Amara Cole had always believed that silence was a kind of honesty.
It was the hour just before dawn, that fragile stretch of time when Lagos seemed to hold its breath. The generators across the neighbourhood hummed more softly than usual, traffic thinned to a distant whisper, and somewhere far off, a siren rose and fell, its wail fading like a question unanswered. The city did not sleep easily, but it did pause in that brief, unsettled hour. Amara lay awake in her narrow bed, staring at the ceiling fan as it turned with uneven patience, its blades ticking a slow, deliberate rhythm she counted obsessively. Each click marked hours worked, days survived, moments until something would change. She had stopped sleeping properly months ago. Fear was not what kept her awake; it was the sensation that the world was slightly off-kilter, as if a picture frame had been knocked crooked and no one else noticed. She felt it in the early morning walks to work, in the smell of rain mixed with diesel, in crowded buses when strangers brushed past her and her skin pricked without reason.
Tonight, the feeling was stronger. It gnawed at her awareness, threading through her thoughts like a persistent whisper that she could not shake.
Amara shifted onto her side and reached for her phone. The screen glowed faintly, illuminating the small room she rented behind a tailor's shop. Her belongings were minimal and carefully arranged. A single suitcase tucked beneath the bed. A stack of notebooks on the small table by the window. Shoes lined neatly against the wall. Everything in its place, as if order could keep uncertainty from spilling in.
Her birthday blinked back at her on the screen.
Twenty-three.
She exhaled slowly and locked the phone. Birthdays had stopped meaning much after her mother died. They had become quiet markers of time passing rather than celebrations. Still, she allowed herself a small, private smile. She had survived another year. That counted for something.
A breeze stirred outside, carrying the scent of the lagoon. The curtains fluttered then settled. Amara closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep, imagining the distant waves and the faint calls of early fishermen from the riverbank.
The sudden pain was unbearable.
It surged through her wrist, sharp and immediate, like heat pressed directly against bone. She gasped, clutching her left wrist. For a fleeting moment, she imagined it was a bite, a cruel insect hiding in the sheets. Then she saw the light seeping through her fingers, pale and insistent. Her heart hammered as she pulled her hand away.
Etched on her skin was a symbol, a complex sigil of intersecting lines and unfamiliar curves. The light pulsed softly, brightening and dimming as if alive. It was no longer painful, yet the warmth of her skin felt feverish. She stared, frozen, rubbing at it, but the lines did not fade.
"What is this?" she whispered.
Her voice sounded wrong in the room, too loud, too thin. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, unsteady, and crossed to the mirror above the sink. The sigil did not resemble anything she had ever seen. It was deliberate, like a stamp placed with authority. The longer she looked, the heavier the feeling became, an impression of meaning beyond her understanding.
Amara splashed water on her face, laughing weakly. "You're tired," she said aloud. "That's all. You finally lost your mind."
Stories of omens and marks, superstitions whispered by aunties and neighbours, flooded her memory. She had never believed them. She believed in work, in effort, in cause and effect.
Nothing made sense.
The light beneath her skin dimmed slightly. She wrapped her wrist in a cloth and paced the room, thinking of doctors, of logical explanations, of allergies or reactions. Something rational.
Time seemed suspended. The walls themselves felt closer, pressing gently inward. Her room, so familiar, now seemed alien. She went to the small window and looked out. The streets were empty. Streetlights flickered intermittently. In the distance, the city throbbed faintly with the pulse of life that she no longer felt part of.
Then came the knocks. Three deliberate, measured taps on the door.
Amara froze. No one visited at this hour. The tailor's shop would not open for hours. Her neighbours were asleep. The knocks came again, calm and precise, as if the visitor knew she was awake.
Her pulse quickened. She moved to the door and peered through the peephole. The hallway beyond was dim, lit by a flickering bulb. Three figures stood there, faces partially obscured by shadow, bodies still and composed.
One of them lifted his head slightly, as if sensing her gaze. Amara stepped back. The knocks came again, firmer this time.
"Amara Cole," a voice called softly, polite and certain. "We know you're inside."
She glanced down at her wrist. The cloth glowed faintly through the fabric.
The world was no longer hesitating. It was moving. And it was moving toward her.
Her mind raced. Every instinct screamed at her to run, yet the narrow confines of her room left no escape. The air felt heavy, thick with something unspoken. She took a slow, deliberate step back, almost tripping over the edge of her bed. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest as the figures outside did not retreat, did not change their measured stance.
Her fingers dug into the edge of the doorframe. The soft creak of the wood was loud in the silent corridor. Another breath. She needed clarity. Logic. Reason. But the rational answers she always relied on were nowhere to be found.
Amara thought of her mother, the few memories left. The smell of wet laundry, the calm voice reading her bedtime stories, the quiet warnings whispered in her ear about believing too much in the world as it appeared. She had scoffed at superstition, yet now superstition had come alive on her wrist and at her door.
The glow from the mark pulsed again, illuminating her small room in pale light. She could feel it responding to the fear, feeding on the rhythm of her heartbeat. Every instinct screamed that this was bigger than her, bigger than anything she had ever imagined.
The three figures outside shifted slightly, but remained composed. The tallest one, whose eyes glinted darkly in the dim hallway, stepped forward just a fraction. "Please," he said, voice low and even. "We only want to talk. You need to come with us."
Amara's chest tightened. "I don't know you," she whispered, her voice shaky.
"No," he agreed, almost sympathetically. "But we know you. And time is no longer your ally."
She glanced at her wrist, the sigil glowing as though echoing the urgency in his words. She felt the room tilt slightly, the air tense with something unnameable. The city beyond the door seemed a distant memory, irrelevant now.
A decision pressed on her, and yet the choice felt like none at all. If she stayed, she risked unknown consequences. If she moved, she risked stepping into a world she did not understand. Her mind screamed at her to choose, even as her body rooted itself to the spot.
A faint shiver ran through her spine. Something whispered in the edges of her awareness, a sense of inevitability. She was no longer merely a resident of Lagos, a girl who counted hours and walked home alone at night. She was at a threshold, a point where her life would fracture into before and after.
The silence was broken again, this time by her own trembling breath.
Slowly, almost unwillingly, Amara reached toward the door. Her fingers closed around the handle. The faint glow from her wrist illuminated the hallway, casting long shadows that stretched toward her as if reaching out.
With a final exhale, she turned the handle.
The hallway light flickered violently. The three figures stood exactly where she had seen them. Up close, they looked almost ordinary. Too ordinary, perhaps. Their composure unnerved her. One stepped forward. Tall, dark-eyed, hair cropped close. "Thank you," he said softly. "My name is Elias."
Amara did not invite them in, yet they entered anyway. The door closed behind them with a soft click that sounded final.
And in that moment, the room itself seemed to hold its breath once more, the city outside fading to insignificance.
The world had begun moving, and she was already part of its motion.