle's side. Since his parents had died in that horrific road accident on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Tunde—his mother's younger brother—had been his entire world. Tunde had sold his house and moved to a smaller apartment just to afford Tade's tutors. He was the only father Tade had left.
"I can't lose you too," Tade whispered.
"You won't," Tunde said firmly. "I'm the Elder of the Chariot, remember? I'm too fast for these guys."
Back on the battlefield, the Ayanfe trio were on the verge of a decisive victory. Ile was on one knee, his stone armour cracked and weeping dust. Ina prepared a final, finishing blow of concentrated solar heat.
But Ile looked up and grinned. It was a cold, jagged expression.
"You always were too predictable, Ina," Ile rumbled.
Ile didn't stand up. He suddenly sank. He dissolved into the asphalt as if it were a deep, dark pool of water. The heroes spun around, their senses searching the ground. They recalled with a jolt of horror that Ile could move through the earth as easily as a fish moves through the sea.
"Where is he going?" Omi screamed, her eyes darting to the moisture in the air for a sign.
"The Shard," Irin gasped, his metallic face pale. "He isn't fighting us. He's hunting the Shard!"
Inside the SUV, the ground beneath the tyres suddenly heaved upward. The car was tossed aside like a toy. Tade scrambled out of the wreckage, his backpack clutched to his chest, but he tripped on a jagged piece of rebar.
Ile emerged from the ground like a nightmare rising from the depths. He was covered in the dust of the city, his amber eyes locked onto Tade's bag. He snatched the backpack with a hand that felt like a vice.
"Finally," Ile hissed, looking inside to see the violet glow of the Shard.
Then, he looked at Tade. He stretched out a grey, stony hand toward the boy's face, his fingers twitching with the power to turn flesh into cold, unmoving mineral.
"No!" Tunde screamed.
With a burst of speed he didn't know he possessed, Tunde dived through the air, shoving Tade out of the way. Tade hit the pavement hard, the breath leaving his lungs.
He looked up just in time to see Ile's hand close around Tunde's throat.
The transformation was instantaneous. It started at Tunde's neck and raced down his chest and up his face in a wave of grey, suffocating stone. Tunde didn't even have time to scream. His eyes, once full of warmth and protective fire, became blank, sightless marble. His hand, reaching out to Tade, was frozen forever in a gesture of sacrifice.
"UNCLE!" Tade's voice broke into a high-pitched wail.
Just then, the three Ayanfe came skidding around the corner, their faces masks of pure horror. They were too late.
Ile withdrew his hand, clutching the backpack. A Sons of the Earth helicopter descended from the dust-choked sky, dropping a winch line. Ile grabbed it, looking down at the weeping boy and the three broken heroes.
"A fair trade," Ile rumbled as he was pulled into the air. "A life for a kingdom."
The helicopter roared away into the smog. Tade collapsed forward, his arms wrapping around the cold, hard statue that had once been his uncle. He sobbed into the stone chest, listening for a heartbeat that was no longer there, while Ina, Omi, and Irin stood helplessly in the ruins of Broad Street, their elemental powers flickering out in the face of a tragedy they couldn't fight.
Ile had taken his prize, and the silence he left behind was deafening.
[ LORE CARD: CALCIFICATION ]
Process: A molecular rewrite of carbon-based life into silicate-based mineral.
Status: Irreversible by conventional Ayanfe means.
Note: The victim remains "conscious" in a state of sensory deprivation for the first 24 hours, trapped inside their own frozen body. This is why the statues of the original victims in Ominira were said to have "weeping eyes" for the first day.
LORE CARD: THE STRATEGY OF AYO OLOPON
Ayo Olopon (The Game of the Board) is an ancient Yoruba strategy game played on a carved wooden board with twelve "houses" (holes) and forty-eight seeds (Omo Ayo). In the era of the Ayanfe, it was more than a pastime; it was the primary tool used by Orun to teach his generals how to visualise a battlefield.
Tactical Terminology Used by Irin:
* The Seeds (Omo Ayo): In Irin's tactical mind, the seeds represent individual soldiers or units. To win, one must not just destroy seeds, but redistribute them to control the flow of the game.
* The Houses: These represent the tactical positions on Broad Street. A "Full House" is a fortified position; an "Empty House" is a vulnerability.
* Osu (The Dead End): A state where a player has no moves left or is trapped in a losing loop. Ile attempted to put the Ayanfe into an Osu by using Tunde as a distraction.
* Odun (The Opening): A specific, aggressive opening move designed to clear the opponent's front row. Irin used his magnetic mastery to "sweep the seeds" (the soldiers) off the bridge to create an Odun.
* Lapping (The Capture): A move where a player's final seed lands in an opponent's house, allowing them to capture all the seeds within it. Irin's plan to flank Ile from three sides was a physical "Lapping" of the Earth-Master's defences.
The Philosophy of the Iron-Heart:
> "The Board is the World. The Seeds are the People. A true Ayanfe does not play to destroy the seeds; they play to ensure that by the end of the game, the Board remains standing." — Ancient Proverb of the Ayanfe.
Irin isn't just being "old-fashioned." He is accessing a mental combat-state that allows him to process thousands of variables—the metal in the guns, the iron in the buildings, the vibration of the earth—as if they were simple seeds on a board.