The abandoned practice field at dusk was a cathedral of failure. The fading light bled orange across the cracked asphalt, and the air smelled of dry grass and David's own simmering frustration.
Jonathan stood before him, a silhouette of stark efficiency. "Faith Manipulation starts with reinforcement," he said, his voice devoid of pep talk. "It's not about power out. It's about integrity within. You feel the 'leak'—the subtle energy that comes from your core convictions, your certainties. You don't push it out. You pull it in. Coax it. Wrap it around your bones, your tendons. Make yourself a vessel that doesn't break when the pressure comes."
David closed his eyes, trying to find the "green," the incandescent heat that had saved him. He searched the dark behind his eyelids. He found… static. Flickers, like afterimages of lightning, that dissolved when he tried to grasp them. He gritted his teeth, muscles tensing, forcing his will into the emptiness.
"David," Praise's voice was a soft contrast to Jonathan's drill-sergeant tone. She knelt nearby, her amber eyes watching him with that unnerving empathy. "You're trying to command it. It's not a servant. It's… a friend. You have to invite it. Create a space for it."
A friend. The concept was absurd. The green light hadn't felt like a friend; it felt like a natural disaster erupting from his soul. The indigo punch had felt like a snarling, cornered animal.
An hour later, sweat plastered David's shirt to his back. His knuckles were raw and bleeding from where he'd tried—and failed—to reinforce his fist before driving it into the unforgiving trunk of a neem tree. Not even a faint shimmer had answered his call.
The dam broke.
"Enough!" David kicked at a clump of dry earth, sending dust devils spinning into the twilight. "I thought this would be like… I don't know, learning a Rasengan or a Kamehameha! Something with a cool name and a visual effect! Or at least a damn Black Flash! Something I could see! Not… not this internal yoga where I can't even feel the damn chakra!" His voice echoed across the empty field, a raw sound of anger and humiliation.
Jonathan didn't flinch. He simply bent down, picked up a ordinary river stone the size of his palm. "This isn't an anime, Osayi." His voice was flat, final. "This is your life. The next Phobia that comes for you won't care that you wanted a flashy special move."
He held the stone in his open palm. Then, with a subtle inhalation, a faint, steady shimmer of cobalt-blue light enveloped his hand, seeping into the stone itself. It wasn't a blast; it was an infusion. For a second, the rock glowed with internal, structured power.
Jonathan flicked his wrist.
The stone shot across the field like a cannonball, not with explosive force, but with impossible, dense velocity. It shattered the top row of rusted bleachers fifty meters away with a deafening CRACK, sending splinters of old wood raining down.
The blue light around Jonathan's hand faded. He looked at David, not with pride, but with grim demonstration. "That's reinforcement. Not a technique. A foundation. Without it, you're just a guy with good eyes and a death wish."
Before David could form a retort, Jonathan's phone buzzed. He answered, his face hardening into granite as he listened. "Understood. On our way." He snapped the phone shut. "Manifestation. Central hospital. Possible C Class ." He nodded at Praise, who was already on her feet, her gentle demeanor replaced by focused readiness.
To David, Jonathan said, "Keep trying. Breathe. Don't force. Listen." It was less encouragement, more a field order.
Then they were gone, moving with that unnerving, predatorial speed, leaving David alone in the vast, darkening field with his bleeding knuckles, his hollow frustration, and the echoing crack of shattered wood.
About an hour later
Room 158, Akanu ibiam Hall 4 Male Hostel Unit 2, was a pressure cooker of teenage boy smells—deep heat, instant noodles, and ambition. Eight beds, eight small worlds crammed together. David's was the bottom bunk by the door, the least desirable spot, perpetually drafty and noisy. He sat on its edge, the thin mattress sagging, trying to ignore the cacophony of a FIFA game and an argument about lecture notes.
His phone rang. An international number. Dad.
The noise of the room faded into a distant buzz. He swiped answer, his throat tight. "Hello, Sir."
"David." His father's voice was clear, layered with the faint echo of a transatlantic line and unspoken worry. "How are you? Your mother said you've been quiet. Not calling."
"I've been… busy. With school." The lie tasted like dust.
"I see." A pause, heavy with the click of a keyboard. "I got an alert from the student portal. Your last Structural Mechanics continuous assessment… David, what is this 42%?"
The temperature in the cramped room seemed to drop. "It was… difficult, Sir. The lecturer—"
"We are not paying this school fee for you to draw cartoons!" The shift was instant, the concern burned away by the heat of disappointment. "Engineering is your future. This 'art'… it is a hobby, David. Not a life. Do you think life is a Nollywood film? That talent alone will put food on the table? Look at me. I am here in North Carolina, working this job, so you can have a real chance. A degree that means something."
Each word was a stone, meticulously placed on David's chest. He could see his father in his mind's eye, tired after a long shift, the glow of the computer screen reflecting in his glasses, scrolling through the numbers that quantified his son's failure.
"I'm trying, Sir," David mumbled, the words hollow even to his own ears. He was trying to see monsters. Trying to summon faith. Trying not to die. None of which he could say.
The call ended with the usual, strained formalities. "Take care of yourself. We love you." "I love you too ..... Sir."
Silence. The FIFA celebration from the other side of the room was a grotesque, cheerful mockery. David sat in the crushing vise of two worlds: he was failing the future his parents had sacrificed everything to build, and he was a floundering rookie in a secret war where failure meant becoming ash on the wind.
He couldn't stay in the room. The walls were breathing down his neck. He grabbed his bag and walked, no destination in mind, his feet carrying him on a well-worn path of dread.
He ended up back in the courtyard behind the engineering block.
It was just a courtyard now. The night was calm, a few moths dancing around a functioning security light. But for David, it was a haunted gallery. Here was the spot where菲菲 had stood. There, the patch of pavement where Chidi had his final breath . Over by that wall, Marcus had fallen .
He sat down roughly on the exact spot where he'd unleashed the green line. The Communion . The cool concrete held no answers.
The emotions came not as a wave, but as a slow, rising boil. Anger, hot and corrosive. At the Phobias for existing. At the Covenant for showing him this hell. At his father for his loving, suffocating expectations. At himself for being too weak to master the faith he supposedly had, and too cowardly to abandon the degree he hated.
Why can't I do it NOW?! The thought wasn't a prayer; it was a scream into the empty architecture of his soul. Where was the green light? Where was the easy power? Why give me a taste just to leave me with nothing but this… this hollow defiance?
He wasn't meditating. He wasn't listening for a friend. He was confronting. Raking his raw will over the coals of his frustration. His conviction in that moment wasn't "God, help me." It was "This is bullshit, and I refuse to be its victim." It was a gritty, unpretty certainty, born not from faith in a higher power, but from sheer, stubborn rage at the injustice of his own life. It filled the hollow spaces, dark and potent.
The walk back to his hostel was different. The anger had burned down to a strange, clear-headed ember. He felt drained, but sharp. The night air was cool on his skin.
A streetlight ahead of him flickered, once, twice, and died with a soft pop.
David stopped. The familiar dread pooled in his stomach, but it was colder this time. Sharper. This wasn't the ambient wrongness of a feeding Phobia. This was a presence. Patient. Focused. Like the hush before the needle drops.
He turned slowly.
From the deep, liquid shadow cast by the dead lamp, something unfolded. It didn't coalesce from chaos; it stepped forth, its form resolving with terrible elegance. It was humanoid, but wrought from layered, shifting darkness and the cold, jagged gleam of mirrored glass. It moved with a predator's economy, no wasted motion. Its face was a smooth, reflective plane, save for two pinpricks of light in its depths—not eyes, but hungers, intelligent and fixed solely on him.
This wasn't a creature of ambient fear. This was a hunter. And it had been waiting. Studying the anomaly. Tracking the green-light signature that had briefly flared and then gone dark.
It raised a hand—a shape of solidified night—and the shadows at David's feet writhed, thickening into grasping, tar-like strands that snaked around his ankles.
David's heart hammered against his ribs. No Jonathan. No Praise. No shimmering green salvation. Just him, his ordinary, untrained body, and the sketchbook full of monsters in his bag.
The Phobia's glass-like face cracked, the fissures spreading into something horribly like a smile.
"If you humans killed lower animals and feel no remorse, why do vanguards kill phobias for doing same" . The Phobia said
Training, David realized with icy clarity, was over.