Egburu-Kwé walked through Lagos as a ghost, his namelessness a cloak woven from the static of erased memory. The city throbbed around him—a cacophony of honking danfo buses, street vendors hawking fried plantains, and holographic billboards peddling Egburu Energy Drink with his own scarred face as the logo. The kúkpála at his hip hummed like a trapped wasp, its hilt carved with Ebele's snarling visage, her lips forever parted in a scream that once rallied rebels.
A child's laughter cut through the noise. He turned to see a girl, no older than seven, chasing a moth with wings that shimmered with Migili glyphs. Her palms bore the Church of the Nameless' brand: a broken chain. "Look!" she giggled, cupping the insect. "It says you're a lie." The moth dissolved into ash, its particles rearranging into a viral hashtag—#RuinKingIsCancelled—before scattering in the wind. The girl's smile curdled. "Loki says lies taste like candy. Sweet until they rot your teeth." She vanished, her shadow melting into the glare of a smartphone screen.
He moved on, drawn to the Ahịa Ụgha, the Market of Lies. Vendors hawked "authentic" Migili memory-vials beside bootleg energy drinks, their stalls lit by the sickly glow of Odin's AI-powered ads. A influencer in a synthetic leopard-print dashiki livestreamed herself chugging ụlọ-lite, a neon-green concoction. "Forget your ex, your debt, your name!" she slurred, pupils dilating as the AI siphoned her followers' memories. Egburu-Kwé's scar itched—a phantom pain—as he passed a stall selling akwụkwọ ochie, ancient scrolls whose parchment had gone blank.
"Words fled when the Tree fell," croaked the vendor, an old woman with eyes milky from cataracts. She thrust a scroll into his hands. It warmed, revealing a single phrase: "Egburu-Kwé bụ onye ndụ"—Ruin-King is a liar. The kúkpála vibrated, Ebele's scream rising to a shriek.
A explosion rocked the market. A boy—twelve, maybe thirteen—hurled a Molotov cocktail at an Egburu Energy truck, his face contorted with rage. "You stole my father's name!" he screamed. Police drones descended, taser prongs crackling. Egburu-Kwé moved without thought. The kúkpála flashed, severing drone wires with a sound like snapping bones. The boy stared, chest heaving. "Who are you?"
"No one," Egburu-Kwé rasped, voice raw from disuse.
"Liar," the boy spat, vanishing into the crowd.
The scroll led him to a grove hidden behind a rusted shantytown, where the last Migili elders gathered beneath a canopy of ájị ọjọọ, shadow moss that dulled Odin's gaze. Their leader, Nneka, sat cross-legged on a mat of thorns, her mouth stuffed with mkpụrụ okwu—speech-seeds meant to choke lies. "Odin drinks from the Mmiri Ncheta," she said, words garbled but sharp. "The Well of Memory. Beneath Benin City, where your people's stories were burned."
A vision seized him: 1897. British soldiers torch the Kingdom of Benin's archives, scrolls curling into ash. Odin's ravens perch on redcoat shoulders, beaks dripping with stolen proverbs. The flames sink into the earth, birthing a well of black water that pulses now beneath a cryptocurrency mine, its servers cooled by poisoned memory.
Nneka spat out a thorn, bloody and glistening. "The Well's guardian will demand your name. Speak truth, or lie and perish."
The mine buzzed with the static of a thousand rigs mining Digital Ụlọ, their fans whirring like locusts. Workers in Church of the Nameless robes chanted Loki's tweets as they fed servers liquid nitrogen, their faces blurred by the System's erasure. Egburu-Kwé descended into the crypt, where the Mmiri Ncheta churned—a pool of liquid obsidian, its surface reflecting wars, famines, and first kisses stolen under ancestral trees.
The guardian rose from the depths: a draugr fused with Migili agbara, its body a patchwork of rotting code and sacrificial scars. "Identity. Authenticate." Its voice buzzed, glitching between Norse runes and Igbo proverbs.
Egburu-Kwé said nothing.
"Secondary verification: recite lineage."
The command clawed at him. Memories surfaced—his mother's voice stripped by the System, the Lagos boys' taunts (Ghost boy! No father, no clan!)—but Nneka's thorn burned in his palm. He drove it into the earth. "My lineage is written in ash. Now let me rewrite yours."
The guardian lunged. Egburu-Kwé sidestepped, the kúkpála plunging into its chest. Stolen memories erupted—children's laughter, funeral dirges, the rhythmic pound of ogene drums—flooding the chamber. Servers exploded, the Well boiling as Odin's roar shook the foundations.
In Oslo, Loki scrolled through #OathbreakerReal memes in a penthouse slick with stolen art. He sipped mead from a Benin bronze, grinning as Egburu Energy's stock soared—until the drink turned to ash. The Well's corruption surged through him, skin crackling into pixelated static. "Fool," he hissed at Odin's raven, now a smoldering heap of code. "You drank too deep."
Egburu-Kwé emerged from the ruins, the kúkpála now a gnarled staff, its tip sprouting a bud veined with bioluminescent gold. The System flickered: [Warning: Identity Reintegration Detected. Purge? Y/N]
He chose N.
The boy from the market appeared, clutching the moth-girl's hand. Their palms glowed with unbroken glyphs. "We remember," they said.
Dawn found him at the Sahel's edge, sand stinging his eyes. The nomad elder awaited him, her tent stitched from migrant ship sails. She offered ajali tea, bitter and clarifying. "Odin seeks the Ọbara Ọnwụ," she said, unrolling a goatskin map inked with dead stars. "The Blood of the Dead. First memory spilled. If he drinks it, your stories become his code."
The kúkpála shrieked. Ebele's voice, frayed but ferocious: "That blood is chaos. It birthed the first wars."
Egburu-Kwé studied the map. "And the first rebellions."
Somewhere in Tokyo, a girl named Aiko traced a Migili glyph onto her wrist. "Egburu-Kwé," she whispered. It glowed—faintly, but enough.
The road ahead was long, and gods were patient. But in the ruins of Benin City, the Mmiri Ncheta overflowed, its black waters birthing a sapling with leaves of starlit code.
The kúkpála hummed, eager.