Efe carried the masked wrapped in cloth to the guildhall, where the elders gathered beneath a canopy of smoked raffia. The air reeked of kola nut and fear. Chief Aruosa, his chest scarred with the marks of a hundred battles, demanded to see Odion's work. Efe unwrapped the mask with trembling hands; the elders recoiled as though it were a live cobra.
"Odion has served the Oba for forty rains," said Elder Osahon, voice thin as a reed. "Yet this thing is not his." He pointed to the inner curve where the wood grain twisted against itself, a pattern Odion never used. Efe's stomach lurched; he had sanded that very spot, had felt the unnatural swirl beneath his palm.
Aruosa seized the mask and held it to the sun. Light poured through the eye holes and cast twin shadows on the ground—shadows that writhed like smoke. "Spirits do not lie," the chief growled. "But men do." He ordered the mask burned at the crossroads at midnight, and Odion chained in the palace dungeon until the pyre's ashes cooled.
Efe slipped away before the guards could stop him. He ran through alleys where children scattered like chickens, past compounds where women ground pepper and pretended not to weep. At the river he found Mama Izu, the guild's herbalist, washing blood from her hands. "The warriors bleed from the ears," she said without looking up. "Not from wounds, but from inside the skull."
She gave Efe a pouch of dried bitter leaf and a warning: "The mask drinks fear. Starve it." Then she pressed something small into his palm—an ivory carving no longer than his thumb, a miniature mask with the same twisted grain. "Found in Igbinosun's fist," she whispered. "Someone wants the guild destroyed."
Efe hid the carving in his loincloth and raced back to the workshop. The guards had already come; tools lay scattered, the drying racks smashed. But the sacred knife lay on the workbench, its blade crusted with red earth—the same earth used to seal curses.
Night fell heavy as wet cloth. Efe sat among the ruins and studied the ivory fragment by lamplight. The carving was exquisite, the work of a master rivaling Odion, yet the eyes were wrong—too wide, too hungry. He remembered his master's lessons: A mask is a door. The carver decides what walks through. Someone had opened a door to madness.
A shadow moved beyond the doorway. Efe blew out the lamp and pressed himself against the wall. Footsteps circled the workshop, soft as a leopard's. Then a voice, low and amused: "Little apprentice, you hold death in your hands." The figure vanished before Efe could see a face, leaving only the scent of palm oil and something sharper—fear, or betrayal.
The drums beat faster now, calling the city to the burning. Efe clutched the ivory mask and ran toward the crossroads, where the pyre already crackled with the hunger of flames.