The golden mist of the dream solidified into the Great Sanctum of Ominira. The air here didn't taste of exhaust or dust; it tasted of rain and cedar, a sharp, clean scent that belonged to a world before engines and oil. Orun, the First of the Ayanfe, stood on a balcony of white marble that overlooked a courtyard bathed in the amber glow of a setting sun.
Beside him stood Imo. She was not a warrior now, but she had fought by his side as a mortal before being blessed by the Source Stone. Her power was usually a quiet thing, a steady hum of psychic resonance that sat beneath the skin like a heartbeat. Yet, Tade could feel the lethality hidden in that calm; she was a woman who could shred a person's mind to pieces in the twinkling of an eye if the need arose. Her eyes were the colour of a clouded sky, seeing things that had not yet happened and things that should never be.
"Look at them, Orun," Imo whispered, gesturing toward the courtyard below.
Tade, watching from the ethereal sidelines of the memory, saw three young figures. They were teenagers, barely older than he was. Ina, Omi, and Irin were huddled over a massive, stone-carved board of Ayo Olopon. They weren't just playing; they were moving in a perfect, synchronised rhythm, passing the seeds between them with a speed that blurred the eyes. They laughed—a sound so pure it made Tade's heart ache with the memory of their lost innocence.
"Their bond is unlike any other," Imo continued, her voice trembling. "Even before the Source Stones chose them, they were a knot that could not be untied. They breathe as one. They think as one."
"Then why do you look as though you are mourning?" Orun asked, his voice a deep cello note.
"Because I see a vision of a distant sun," Imo replied, turning her clouded eyes toward the horizon. "A world of metal and noise. A world that has forgotten the language of the Earth. In that time, the fate of all mankind will rest on their shoulders. As long as they remain united, they are an invincible wall. But their enemy knows this. He won't attack their strength, Orun. He will attack the knot. He will find the one thread that is different from the others, and he will pull until the whole world unravels."
Tade was jolted awake not by a voice but by a bone-jarring slam.
"DIA! GET DOWN!" Bisi screamed.
The SUV lurched violently as a black, armoured truck rammed them from the left, trying to force them off the embankment. The peaceful silence of the country road was shattered by the rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack of a low-flying Black Hawk helicopter.
"The Defence Intelligence Agency," Bisi gritted out, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. "They must have flagged the SUV's satellite signature the moment we crossed the state line!"
A flash-bang grenade shattered the rear window, filling the cabin with a blinding white light and a high-pitched ring that made Tade's teeth ache. The air in the SUV became a thick soup of acrid smoke.
"Irin!" Tade coughed.
Irin didn't need to be told. The Iron-Heart punched his massive chrome hand through the floorboards of the SUV, reaching down until his fingers gripped the very chassis of the car and the magnetic ley-lines of the road beneath.
CLANG.
The SUV became an immovable object. The chasing DIA truck, unable to compensate for the sudden lack of momentum, crumpled against the back of the SUV as if it had hit a mountain. The truck came to a violent, metal-shrieking halt, while Irin's magnetic field acted as a kinetic buffer, preventing even a scratch to the passengers inside Bisi's vehicle.
Then, Irin tilted his head toward the Black Hawk hovering above. Without leaving his seat, he extended his other hand, palm upward, and tightened his grip on the empty air. He didn't crush the helicopter; instead, he exerted a targeted electromagnetic pull on the craft's heavy turbine engines, forcing the chopper to descend in a slow, controlled plummet until its skids hit the soft earth of the roadside, grounding the terrified crew without a single injury.
Ina launched himself through the sunroof like a solar flare. He landed on the hood of the second DIA vehicle, his hands glowing a terrifying, incandescent white. He didn't even strike the car; he simply touched the metal, and the engine block melted into a pool of useless slag in seconds.
"Stay down, little men!" Ina roared, his voice amplified by the shimmering heat.
Omi stepped out of the SUV, her hair a swirling halo of mist as she raised her hands and rapidly drew moisture from the humid air. A thick, impenetrable fog rolled across the highway, blinding the agents and shorting out their electronic gear. It was a masterclass in restraint—she incapacitated an entire squad without shedding a single drop of blood.
The skirmish was over in less than two minutes. The agents lay groaning on the asphalt, unharmed but defeated.
"We should have ended them," Ina spat, standing over the lead agent. His tactical vest was still smoking from the heat of Ina's presence. "They are gnats. They slow us down while Ile moves beneath us. Why do we spare those who hunt us?"
"Because they are just men following orders, Ina!" Irin countered, his metallic skin dulling as he retracted his power. "We are protectors, not executioners. If we start killing the people we are meant to save, we are no better than the tyrant we chase."
"Order is a lie if the Earth is lost!" Ina screamed, a jet of flame erupting from his throat and scorching the asphalt. "You are too soft, Iron-Heart! You spend your time learning their 'Mathematics' and playing with their gadgets while our brother Tunde turns to permanent dust!"
"ENOUGH!" Omi's voice cracked like a whip of thunder, silencing them both.
Tade watched them, the words of Imo echoing in his head: He will attack the knot. He could see the thread fraying right in front of him.
As the moon rose over the outskirts of Lokoja, the group stopped at a derelict, overgrown fuel station to regroup. The air was cool, but the atmosphere inside the SUV was boiling. Ina stood by the edge of the dark highway, his back to the group, staring toward the north where the Niger and Benue rivers met in a silent confluence. When Omi approached him, he didn't turn.
"Ina, I just spoke with Irin," Omi started, her voice soft but firm.
Ina did not speak. He remained as still as a statue of cooling basalt.
"This constant bickering between you two needs to end," Omi went on, stepping closer. "We cannot hope to defeat Ile if we are at war among ourselves. We are the Circle. We are the wall."
Ina remained silent, his eyes fixed on the distant horizon where the darkness of the Middle Belt swallowed the road.
"Well, Irin is still troubled by what happened when Tade awakened us," Omi continued, trying to bridge the gap. "He finds it difficult to trust you. Perhaps you should extend an olive branch. You could apologise to him for—"
"I am leaving," Ina said. The heat was gone from his voice, replaced by something much colder: exhaustion.
Omi stopped dead. "What? Ina, don't be foolish. We are hours away from the Source Stone. We cannot face Ile without the Circle."
"I am going to find Ile on my own," Ina said, finally turning. His eyes weren't burning with rage; they were wet with a profound, agonising sorrow. "I cannot be near him anymore, Omi. I cannot watch the way you look at him."
Omi looked confused, her brow furrowed in the moonlight. "Look at who?"
Ina gestured toward Irin, who was sitting in the back of the SUV, hunched over Tade's smartphone as the two discussed the binary logic of the device. From this distance, they looked like two scholars sharing a secret.
Omi blinked, her voice failing her. "What... what are you talking about? Irin is our brother. He is—"
"He is the one you chose," Ina interrupted, stepping into her space. The heat radiating from him made the air shimmer, blurring his features into a flickering mirage. "Five hundred years ago, in the gardens of Ominira, I thought if I became the greatest warrior, if I burned the brightest, you would finally see me. But your eyes always found the mountain. You always looked for the Iron. Even now, in this new world, you sit by him. You learn with him. I am just the fire that keeps the dark away, but he is your earth."
Omi gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. The mist around her began to swirl erratically, reacting to her shock. "Ina... I didn't know... I never meant..."
"I love you, Omi," Ina whispered, a single tear of molten gold carving a path down his cheek before evaporating into a puff of steam. "And because I love you, I hate him. Every second I spend in that car, I feel the jealousy turning into a discordant note. If I stay, that note will grow. I will end up striking him, or I will let him fall when he needs me most. To save this mission, I have to save myself from this fire within me."
Before she could speak, before she could offer a response he wasn't ready to hear, Ina stepped away into the shadows. He dissolved into a streak of white-hot light that blurred into the dark horizon, heading north like a falling star.
"Ina, wait!" Omi cried out, reaching into the empty air.
Tade stepped out of the car, watching the light vanish. Without the Shard to anchor his senses, the void in his pocket felt like a physical wound. He felt his heart skip a beat, his chest pulsing with a sudden, violent throb—a warning of a much greater shift in the world's spirit.
The Heart of the World
Five hundred miles away, deep beneath the granite foundations of the Jos Plateau, the air began to hum. The cavern was ancient, lined with jagged obsidian that pulsed with a faint, rhythmic violet light. In the centre, resting upon a pedestal of living root and stone, sat the Source Stone of the Earth.
A hand, textured like cracked riverbed and glowing with amber malice, reached out of the shadows. Ile stepped into the light. He was no longer the man who had stood on Broad Street; he was a colossus of shifting tectonic plates and cooling lava. He laid his palm against the Stone.
The moment his skin touched the surface, a surge of infinite power spiralled up his arm. His cracks filled with molten gold. His eyes flared like twin suns.
"Finally," Ile rasped, his voice the sound of a mountain collapsing. "The silence ends."
With a guttural roar, he tore the Source Stone from its pedestal.
The reaction was instantaneous. Across the globe, the balance of the elements was shattered. In Lagos, the ocean suddenly retreated miles from the shoreline, leaving ships stranded in the mud as a massive wall of water began to build in the distance. In California, the San Andreas fault groaned and buckled, triggering a magnitude 8.0 earthquake. In Japan, three dormant volcanoes roared to life simultaneously, spewing ash that blacked out the sun.
Back at the derelict gas station, Tade collapsed to his knees as the blood in his veins turned ice-cold. He looked up at the sky and saw the stars begin to flicker and shift.
The game of Ayo Olopon had moved into its final, deadliest phase, and the Earth-Master had all he needed to win.
[ ARCHIVE ACCESS: DIA DOSSIER #09 ]
Organisation: Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) – Paranormal Containment Division.
Objective: To identify, track, and neutralise "Class-A" anomalies (Alagbara/Ayanfe).
Tactics: Utilisation of Black-Site technology, satellite thermal tracking, and kinetic-suppression weaponry.
Note: Following the "Broad Street Incident," the DIA has been authorised to use lethal force to prevent the Shard from falling into non-government hands. They view the Ayanfe not as guardians, but as national security threats.
[ LORE CARD: THE ANCHOR'S BURDEN ]
Warning: The Source Stone is the gravitational anchor of the physical realm. To remove it is to invite the "Great Imbalance." If the Stone is not returned to its pedestal within one lunar cycle, the ley-lines will snap, and the world will literally pull itself apart.