At dawn, the hideout's amber lanterns flickered low, their light burning soft and sleepy against the cool hush of early morning. Chizoba and Omo stepped out into the streets of Iburolẹ, the city still cloaked in twilight's breath. Fog clung to the flagstones like forgotten dreams, and thin veils of dew shimmered on the market awnings, drooping like tired sails.
The city stirred only faintly. Sandstone buildings cast long shadows across the alleyways, their ochre walls beginning to warm under the timid advance of the sun. The rhythmic creak of water-wheels echoed from somewhere behind the dyeworks, and from afar, the highland wind carried the scent of wet spice, river clay, and fading incense.
They walked side by side down a winding cobbled road that sloped gently toward the western gate. The textile district lay ahead—its once-bustling stalls now shuttered, its flags limp in the dawn air. Omo, visor up and eyes darting with subtle energy scans, paused before a shop whose faded green awning bore the symbol of a weaver's spindle crossed with thunderstones.
"Hold up," she said, tilting her head slightly. Her gauntlet clicked softly as she pulled her satchel across her shoulder.
Chizoba glanced at her with mild surprise. "We're leaving."
"Exactly," she replied, brushing past a dangling chime of copper-threaded bells at the entrance. "And I need something that doesn't smell like ghost blood and hydraulic fluid."
The shopkeeper inside was an elderly woman with milky eyes and hands scarred by decades of loom work. She barely looked up from her spindle but greeted Omo with a soft hum and a slight nod. The shelves were packed with bolts of vibrant fabric—dyed in rich crimsons, storm-blues, obsidian blacks, and glimmering silvers woven with thread that caught light like dew.
Omo rummaged with the precision of a scavenger and the discernment of a fashion tactician. She held up a bolt of silken midnight blue shot through with golden embroidery that traced ancient Ase circuits in spiraling patterns.
"This one," she said. "It'll go great with the plating on my Ember rig. Adds drama. And reinforcement."
"You're worried about drama?" Chizoba leaned on the doorframe, arms folded, clearly unimpressed. "We're hunting a Riftborn cell, not entering a masquerade."
She smirked, giving the cloth a theatrical flair. "Function and flair, my friend. Don't insult my multitasking."
Chizoba made a show of sighing as she haggled with the shopkeeper, trading in a few spare capacitor lenses and a spool of conductive fiber she'd scavenged weeks ago. With the transaction complete, Omo stepped out of the shop twirling the folded fabric in one hand, as pleased as a trickster with a new mask.
"Your turn," she said, nudging him with her elbow. "Don't tell me that rag you call a cloak is still holding up."
"It's fine," Chizoba replied flatly, tugging the frayed edge of his worn, ash-grey mantle.
"It's a Chi-sink," she said, scanning it with a flick of her visor. "You're leaking energy at the shoulder seam. Probably why your resonance is off."
Chizoba looked down at the cloth, the hem crusted with dried earth and slash-marks from their last few encounters. He hesitated, clearly reluctant—but her words had a sting of truth.
"Fine," he muttered.
They returned to the weaver's stall, where the old woman laid out several cloaks with patient, unhurried hands. Most were ceremonial—flamboyant things meant for temple dancers or nobles. But one stood out: deep green with black threading, its weave dense but smooth. It shimmered faintly under Omo's scanner.
"Chi-reactive," the old woman whispered, tapping the hem. "Woven with threads from the Amu-Agu trees. Breathes like skin. Holds like armor."
Chizoba didn't need more convincing. He exchanged two vials of preserved spirit-ink from the healing rituals he'd completed days before. The weaver bowed her thanks. He removed his old cloak and wrapped the new one around his shoulders. It fit snug, light, and warm—but more than that, he could feel the difference. His inner current steadied, no longer diffused at the edges.
"Looks better," Omo noted, walking beside him as they exited again into the morning.
"It's just a cloak," he replied.
"No," she said, tucking her fabric into a side compartment of her rig. "It's a choice. You chose to walk forward."
He gave her a sidelong look, unsure whether she meant it philosophically or practically. With Omo, it was always both.
They stepped together into the amber glow of early sun. The sandstone walls of Iburolẹ behind them shone with quiet farewell. Before them, the road unfurled toward the west—toward the Viridian Jungle and the first Riftborn cell that waited in shadow.
Their boots struck the earth in unison, two exiles walking forward—not out of duty, but momentum. Behind them, Iburolẹ slumbered in peace. Ahead, the green tide of wilderness rustled with secrets ready to awaken.
The jungle swallowed them whole.
What began as a road gradually faded into broken dirt, then into veils of moss and loam until there was no path at all—only the suffocating green of the Viridian Wilds, as if the world itself had decided it no longer cared for straight lines or direction. Trees soared like titans, thick-trunked and ancient, their roots sprawling in massive webs that broke the earth into uneven ridges. Kapok, ebony, and iroko trees loomed like watchful spirits, their crowns joining high above into a vaulted canopy that devoured the sun. Light dappled through in liquid gold, moving and flickering like it was alive.
The air was thick with moisture and pollen, clinging to the skin in a warm, constant embrace. Ferns grew taller than men; bright-red fungi clung to trunks like spilled paint. Butterflies the size of a man's hand flitted between shafts of sunlight, and lizards with translucent skin blinked from their mossy perches. But it was not beautiful in the gentle sense—no, it was the kind of wild that watched you back. It pressed in around them, quiet but breathing, the way old gods might wait behind curtains of leaves.
Omo hated it instantly.
Her boots sank into the damp floor with every step, and though her Ember Drive regulated her body temperature, the heat still found ways to creep into her bones. It wasn't just the temperature—it was the clinging rot, the scent of ancient mulch and unseen decay, of life trying to eat life in endless cycles. The fabric she'd bought in Iburolẹ was already collecting sweat around the collar.
"This place feels... territorial," she muttered, flicking a hanging vine out of her way with a charged finger. "Like it's daring us to keep going."
Her visor cast scanning lines ahead, detecting mineral traces, movement echoes, and low-grade electromagnetic surges. But half of the jungle simply defied her tech—trees whose inner fibers reflected scans, stones laced with living mycelium that distorted readings. It was like the forest had learned how to resist modernity.
She adjusted a dial on her wrist. "Ugh. If we're not eaten by something old and angry, we'll probably die from overheating."
Behind her, Chizoba was silent.
He moved like someone returning to a place he half-recognized in dreams—each step slow but steady, his cloak whispering against bark and bramble. The new fabric's Chi-conductive threads resonated softly with his body's energy, which pulsed in disciplined waves beneath his skin. Every so often, his eyes drifted upward to the thick canopy, then forward to the twisted trail. He wasn't smiling, but he didn't look burdened either.
Where Omo found the jungle oppressive, Chizoba found it... familiar.
The dense, ancient energy that soaked into every leaf reminded him of the old Chi rituals performed in the mountain groves of Nri-Ulo. Places where silence was sacred, and even birdsong meant something. The smells of rot and bark were comforting in a strange way—signs of death feeding life.
He spoke at last. "This forest hasn't forgotten anything. You can feel the weight of stories in it."
Omo glanced back at him, brushing a green beetle off her shoulder. "That's poetic. You always get philosophical when your boots are full of mud?"
He didn't answer. Not because he was ignoring her, but because his senses had shifted. Chi—like scent, like heat—was attuned to presence, and something in the forest was watching. Not with eyes, but with intent.
He slowed his pace.
"Stick close," he whispered, not as a warning, but as a ritual—a phrase meant to tighten the thread between them.
Omo didn't argue. Her visor flicked to a higher sensitivity. Behind her, the forest distorted her sensor lines with flickers—heat ghosts, perhaps; or the remnants of something twisted passing through.
They began moving in a formation they'd settled into over the last few weeks: Omo ahead, sweeping for tech, devices, and mechanical anomalies; Chizoba trailing slightly behind, his Chi unsealed just enough to ward off spirit interference and keep their inner rhythm steady. Every so often, he extended a hand to a tree or stone and murmured in Igbo under his breath—a greeting, or perhaps a request for safe passage.
The deeper they went, the more distorted things became.
The trees bled syrup that smelled like copper. The vines pulsed faintly when touched. And more than once, they spotted trees with scars shaped like symbols—spiral glyphs, cut not by blade but by something grown into the bark. Omo scanned one such tree and frowned. "Residual kinetic disturbance," she muttered. "Like something passed through it... not walked. Warped."
Signs of Riftborn presence began to emerge—at first, subtle. Flattened undergrowth, as if a large group had passed silently. Footprints, some made by human soles, others by something metal and clawed. Then more obvious: a twisted drone snagged in the crook of a tree, half-devoured by fungal growth. Its innards had been replaced with vines, but the casing still hummed faintly with Riftborn code.
"Still fresh," Omo murmured, plucking a strand of data-wire from the drone's husk. "This isn't old tech. They passed through here within the last two days."
Chizoba knelt near a patch of disturbed soil. He dipped two fingers into the earth and closed his eyes. Chi stirred. For a moment, the jungle faded—and in its place, an echo bloomed: a shadow of a procession, half-human, half-unreadable, walking silently through the green with no weight but endless purpose. They didn't speak. They didn't look. They just moved.
He opened his eyes.
"They weren't running. They were drawn to something."
Omo raised an eyebrow. "You got all that from dirt?"
He nodded.
She gave a dry chuckle. "Chi's a hell of a system."
Just as they were about to move forward again, the forest shifted. The temperature dropped suddenly, and the insects fell silent—mid-buzz, mid-flight, like the air had closed its mouth.
Chizoba raised his hand. "Something's coming."
The bush baby came first—at least, that's what the old stories might have called it. But this wasn't a harmless primate. It dropped from the canopy with limbs too long and eyes too large, glinting like twin moons. Its skin was taut and gray, stretched like drumhide over a too-thin frame. It screeched, a warbling noise that echoed in both ears and mind.
Omo reacted instantly. Her gauntlet flared, and she fired a pulse shot that disrupted the creature's nervous system. It staggered, then leapt—its motion unnatural, as if midair joints bent where they shouldn't.
Chizoba didn't wait. His Chi lashed out in a spiral—a disciplined arc that blasted the creature mid-flight, slamming it against a tree with a crack that silenced the underbrush.
But the silence didn't last.
The ghosts came next.
Not specters in the classic sense—but shimmering figures, barely human, walking between trees without touching them. They whispered in a forgotten tongue. Their faces were missing, like the jungle had peeled away their names and souls. One reached toward Omo—its hand phasing through her rig, and for a moment, her memories blurred: her first scavenger kill, her brother's laugh, the moment she nearly drowned beneath a collapsed ruin.
She gasped.
Chizoba shouted something in an ancient dialect, and his Chi ignited like fire. A circular sigil burned on the earth beneath them, casting light against the shade. The ghosts recoiled, wailing as their forms disintegrated into pollen and ash.
Breathing heavily, Omo backed away. "Those weren't ordinary spirits."
"They were lost names," Chizoba said quietly. "People the jungle forgot to remember."
They sat beneath a ridge of old roots for a while, breathing, the tension of survival slowly leaving their muscles.
Omo glanced at him. "You ever think we're not built for this?"
"We are," he said. "But not alone."
She didn't reply for a while. Then she leaned her head back and let the filtered sunlight dance on her visor.
"We make a good team," she said finally.
Chizoba said nothing—but the small nod he gave was enough.