Two days before the incident—the one that shattered logic, the one that cracked time itself, when Ogun emerged from the iron box—far away in ogun State, in a thick, sacred forest called Igboora, there lived a man.
Not just any man.
A priest.
Some called him Baba Alawo, the one who reads destinies like books, who hears whispers from realms no man dares to dream. He had no need for calendars or clocks. He could feel the threads of time twisting.
And on this day… he felt it.
A deep, crawling disturbance in his chest. A chill that didn't belong to the wind. A rift in something unseen, something spiritual. He stood in the middle of the bush, his white wrapper flapping slightly in the breeze, his cowrie-studded staff steady in his palm.
His breathing slowed. His eyes rolled back.
Then he whispered:
"Something has been cracked… and something ancient stirs."
His heartbeat thundered like a drum from the ancestral lands. Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Then, with urgency in his steps, Baba Alawo bent beside a black clay pot—an ishasun—half-buried in the forest floor. From the pouch tied to his waist, he pulled out a single green leaf, still fresh with morning dew. He whispered something to it. Words older than the language of man.
He dropped the leaf into the pot.
It sizzled without fire.
He closed his eyes, raised his hand, and began to chant. Not loud. Not soft. Just… ancient. The pot trembled slightly. The wind around him paused—as if nature itself was listening.
"Ero orun... e gbo mi. Aaye ti ya. Ogun ti n gun…"
Then, he knelt and covered the pot gently with soil, hiding it as though burying a secret.
Done.
He wiped his brow, picked up his staff, and walked silently through the thick trees.
To his hut.
To his oats.
But in his heart… he knew breakfast wouldn't taste the same again.
Something had shifted.
---
And that message—yes, the one buried with the leaf—didn't just dissolve into dirt. No, it traveled. Not by bird, not by wind, but like a WhatsApp ping or a Facebook DM, it zipped invisibly through spiritual channels… heading straight to its destination.
Ibadan.
Deep within another dense forest, even darker than Igboora, lay an ancient house—a relic from the 18th century. Crumbling, moss-covered walls. Rusted zinc roof. But somehow… it still stood.
Despite its age, life pulsed inside.
Not ordinary life.
The kind that bends reality.
One sat on the porch, dragging shisha smoke lazily into the air like time didn't matter. Another leaned against a wall, scrolling on a glowing tablet—yes, a tablet, in the middle of a bush. Inside, someone else was yelling at a game console, rage-quitting and restarting FIFA like they were in a Lekki apartment, not in a haunted rainforest.
They looked young. Alive. Fresh-faced.
Like they belonged to this generation.
But they didn't.
These weren't people. Not really.
They were beings.
And they were chilling—in the middle of nowhere.
Seriously… how do you chill in a bush?
Unless the bush belongs to you.
---
POW!! All their phones lit up at once.
Seven of them.
Young. Vibrant. Laughing just moments before.
But don't let the fresh faces fool you.
These were not your regular boys.
These were the Akúndàyà—the undead. Souls that refused to leave their bodies. Beings that cheated death and made a home out of the supernatural. They had been alive for four centuries and counting.
And yeah… they walked in the dark.
They handled things nobody else could. Things from beneath. Spiritual things.
When their phones pinged, they didn't go to WhatsApp. They didn't go to X or Facebook.
They all opened the same app.
IFA-AI.
It looked like just another dark-themed app. But this wasn't TikTok for babaláwos.
No. IFA-AI was the evolution of ancient Ifá divination—merged with 21st-century artificial intelligence. Sacred codes, spiritual signs, cowrie-shell algorithms, all restructured by deep learning and ancestral data. This was the bridge between the seen and the unseen. A Yoruba-coded assistant for decoding the gods themselves.
They saw the leaf notification.
One of them, lean and dreadlocked, reached into his phone—not physically, but spiritually—and dragged the leaf out like it was stored in a cloud beyond the cloud.
A literal leaf.
And from it came a voice. Old. Croaky. But powerful.
The voice of the Babaláwo from Igboora.
It didn't waste time.
"A god-level threat is approaching… in two days."
Silence.
One of the boys leaned forward slowly, his shisha still burning in his other hand.
"God-level what?"
The second guy stood up, already pacing.
"Nope. Nope. Not me. I've handled demons. I've handled spirits. I've even done one-on-one with a river goddess. But GOD-LEVEL?" He pointed at the message. "I'm not dying again."
Laughter scattered, nervous and real.
Another said: "Okay, okay, chill. We know what to do…" He looked around. "We wake the boss."
"What?! Wake the boss?" someone gasped. "Is that even safe?"
"He said it himself!" The leader snapped. "He said—and I quote—'If anything worth it happens… wake me.'"
They all went quiet again.
Because "the boss"?
He wasn't your regular babaláwo.
He wasn't even a god.
He was something... else.
Something older.
And if they were going to disturb his 200-year slumber…
It better be worth it.
---
Then they went down to the basement.
Dark.
Cold.
Smelling like abandonment and old sins.
Cobwebs clung to their faces like curses that refused to die.
They walked in silence, torches in hand, through the damp corridor until they reached the room—a small, forgotten chamber sealed by time and fear.
The smell hit them first.
Like something had died... and decided not to leave.
They pushed the heavy wooden door open. It creaked like it was weeping.
Inside, in the middle of the room, was a bed—wrapped up in ancient cloth, thick with dust and dry blood.
They hesitated.
Then they unwrapped it.
Slowly.
Revealing what lay beneath.
A skeleton. Old. Dry. Yellowed with age. Cracked in places. Still dressed in tattered white cloth that once looked holy. Now? Just ash and history.
And the stench? Bruh.
Death. Real death.
But they stayed.
They had to.
They formed a circle around the body.
And began chanting.
Incantations from four centuries ago. Raw. Untouched. Forbidden.
They chanted for 30 minutes straight.
Until something started to change.
The bones twitched.
Then pulsed.
Then... flesh began to grow—slowly, like clay molding itself.
Muscle. Veins. A heart. Liver. Lungs. Intestines. Skin.
Hair black as midnight sprouted across his head.
His chest rose.
He breathed in life.
They stepped back.
The room trembled for a second.
He opened his eyes. Dark. Bottomless.
Looked around.
Sniffed the air.
Smirked.
"Wow." He said in a low, rough voice. "Y'all finally remembered me."
One of them stepped forward.
"Boss… we've got a problem."
The resurrected man tilted his head.
"Good." He stretched. "I was getting tired of sleeping anyway."
---
Back to the present.
BOOOOM!!!
The blast rang out like thunder from the throat of an angry god.
Kayode—yes, his name was Kayode—hit the ground hard but kept running, spirit-form or not. His legs didn't ache. His body felt weightless. Like pain had clocked out.
He ran towards the road. Middle of the chaos.
And that's when he saw him.
A black man. Skin shining like obsidian. Hair full and wild. Standing tall beside a heap of twisted, flaming wreckage—cars crumbled like tin foil.
The man looked… confused. Lost. But powerful.
He turned slowly, scanning the area, sniffing the air like something ancient waking up in a new world.
"Iron… speaks now?" he muttered. His voice? Deep. Raw. Full of disbelief.
He took a step forward, touching the hood of one wrecked vehicle. The metal shivered at his touch. Bent slightly, like in reverence.
"This is madness." His eyes flicked left. Then right.
"Even iron… it moves. It talks. It dares to scream in my presence? Tell me… how?"
He wasn't talking to anyone directly. He was talking to the world. Maybe to the spirits.
Then he turned to face Kayode.
Eyes sharp. Curious.
Kayode went still. His spirit sank slightly, like gravity itself had acknowledged this man.
"You," the man said.
"What kind of soul dares walk like this? Pressure like this. Presence like this."
He walked closer.
"Why is Shàngó's fire humming in iron?" he muttered again, almost to himself. "Why does Ogun's voice
boom like thunder? Why… are the gods colliding… inside metal?"
Kayode didn't speak. Couldn't.
Ogun stepped forward, barefoot, eyes burning with questions only the gods would dare ask.
"You. Boy. Tell me… how do you look at Ogun?"
Silence.
Even the spirits nearby stopped whispering.