Chapter One: The First Spin
The sky was bleeding.
Blood-orange light spilled through the shattered window panes, casting twisted shadows across the tiled floor. Every breath he took sliced through his ribs like broken glass. His arm—slashed. His stomach—open. His body leaned hard against the cold metal of the supermarket backroom door; his hand clamped over the wound like it would stop the world from unraveling.
BOOM!!!
Something slammed against the front counter. Screeching. Then silence. Then giggling.
She was hunting with him .
Sweat dripped from his brow and stung his eye, but he dared not wipe it. Somewhere beyond the metal, she waited. The girl he once had a secret crush on. The girl whose smile once lit up his day. The girl who, minutes ago, tore open his flesh with claws like fishhooks and laughed like a naive child.
Her name was Daisy and she was no longer human.
His blood trailed in red droplets across the floor. He pulled his legs closer. The pain howled through his body, but he refused to scream. He looked around and saw it—the thin black seed pendant, broken and dusty, lying a few feet away beside his century old pen.
His breath caught.
He hadn't even realized it had fallen from his neck during the fight. The pendant—his last link to his parents, both long dead. His father used to call it a "diviner's eye," something from Igbo tradition. His father had once told him: "As long as you carry it, our ancestor Ogwugwu sees you."
But now it was on the bloodied ground. Between him and the thing that wanted to rip his face off.
Feeling fuzzy from the blood loss he closed his eyes for a second.
Then everything spun—
Twenty minutes earlier…
He was restocking the goods on the shelves,sweat sticking his black worn-out T-shirt to his back. The power had gone out again, so no music, no fans. Just heat,the noisy city,and some old baldies arguing about football outside again. He stretched he's tired body leaning on the counter, glancing outside at the street. According to the weather forecast today it was supposed to be cloudy, but the sun had boiled the air to madness. Then it happened...Birds flew backwards. Dogs barked at empty spaces, the sun darken...what?,it became blood red. But how? The he felt it, or rather everyone felt it—something was coming.
Daisy had entered silently while he was about to call his sister. Her skin pale. Her lips a shade too blue. Eyes too wide.
"Why are you here?" he asked.You should go home and be careful on the way cuz everywhere upside down"
She tilted her head. "You never answered my last text."
"I didn't—"
She leapt.
He hadn't seen it coming. One second she was standing. The next, her fingers were claws and his stomach was open.
Now.
He stared at the pen. Just a black pen. Not even fancy. But he remembered something—his dad's voice during a rainy night:
"Mmiri amaghị onye kpatara ya, na-asa ahú onye dị nso."
("When the rain doesn't know who caused it, it beats the one closest.")
"She didn't choose this. This chaos didn't come for her… it just found her standing too close."
He took it, unclipped it, instinctively the other hand took the divination seeds.
A deep inhale.
She crashed through the storage racks, eyes glowing like molten mercury. Laughing.
His fingers brushed the shard.
It was cold. Colder than the blood dripping from his palm.And then—
Time stopped.
The barking dogs paused
The howl of the girl—that thing she had become—froze in her throat.The world turned gray, then black, then ash.
He stood, but not in the Supermarket anymore.Not in the city. Not in Nigeria. Not on Earth.
Just… ash.Falling from a sky with no stars.Endless, silent, and dead.
Then a voice —Not from outside, but from within.As if his own thoughts were being read aloud by something ancient, ancestral.
"Nwanne m, ọbara anaghị efu n'ala."My brother, blood never disappears in the earth.(The bloodline always answers. It always returns.)
[SYSTEM INITIALIZED.] Ancestral bloodline established with user.
Vital Resonance Confirmed.
Welcome to THE LAST ARCHIVE.
He blinked. Tried to speak.But his lips didn't move.He thought his words instead—
"What is this? What's happening?"
[ACCESS GRANTED.]User has touched a Divine Fragment Slot 1 unlocking…Selecting compatible survival relic…
Rolling…
A giant wheel of light appeared in the sky above the ash — symbols flashing: a skull, a flame, a feather, a shadow, a mirror.
It spun wildly.Faster.Faster—
CLACK.
The wheel stopped.
The symbol it landed on: a black hood, frayed at the edges, made of embers and soot.
Relic Acquired: Cloak of Ash.[Effect: When activated, grants perfect invisibility. No sound. No presence. No scent. Lasts 30 seconds. Cool down: 2 minutes.]
The world pulsed.Ash surged around his legs.And like smoke pulling into a body, the cloak wrapped itself around him.
It didn't feel foreign.
It felt… familiar.
He closed his eyes.
And in the dark behind his eyelids, he saw his mother's face. She was lighting a fire.
"Ash is what remains… even when gods fall."
He opened his eyes.
The system voice returned, calmer now:
Would you like to name your first Archive Ability?Default: Cloak of Ash.
He thought:
"Leave it. That's what it is."
Confirmed. Archive slot: 1/7 unlocked.
The ash around him began to lift—Time surged back—
The girl screamed.
But he was no longer there.
Only the fading shimmer of a shadow.A ghost wrapped in ash.
The world blinked.
A cold film wrapped around his body. Light bent away from him. He vanished.
Losing sight of her prey, she hissed, circling the room, claws dragging against the floor.
Invisible now, he crept sideways,wincing in pain from the injury, barely breathing. She growled and sniffed the air like a dog. He stepped behind her.
She paused. Tilted her head. Almost caught him.
Then—he struck.
The pen jabbed into her eye with a squelch. Her scream froze the air. Blood burst across the flour-covered floor.
She collapsed.
Twitching.
Then still.
Everything stopped.
A voice spoke—not in sound, but inside his chest:
"A debt must be paid."
He blinked.
"The Archive opens only to those who pay for their ancestors.To those whose bloodline has not gone silent.It does not respond to power. It responds to remembrance.To sacrifice.To worship."
And he?
He didn't even know he had paid.But his life had been one long offering —In pain.In hunger.In blood spilled while calling names he didn't understand.In holding onto the divination seed when he could have thrown it away.
That was enough.It remembered him.
So when the shards burned cold into his palm, and time froze like a bowed spirit —the system answered him not as a user… but as a son.
[The Last Archive]Ancestral seal confirmed.Entry permitted.Debt cycle activated.First Fragment: Cloak of Ash.
A spinning interface appeared in his vision. ancestral, ancient, and alive.
It read:
THE LAST ARCHIVE
Do you wish to open your second relic?
[YES] [NO]
He hesitated. Then thoughtYES.
A thousand lights swirled. His mind burned. The seed dissolved into his palm.
Then the interface spoke again:
DESTINY INITIATED:
Debt Walker
Healer of scars not his own. Restorer of the wounded. Each healing leaves a mark. Each life saved is a payment owed.
A glowing brand appeared faintly on his arm. His wound stopped bleeding.
But his stomach tightened.
"Debt?"
Yes.
Every time you heal, you take their pain. And someone—somewhere—must pay.
He froze breath catching.
Then he remembered his sister
Bringing his old phone out of his pocket, 6% left.
Anxiously he pressed speed dial. One ring. Two.
Then—her voice.
"Hello? Hello? Hello—who is this?"
He almost cried. "Linda. It's me."
"Chuka?"
"Yeah. Yeah, it's me."
She whispered, "Where are you? Am in the Campus in my lodge.They're outside, everywhere.""Then she started sobbing, the killed many of my friends, am afraid."
He swallowed hard.
"I'll come get you."
"You can't!, they're—"
The call dropped.
Battery dead.
He sat in the dust and darkness, listening to the world scream, the people scrambling. Chaos reigning. A strange wind pushed through the cracks of the supermarket. Somewhere outside, something screamed—not human. Not close but Not far.And he knew he had to move but not blind. He needed information and intelligence.
The blood hadn't even dried on his hands when instinct made him search her body. Not out of cruelty — just survival
Her skull was torn behind where he'd stabbed her. Her thigh was twitching like something beneath her skin still wanted to fight. He pushed past the blood and her twisted waistline, hand trembling as it slid toward her back pocket.
He gagged.A sharp surge of nausea punched through him like a betrayal.
She used to smile.She used to smile when she teased him.
Now her mouth was frozen open, not in a scream — just a horrible, open confusion.Like she never understood why.
His fingers touched plastic — cracked. Warm. A phone.
He yanked it out, wiping bile from his lips with the back of his wrist.
Daisy.
It was her phone.The Home screen was ruined, half-flickering with static.A selfie of two girls from campus — Linda and Daisy the girl who now lay dead by his hand.He shuddered almost dropping it.
She had been running with the phone.She had been trying to call someone.
Then he saw it.A gash — no, a tattoo carved on her skin shaped like the skeleton of a fish, carved deep into her back(Ụkpụ Azụ).Not an accidental wound.His grandmother used to whisper about it during harmattan nights.
"Ụkpụ azụ bụ akara mmụọ — onye e ji mee omenala n'ike."
"The fishbone cut is the spirit's mark — made for those forced into ritual."He stumbled back. She hadn't just changed.She had been forcefully taken.