The second night after Kike's burial, Ayetoro slept like a man who has taken a blow to the head—too deeply, and badly.
The market lay quiet. The palace torches burned low. Even the goats seemed subdued, huddled close to their owners' walls instead of testing every loose thatch panel.
In the Ifatedo compound, lamps had been extinguished one by one until only a single flame remained, burning before the inner shrine. Fẹ́mi and the elders had finally collapsed into exhausted sleep, heads lolling against pillars, charms still clutched in their hands.
Ifabola could not sleep.
Every time her eyes drifted shut she saw Kike's wrapped body, the river‑lady's cool gaze, Baba's staff cracking far away under a sky gone strange.
She sat in the courtyard with her back against the mango tree, knees drawn up to her chest. Moonlight pooled silver on the worn earth. Her right palm pulsed under its new pattern—hunger's curve overlaid with river's spiral—like a small, stubborn heart that did not care what the big one in her chest was doing.
The stone bead Baba had given her hung on its cord around her neck.
She held it between finger and thumb, rolling it back and forth.
"You promised not to break," she whispered to it. "That was the agreement."
The bead, being a bead, said nothing.
The air shifted.
Not with wind.
With attention.
The hairs on her arms rose.
"Back again so soon?" a dry voice murmured.
A figure unfolded out of the shadow of the water jar.
Not the tall, robed messenger this time.
Water‑light rippled in the shape of a woman, hair streaming around her like currents, eyes deep as night pools.
The river‑lady.
Ifabola scrambled to her feet, heart leaping.
"So you can come to me," she said. "Even when I'm not by your banks."
"Do not get used to it," the goddess replied. "Walls are not fond of me. But grief has thinned the distance tonight."
She eyed the band of new markings on Ifabola's palm.
"You are in one piece," she observed. "Good. I was not entirely certain the covering would hold when it cooled."
"You let her go," Ifabola burst out. "Kike. You took her."
"I caught her," the goddess corrected. "Your father's line has a saying: 'The bowl that catches spilled water did not make the hand stumble.' You want to throw stones, throw them at the hunger, or at the men who cracked its bowl first."
"If I throw enough stones, they all start to look the same," Ifabola muttered.
The goddess's mouth twitched.
"That is an answer most old ones will not give you," she said. "Careful. You may accidentally become wise."
Ifabola clenched her jaw.
"I don't want to be wise," she said. "I want this to stop. I want Baba home. I want Kike to grow up and steal my food again. I want people to stop dying with letters on them like they're market cloth."
She held up her hand.
"And I want this to mean something other than 'come and eat here.'"
The river‑lady studied the glowing spiral carefully.
"It already does," she said. "That is why I wrapped it. Name‑threads like that do not sit quietly forever. They connect. To stones. To doors. To other skies."
"Other…skies?" Ifabola repeated.
The goddess tilted her head back, gazing past the mango leaves to the stars.
"You think this is the only roof the world wears?" she asked. "This little bowl of air over Ayetoro? There are other bowls stacked above, beside, beneath. Other rivers that are not water. Other grounds that drink different kinds of blood."
Ifabola imagined the sky as a stack of calabashes, each with its own little world inside, jostling on some unseen shelf.
Her stomach flipped.
"You mean…other worlds?" she whispered. "Like places where Sango doesn't throw lightning and people don't know our songs?"
"Some have their own thunder gods," the goddess said. "Some have only cold rules with no faces. Some are broken already. Some are young and stupid. One"—her voice dropped, tasting something sour—"is where this particular hunger first learned to spell itself."
Ifabola's throat went dry.
"You've seen it," she said.
"I am river," the goddess replied. "I flow where cracks leak. The first bargain that birthed these bloody letters was not made in this world. It was made under another sky, where people chew on air called qì and polish their souls like bronze mirrors. They stacked cities on mountains and built swords that drank sunlight. Their kings wanted to live as long as their own legends. They fed something that promised to make it so."
She snorted softly.
"It lied, of course. That is what hungers do."
Images brushed Ifabola's mind:
– Men and women in long robes flying on swords through purple clouds.
– Giant trees with leaves that glowed faintly, drinking some invisible power from the air.
– Tall towers carved with spirals of writing that did not look like any script she knew.
– A great, dark maw in the sky, ringed with writhing letters.
She staggered.
"Too much," she gasped.
The goddess made a small gesture.
The flood of images cut off.
"Breathe," she said. "Anchor."
Ifabola obeyed out of habit: breath in, breath out, feel the ground under her feet. Baba's exercises worked even when her thoughts wanted to fly apart.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked when her heart steadied. "What does another sky's foolishness have to do with us? With me?"
The river‑lady's gaze sharpened.
"Because the crack runs both ways," she said. "What they fed there overflowed. It seeped into the gaps between worlds, looking for more tables. Your altar in Òkìtì was one of its first foreign plates. Your father almost invited it fully back in his youth. The king finished the work by dying with its name in his blood. And you…" Her eyes dropped to Ifabola's palm. "…you have become a knot where many of its threads tangle."
Ifabola swallowed.
"I didn't ask to be a knot," she muttered.
"Few knots do," the goddess said dryly. "They happen when enough ropes pull in the same place."
She paced a slow circle around Ifabola, bare wet feet leaving no mark on the dusty courtyard.
"You carry a shard of its name," she went on. "You carry my counter‑spiral over it. You have walked the halfway river and returned with your mind mostly intact. You are a child of a great priest and a hill‑woman whose people talk to stones. If anyone in this little bowl of sky can step across to where the root of this hunger writhes, it is you."
Ice slid down Ifabola's spine.
"Across," she echoed. "You mean…leave. Not just in dreams."
"Yes," the goddess said.
"Like…forever?"
"For a while," the goddess replied. "Time walks differently under other roofs. You might go and live a hundred harvests and come back to find only a season has turned here. Or the other way round. The threads are tangled. I will not lie and tell you I know exactly."
Ifabola's knees nearly buckled.
"You're asking me to disappear," she whispered. "To go to some strange place where people fly on swords and feed the sky and think my gods are fairy tales. To fight a thing that eats worlds when I couldn't even keep my own sister from—"
Her voice broke.
The goddess's expression softened, just a fraction.
"I am telling you the root is not here," she said. "You can hack at the branches in Ayetoro until your hands bleed; they will keep sprouting. Your father cracking that altar in Òkìtì loosened one tooth. Good. But the jaw lives elsewhere. If you want to kill it—or at least sew its mouth shut—you will have to climb into its throat."
Ifabola stared at her hand.
Her mark pulsed faintly, answering some distant beat she could not yet hear.
"How?" she asked hoarsely. "I can't even cross the halfway river without you catching me by the scruff. I'd die."
"You would," the goddess agreed. "Your body would, at least. It was not built for that sky. But bodies are sacks; they split easily and new ones are sewn. Your name is what must survive the crossing."
"If you tell my mother the answer to this is for me to die, she will curse every river from here to the sea," Ifabola said.
"She already curses me," the goddess said. "I can wear a few more words."
She paused.
"I am not asking you to throw yourself into the dark with empty hands," she added. "Others have tried to fight this thing there. They crafted tools—not swords or spears, but…how do I put this in a tongue that still uses goats to count…"
She frowned, searching.
"Imagine," she said slowly, "a divination board carved not in wood but in the air itself. A set of laws that weighs names, debts, strengths, chances. A…system…that can whisper in your ear, 'If you walk this path, this will likely happen. If you feed this river, your own will grow.' The scholars of that world built such a script ages ago to track their own foolishness. They called it the Script of Ten Thousand Names."
Ifabola blinked.
"Like Ifa's signs?" she asked. "Patterns that tell stories about what could come?"
"Yes," the goddess said. "Only theirs sits not in shells but in the bones of their sky. When the hunger grew fat, it learned to twist that script, to hide its own costs. But some of the old code still runs. I caught a piece long ago, when their rivers bled into mine after one of their wars."
She opened her palm.
Lines of light appeared above it, thin as spider silk, weaving themselves into tiny squares, then dissolving.
"It is not enough to defeat him," she said. "But it is enough to give one stubborn child a ledger the hunger cannot easily edit. A…System, if you like that word better."
Ifabola's heart thudded.
"A system," she repeated slowly. "Like…a voice? A…guide?"
"A whisper," the goddess said. "A set of rules bound to your own name. It would track how you grow under that other sky. What powers you learn. What debts you incur. Where the hunger's threads touch your path. It will not make choices for you. But it will speak plainly when others lie."
Images flickered in Ifabola's mind, unbidden:
—A small, floating panel of light only she could see, lines of script translating themselves into her language.
—A bar slowly filling as she practiced a new charm.
—A quiet chime when she stepped onto a path that brought her closer to one of the hunger's anchors.
She swallowed.
"What's the catch?" she asked.
The goddess almost smiled.
"You are learning," she said. "Good."
She closed her hand; the light‑threads vanished.
"The catch is this," she said. "Once the Script binds to you, you are no longer only of this world. You will be a…foreign object…under that other sky. The laws there will try to reject you. The hunger will recognize you as both threat and meal. You will be alone in a place where even children wield more raw force than your strongest warriors."
"Alone," Ifabola echoed, stomach twisting.
"No father to pull you back from bad bargains," the goddess said. "No Dupe to joke the fear away. No Fẹ́mi to drag you from the river at midnight. Only a quiet ledger in your head and whatever allies you can scrape together among strangers."
She stepped closer.
"But you will also have something no one there does," she murmured. "A System that still remembers the old laws. A name that holds two skies. And the very thing that wants to eat you woven into your palm. That, wielded well, is sharp enough to cut even gods."
Ifabola's head spun.
Part of her wanted to wrap her arms around the mango tree and refuse.
Let someone else climb into throats and chew on laws. She was tired. She wanted to sleep without hearing drums or feeling doors press against the inside of her skull.
Another part—a small, furious knot that had been tightening since the first time she saw the bloody name on the king's chest—leaned forward.
"How would I even get there?" she asked quietly. "What does 'crossing' look like?"
The goddess's expression turned serious.
"You have already half‑done it," she said. "Each time you walked the halfway river, you loosened your name's roots from this soil. The next step is…deeper. You would lie down in the shrine with the old divination board, with shells and chalk drawing your path. I would flood that circle, briefly. Your brother and the others would chant the old travel songs. You would let go of your body at the exact moment I open a crack between bowls."
"If we miss the moment?" Ifabola asked.
"You either drown or wake up coughing in your own vomit," the goddess said bluntly. "Probably with some of your mind still stuck here. I do not recommend it."
Comforting.
"And my body?" Ifabola pressed. "What would they bury?"
"A shell," the goddess said. "Empty. It will look like death. Feel like death. To everyone but me."
"If Baba comes back and finds me buried by the river beside Kike, he'll…" She trailed off, unable to picture it.
"He will rage at me," the goddess said. "Then perhaps understand. In time. If you are stubborn enough to survive and send word."
"Send…word? Between skies?" Ifabola asked.
The goddess shrugged, water‑hair rippling.
"Where names cross, messages do," she said. "Your new System will touch the old Script still lingering here. Throw enough pebbles into one bowl, and the ripples will splash the others. It will not be easy. But you are not the first to try. Only the first I have any hope for."
Silence fell.
The night watched.
From the palace, faintly, came the echo of a drum. Not the hollow, hungry beat. A human one—some late guard changing shifts, some sleepless elder calling on ancestors.
In the compound, someone coughed and turned over on a mat.
Ifabola looked at her palm.
At the bead around her neck.
At the courtyard where Kike had once played at drawing cowries in the dust.
"You said," she began slowly, "that bodies are sacks. That names are what matter."
"Yes," the goddess said.
"If I go," Ifabola said, "and I fail…what happens to my name?"
The river‑lady's gaze did not waver.
"Then it is eaten," she said softly. "The same as any who die too close to that thing. It will wear your courage like a tooth."
Ifabola flinched.
"And if I stay," she whispered, "what happens to everyone here?"
The goddess did not answer.
She didn't have to.
Ifabola had seen the graves grow.
Had felt the old altar's hum, the way EJEH's threads tugged at children, widows, angry men in dark huts.
She closed her eyes.
Baba's voice rose in her memory.
Protecting the living comes before pleasing the dead.
What about protecting those who were not yet dead, but standing very close to the edge?
A strange calm settled over her.
Maybe it was shock.
Maybe it was that small, furious knot finally choosing a direction.
"Can I say goodbye?" she asked.
The goddess's eyes flicked toward the sleeping rooms.
"Words to carry with you, or words to leave in their ears?" she asked.
"Both," Ifabola said.
"Choose," the goddess replied. "There is no time for too many speeches. Threads are moving. Your father cracked one anchor today. The hunger will not sit still and let us tie down another."
Ifabola chewed her lip.
Images flashed through her mind:
—Her mother's face, hollowed by losing one child already.
—Fẹ́mi's tired eyes, full of too much responsibility.
—Baba's broad back walking away at dawn.
If she told them, they would stop her.
If she snuck away, they would think her dead.
Neither choice felt clean.
"Will you look after them?" she whispered. "If I go?"
"As much as a river can guard those who never learned to swim," the goddess said. "I will not abandon them. Or you. My reach is wider than this little compound."
It was not a promise of safety.
But it was something.
Ifabola took a slow breath.
She thought of Kike's laugh.
Of Dupe's rough hand on her head.
Of Mama Ireti slamming her staff down and saying, Let me hold this, just once.
She was tired of others stepping into mouths for her.
"Fine," she said, her voice surprisingly steady. "I'll go."
The goddess rose to her full height.
Water‑light cascaded around her, brightening the courtyard.
"Understand," she said. "This is not hero‑play. There will be no drums for you under that sky. Many will look at you and see only a small foreigner with a strange accent and weaker bones. They will not know what your name holds. You will have to make them see. Or not. Saving worlds is not always as dramatic as the stories say."
"I don't care about stories," Ifabola said. "I care about not watching more graves grow."
"Good," the goddess replied. "Stories are for those who survive."
She extended a hand.
"Come, little door," she said. "Let us carve another path."
Ifabola hesitated only a heartbeat.
Then she took the goddess's hand.
Cold rushed up her arm, through her chest, into her head.
The world flipped.
She found herself lying on the cool floor of the inner shrine.
Lamps burned low in the corners, casting long shadows over the opon‑Ifa board and its carved patterns. Cowries sat in their little bag. Chalk sticks lay neatly on a shelf. For once, no one else occupied the space.
"Time bends when gods walk," the goddess's voice murmured. "We have a little pocket before the dawn. Make use of it."
Ifabola's body felt…strange.
Heavy and light at once.
Her palm ached.
Her heart pounded not only in her chest but in the bead at her neck and somewhere just above her head, as if another pulse had woken there.
"You will lie here," the river‑lady said. "Your brother will think you wandered to the shrine in your grief and lay down to weep. That is close enough to truth. When they find your body, it will be still. Let it be. Do not struggle back."
"I am not sure I can stop struggling," Ifabola muttered.
"That is why we practice now," the goddess said.
She guided Ifabola to lie flat on the mat before the board.
"Close your eyes," she said. "Breathe. Remember your father's exercises. Feel your spine on the earth. Feel the curve of your name inside your bones."
"What does a name feel like?" Ifabola whispered.
"Like the taste of your own tongue when you bite it," the goddess replied. "Painful if you are careless. Familiar if you are not. Stop asking clever questions and breathe."
Ifabola obeyed.
In.
Out.
The air smelled of old palm oil and chalk.
Her heartbeat slowed.
Somewhere just above her, she sensed the goddess lifting her other hand.
Water whispered.
It was not the full rush of a river, but a thin trickle drawn from nowhere, circling the mat, filling shallow grooves in the floor she had never noticed before.
A ring.
Doorway, some part of her recognized.
"Now," the goddess said softly, voice echoing from very far and very near. "I will lay the Script over you. It will be…uncomfortable."
"Define 'uncomfortable,'" Ifabola muttered.
The answer was a spear of light through her skull.
She gasped.
Lines—so many lines—rushed around her mind, a blizzard of symbols and connections. They were not Yoruba characters or the curling marks of ancient Òkìtì. They were stranger, more angular, but beneath them she sensed meaning:
NAME: IFABOLA – THREADS: RIVER / THUNDER / HUNGER
ANCHORS: 3 BROKEN, 1 MISSING
WORLD: CALABASH‑UNDER‑SIXTH‑SKY
STATUS: FRAGILE. ADAPTABLE. MARKED.
The words flashed and rearranged themselves in a heartbeat, becoming something she could understand.
A small, translucent panel floated behind her eyelids, listing things in lines like a market ledger.
She squeezed her eyes tighter shut.
"What is that?" she gasped.
"Your System," the goddess said. "The Script of Ten Thousand Names, bound to yours. I hold only a splinter of it; the rest lives in the other sky. This shard will keep you from tearing when you pass through."
Information pulsed.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZING…]
Welcome, External Node.
Primary Directive Loaded: COUNTER‑HUNGER / SEAL ANCHORS.
Secondary Directive: SURVIVE.
"'Secondary'?" Ifabola croaked. "Excuse me?"
The goddess snorted.
"You are outranked by balance itself," she said. "Do not pout. Staying alive is part of sealing anchors. The Script is not as reckless as some of its former masters."
Threads of light wrapped around Ifabola's chest, her limbs, her head.
Not binding—measuring.
Baseline Established.
Current Vessel: Ifabola – Age: 5 seasons
Physical Integrity: LOW+
Spirit Density: HIGH–
Name Stability: UNUSUALLY FLEXIBLE.
"Is it…judging me?" Ifabola demanded.
"It is describing you," the goddess said. "Judgment comes later. Usually from people with less information."
The panel shifted.
A new line appeared.
PATH SUGGESTION: "NAME‑WEAVER"
Auxiliary Paths: RIVER‑ROOTED / THUNDER‑TOUCHED.
"Name‑Weaver," Ifabola whispered. The words felt oddly right in her mouth.
"They used to call such cultivators 'script‑saints,'" the goddess said. "They wove laws into their own bones. Many of them went mad. Let us try not to repeat that."
"Cultivators," Ifabola repeated. A word from the goddess's earlier glimpse: the flying sword people, the qi‑drinkers.
"The people of the other sky," the goddess confirmed. "They cultivate—grow—themselves like gardens. Muscles, minds, souls. They stack their strength in layers they call Realms. Your System will translate their nonsense for you. It has a sense of humor. Sometimes."
The panel flickered again.
REALM: NONE (OUTSIDE LOCAL LAW).
ACCESS: LIMITED.
NOTE: ILLEGAL ENTRY DETECTED. COMPENSATING…
"'Illegal entry'?" Ifabola said, alarmed.
"Of course," the goddess said. "You will not be in their records. Think of it as sneaking into a king's compound at night. The walls will not like it."
"If the walls complain, tell them to argue with you," Ifabola muttered.
"Do not worry," the goddess said. "The Script has…friends. Old subroutines. It will smooth some edges."
She hesitated.
"There is one more thing," she added. "Under that sky, your body will not be this one. It will be…borrowed."
Ifabola's breath hitched.
"Whose?" she asked.
"A child," the goddess said. "One whose own name was about to be erased by sickness. She lay near one of the hunger's distant anchors, abandoned in a hut that smelled of herbs and regret. Her thread was already slipping into my currents when I caught it; her world does not know my face, but water is water. I can divert some flows."
"You're…putting me in her?" Ifabola whispered.
"I am sewing your name where hers would have frayed," the goddess said. "It is not theft. She was leaving. You will give her body a second story instead of none. But you will carry some of her…context. Her language. Her family's scent. Her enemies."
"If she has enemies as big as ours, I'm going back," Ifabola said weakly.
The goddess actually laughed.
"Her troubles are…smaller," she said. "For now. A sect that values power over kindness. A father who traded too much for pills. Local mess. You will land in the shallow end of their madness. Deep enough to drown you, but not the ocean yet."
Comforting.
The panel flashed one more time.
TARGET WORLD: "HEAVENLY NINE‑FOLD REALM"
ENTRY COORDINATES: LOWER EASTERN CONTINENT / MINOR SPIRIT‑ROOT VILLAGE
INHERITED VESSEL: FEMALE / AGE: 5 / ROOT: WEAK (WATER‑TINTED)
MERGE STATUS: PENDING…
"The name of their world is ridiculous," the goddess muttered. "Nine‑fold. As if counting makes it grander."
Ifabola barely heard.
Fear and a wild, dizzy excitement warred in her chest.
A cultivation world.
She did not know those words, not the way a scholar would. But the images attached to them—flying swords, glowing trees, people punching mountains—dazzled and terrified her.
"And Baba?" she whispered. "How will he know?"
The goddess's voice softened.
"When the crack in his staff deepens," she said, "he will feel another tug. A…foreign echo. If he listens well, he will hear your new sky in his bones. And if you learn to push ripples back along the Script, he will dream of your madness. That is the best I can promise."
Ifabola nodded, throat tight.
"Will…will I see you there?" she asked.
"Not in my current dress," the goddess said, flicking a ripple at the hem of her water‑robe. "Their rivers wear different masks. But I have cousins. Old currents. We gossip. One of them owes me three favors. I will collect."
The panel flared brighter.
MERGE STATUS: READY.
WARNING: PROCESS IRREVERSIBLE.
CONFIRM? [YES / NO]
Ifabola stared at the glowing options.
Her hand shook.
If I press "no"… she thought. I stay. I grow. I maybe become a priestess like Baba. I bury more people. I die here eventually with my own grandchildren crying over me, if I'm lucky. And the thing that eats names keeps chewing.
If I press "yes"…I vanish. I may never see my mother's face again except in dreams. I may die screaming in a place that does not know how to pronounce me. But I will at least have swung at the throat, not just the teeth.
She lifted her marked hand.
Her finger trembled.
"Will it hurt?" she whispered.
"Yes," the goddess said.
Ifabola almost laughed.
"At least you're honest," she said.
She took a breath that felt like the first step into deep water.
"Then…yes," she said.
She tapped the glowing word.
Everything broke.
Pain was not the word.
Pain was too small.
It was as if every letter in her name had been yanked apart and thrown into the air like a handful of cowries. Each piece spun, flashing a different memory—Kike's gap‑toothed grin, Dupe's shout, Baba's chant, Fẹ́mi's worried frown, the feel of river mud, the taste of roasted plantain, the crack of thunder over a clear sky.
Some of the shells tried to fall back into their old places.
Others were caught by invisible fingers, tugged sideways.
Voices roared around her.
The hunger's deep, furious bellow.
The river‑lady's clear, cutting command.
Strange, new tones—high and ringing, like metal, barking syllables she half‑understood: "Qi circulation disrupted… foreign will detected…"
The System's calm whisper threaded through the chaos.
TRANSLOCATION IN PROGRESS…
ANCHORING NAME…
SEEDING ROOT‑SCRIPT…
ERROR: WORLD‑LAW REJECTION. COMPENSATING…
Ifabola felt herself squeezed.
Not physically.
She had no limbs now.
She was thought.
She was taste.
She was the memory of herself curling tight as something vast tried to push her out, like a body rejecting a splinter.
You do not belong, a cold, impersonal presence murmured. Not the hunger. Something else. The law of the other sky. Unauthorized soul. Return to origin or be erased.
"Return where?" she wanted to scream. "My origin is cracking!"
The System flared.
OVERRIDE REQUEST: BALANCE SUBROUTINE – CODE: RIVER‑PATH.
STATUS: PARTIALLY GRANTED.
NEW FLAG: EXTERNAL OBSERVER. LIMITED EXEMPTION FROM LOCAL LAW.
The squeezing lessened.
Barely.
The world rushed.
She fell.
Not down.
Sideways.
Through color and cold and fire and nothing.
At the very edge of perception, she heard one last, faint, furious hiss from the hunger:
I will find you, little door.
Then—
Impact.
Not of body on ground.
Of self on self.
She slammed into a waiting shape—a hollow that matched her age and size only roughly, its edges strange. For a heartbeat, she felt another presence there, weak and flickering.
A small, tired voice whispered, Is it my turn to live now?
Then it faded, leaving behind only a trace of sadness and the faintest scent of wild herbs.
MERGE COMPLETE.
NEW VESSEL: OCCUPIED.
ADAPTING SENSES…
Pain came back.
This time it was physical.
Her chest burned as if she'd swallowed coals. Her limbs throbbed. Her head pounded.
She gasped.
Air rushed into lungs that did not know her.
It smelled different.
Cooler.
Sharpened by some tang she could not name—pine? Rock? Strange flowers?
She coughed.
Voices shouted, very close.
"—she's breathing!"
"Impossible. The elder said she had only a thread left—"
"Don't just stand there; fetch Master Yun!"
Ifabola blinked.
Her eyes felt gritty, lids heavy.
Blurry shapes swam above her—human, but wrong. Their clothes were cut differently: long robes with wide sleeves, tied with sashes. Their hair was bound in high knots or long tails. None wore beads like hers.
One face loomed nearer.
A woman, middle‑aged, eyes rimmed red from weeping.
"Xiao‑lan?" the woman whispered. "Can you hear me?"
The name meant nothing to Ifabola.
But her new body's heart squeezed at the sound, responding even where her mind did not.
ALERT: LINGUISTIC DISCREPANCY DETECTED.
INSTALLING BASIC LANGUAGE PACK…
Words blurred, then snapped into focus.
Not as Ifabola's own Yoruba, but as something else—with different sounds, different shapes—but the System slipped meanings behind them like translators at a council.
The woman said, "Little Orchid? Look at Mother."
Ifabola's mouth opened.
A croak came out.
"Mo—…" She coughed. Tried again with the new tongue. "Mother?"
The woman burst into tears.
"She speaks!" she sobbed. "The heavens have pity after all. She speaks!"
Hands grabbed Ifabola—Xiao‑lan—lifting her gently onto something soft. A low bed, she realized, mat stiff beneath thin blankets.
Her new body trembled.
She felt…weaker than she had ever been.
More fragile than the smallest chick.
The System whispered.
WORLD: HEAVENLY NINE‑FOLD REALM
LOCAL REGION: EASTERN VEIN / QINGRIVER PREFECTURE
VILLAGE: SPIRIT‑ROOT
CULTIVATION LEVEL: MORTAL / NO ROOTS AWAKENED
BODY CONDITION: SEVERELY DEPLETED. MERIDIAN DAMAGE (MINOR). SPIRIT‑SEA: CRACKED.
RECOMMENDATION: REST. INTAKE OF PURE QI / LOW‑RANK TONICS. AVOID AGGRAVATING HOST.
Ifabola closed her eyes again, dizzy.
New world.
New mother sobbing over her.
New laws pressing around her like an unfamiliar wrapper.
Inside, the faint taste of iron that meant hunger.
Far above, under a different bowl of sky, the Script of Ten Thousand Names stretched new threads toward her.
And under it all, her old name curled, stubborn and small, refusing to be erased.
Ifabola—now also Xiao‑lan—took a shallow breath.
"One bowl to another," she whispered inside her mind. "Let's see how many teeth I can break before they notice the crack."
The System answered with a soft chime only she could hear.
NEW QUEST GENERATED: "LEARN TO BREATHE THIS SKY."
REWARD: SURVIVAL (TEMPORARY). ACCESS TO CULTIVATION BASICS.
PENALTY FOR FAILURE: DEATH / NAME‑ERASURE / WORLD DEVOURING ACCELERATED.
Batshit it was, then.
Under a strange roof of stars, in a body that answered to another name, the daughter of Ayetoro's great priest opened her eyes wide.
Cultivation world, meet Ifabola.
She was here to rewrite your stories.