The sun over Lagos was too bright. It was a searing, crystalline yellow that didn't burn the skin so much as it stung the eyes. David stood on the cracked pavement of Herbert Macaulay Way, watching a yellow danfo bus screech to a halt. The conductor leaned out, screaming "Yaba! Yaba-Oyingbo!" with a mechanical rhythmic precision that made David's skin crawl.
Five minutes ago—or five years ago, depending on which soul-clock he followed—David had been a survivor in the Grey Plains of the Void, eating essence-slugs and sleeping with one eye open. Now, he was back in the "real world."
Except it wasn't real.
[Tutorial: The Illusion of Home]
[Status: Active]
[Condition: Complete 5 Ancestral Blessing Rituals to break the Cradle.]
"David? O boy, you okay? You've been standing there staring at that gutter like you saw a ghost."
David turned. It was Tunde. His best friend since secondary school. Tunde looked exactly as he had the day David "vanished"—wearing a faded Arsenal jersey, smelling of cheap cologne and fried plantain.
Badum. Badum. Badum.
David's heart beat with a steady, hollow thud. This was the Neutral Pulse. It meant the entity in front of him wasn't an immediate threat, but it wasn't "alive" either.
"I'm fine, Tunde," David said, his voice raspy. He reached out to pat Tunde's shoulder. His hand passed through the fabric, but the moment his palm touched the skin, he felt a faint vibration—like a low-voltage hum.
Tunde didn't flinch. He just grinned, a smile that was three millimeters too wide to be human. "Standard, man. Let's go hit the buka. I'm starving."
David stepped back. "I can't. I have an appointment."
"Appointment? But we just got here!" Tunde's smile didn't fade. It stayed fixed, frozen. "Let's go hit the buka, David. The jollof is fresh. Let's go hit the buka."
Thump.
A heavy, singular beat echoed in David's chest. The Thump of Dread.
He looked around. It wasn't just Tunde. The woman selling roasted corn across the street had stopped shucking. The street hawker with the crate of gala on his head had stopped walking. Every single "Construct" in a fifty-yard radius had turned their heads toward David. Their eyes were vacant, flickering with that same mechanical blue light he'd seen in his sister's eyes.
"The candidate is deviating," the corn seller whispered.
"The candidate is resisting the comfort of the Cradle," the hawker added.
David didn't wait. He bolted.
As he ran, his internal radar began to shift. The heavy dread remained a dull roar in the background, but suddenly, a new sensation pierced through the fear.
Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter.
It was light. It was airy. It felt like the sound of rain on a tin roof.
[The Rhythm of Fortune detected.]
[Direction: 300 Meters North-East.]
[Target: Fragment of the First Pulse.]
"The cheat," David hissed, dodging a motorcycle that didn't have a driver. The bike was just moving on its own, a prop in this grand simulation. "It's actually working."
He followed the beat. It led him away from the main road and toward the National Museum on Awolowo Road. In the "real" world, this place was a quiet relic of history. In the Cradle, it was a fortress.
As he approached the iron gates, the air grew thick. The sky above the museum didn't look like a sky; it looked like a low-resolution texture, pixels blurring into a muddy grey.
Standing at the gate was a security guard. He was massive, his uniform straining against muscles that looked like they were carved from granite. Above the guard's head, a glowing red tag hovered: [Enforcer - Level 10].
David looked at his own hands. [David - Level 0].
"Access denied, Candidate," the guard said. His voice sounded like two boulders grinding together. "Return to your assigned narrative. Go to the buka. Eat the jollof. Live the lie."
"I'm allergic to fake rice," David muttered.
Pitter-patter! His heart sped up. The Rhythm of Fortune was screaming now. The treasure wasn't just in the building; it was right behind that guard.
The Enforcer stepped forward, his fist glowing with a dull, suppressed energy. "Recalibration required."
He swung. The move was lightning fast—fast enough to decapitate an ordinary man.
But David wasn't ordinary. He had spent five years in the Void, where the monsters didn't give you a tutorial. More importantly, his heart gave a sharp skip exactly 0.2 seconds before the punch landed.
[Beat Sync: Dodge Left.]
David didn't think. He felt the skip in his chest and pivoted. The Enforcer's fist whistled past his ear, the sheer wind pressure cutting a small nick into David's cheek.
Badum-tap! [Beat Sync: Low Sweep.]
David dropped to the ground. He kicked out at the Enforcer's lead leg. It felt like kicking a steel pipe, but he didn't need to break the leg—he just needed to disrupt the "code."
As his foot connected, a small spark of golden light—residual energy from his time in the Void—flashed. The Enforcer glitched. His leg turned into a swarm of blue cubes for a split second, causing him to stumble.
"You... carry the Void Taint?" the Enforcer growled, his face twisting into a mask of digital fury. "The Ancestors did not account for this."
"The Ancestors have been gone a long time," David panted, scrambling toward the museum doors. "They forgot what happens when you leave a heart out in the cold for five years. It hardens."
He burst through the heavy oak doors. Inside, the museum was an endless hallway of mirrors. Every mirror showed a different version of David. David the doctor. David the beggar. David the king.
Pitter-patter! Pitter-patter!
The rhythm led him to the very center of the hall, where a glass plinth stood. Resting on it wasn't a piece of art, but a jagged, obsidian stone. It looked like a piece of a star that had fallen and cooled. It wasn't glowing, but it was vibrating.
David reached for it.
"Stop."
A figure stepped out of a mirror. It was David himself—but wearing a pristine white suit, his eyes glowing with the full power of the Eternity Realm.
"I am the Mirror-Guardian," the duplicate said. "I am the David who stayed. I am the David who accepted the lie. If you take that stone, you kill the peace. You kill the version of your sister that still loves you. You kill the version of Tunde that is still alive."
David looked at the stone. Then he looked at the Guardian.
His heart gave a strange, mournful throb.
"They're already dead," David said quietly. "Or they were never here. A beautiful lie is still a cage, and I'm done living in a box."
He slammed his hand onto the obsidian stone.
The Hall of Mirrors shattered.
[First Ancestral Blessing: The Primal Heart – Integration Initiated.]
[Warning: Mortal Vessel detected. Heart-Refining Ritual will be... painful.]
David fell to his knees as the obsidian stone liquefied, turning into a black, oily smoke that began to pour into his mouth, his nose, and his ears.
Outside the museum, the "Constructs" of Lagos stopped what they were doing. Thousands of faceless shadows began to turn toward the building, their blue eyes turning a vengeful, bloody red.
The hunt was on.