The storm that night was not ordinary.
It felt summoned.
Thunder cracked over Lagos like the sky was being torn open. Rain lashed against rooftops, poured through open gutters, rattled the loose zinc sheets of the Adeniyi home. Inside, their mother hovered over the twins, humming a shaky lullaby she barely remembered. Something in the air felt wrong. Heavy. Watching.
She held Kafé close to her chest. His twin, tiny and quiet, slept in his crib—Taye, only four months old, his breathing soft and steady.
When the power cut, darkness swallowed the room.
Then came the footsteps.
Slow. Deliberate. Waterproof boots on wet earth. The door didn't break—it opened. As if the home itself surrendered.
Hooded figures stepped into the room, their presence bending the darkness around them. They moved with the calm certainty of people who had done this before. They passed valuables without a glance. Passed the mother's shaking form. Passed the photos on the wall showing happier days.
They went straight to the crib.
The leader leaned in, his shadow falling over Taye like an eclipse.
"Found him."
The mother's voice cracked. "No! No—please!"
Hands seized her shoulders, forcing her to the ground. She fought, screamed, clawed, begged—her voice drowned by thunder.
The leader whispered something that did not belong to this world. A chant. A claim.
"The Zenith marked this one. The second flame. The child of convergence. He is ours."
He lifted Taye.
The baby didn't scream.
He stared.
Wide, focused, unafraid—almost as if something ancient and instinctive recognized the figures
who carried him away.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the room one last time before the hooded order vanished into the storm with the child destined for darkness.
The home fell silent.
Except for Kafé's cry—sharp, frantic, echoing the part of him that had just been torn away.
---
The Order's hidden compound lay deep inside wetlands beyond the edges of Lagos—half swamp, half ruins, all secrets. Heavy stone pillars jutted from the ground like broken teeth. Strange symbols burned faintly along the walls whenever the moon rose.
The elders called the place The Hollow Nest.
Taye was brought there wrapped in a black cloth, his eyes shining strangely in the dim torchlight.
"Place him in the chamber," an elder murmured.
They rested the infant on a stone basin carved with spirals. Cold water trickled beneath it, flowing from an underground spring. The elders circled him, chanting in a voice that did not rise or fall—it pressed, heavy and relentless.
Taye twitched.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
The chanting grew louder, vibrating through the stone, through the walls, through the air itself.
Visions exploded behind Taye's closed eyes—blinding streaks of lightning, a burning sky, a serpent-shaped constellation coiling around a city he did not know. His small chest rose sharply. His fingers clenched.
"He feels it," one elder whispered. "Even now."
"Does he see the storm?" another asked.
"No," the leader murmured. "He is the storm."
The ritual continued for hours.
Taye didn't cry.
He absorbed.
He watched the movements of torchlight behind his eyelids.
He felt the cold of the stone beneath him.
He heard their voices, their fear, their awe.
And although he could not understand words, something inside him awakened—a presence, quiet and burning, like a small ember placed in the center of his being.
When the ritual ended, the elders stepped back.
"He survives," the leader said. "The prophecy holds."
"He must be raised in silence," another whispered.
"Raised away from his twin."
"The twins cannot meet until the dawn has chosen."
They built a small room for him—if it could be called a room. Stone walls, no windows, a narrow slit for air. Guards passed through like ghosts, carrying bowls of warm milk, whispering about the child who barely cried.
As Taye grew through those first months, the rituals continued.
Cold water poured over his tiny body.
Incense thick enough to choke a grown man.
Symbols drawn across his skin that faded and reappeared like breathing ink.
Chants that made the walls tremble.
Still—no tears.
Only silence.
Only those eyes that glowed faintly when the moonlight brushed them.
But the Hollow Nest was not a secret forever.
Rumors spread.
Dangerous rumors.
A branch of the Order was hiding something—
A relic.
A power.
Something alive.
Criminals whispered.
Traffickers listened.
Mercenaries speculated.
And the worst of them all—
General Koroba—
Acted.
---
Koroba's assault arrived like a second storm.
Explosions ripped open the outer walls of the compound. Fire consumed the elders' archives. Armed men screamed commands as they tore through the chambers. The Order fought back with their limited magic—shadows twisting, symbols glowing—but they were outmatched.
Koroba entered himself, boots crunching over broken stone.
"Find it!"
"Find the relic!"
His men smashed ancient crates, ripped open sealed rooms, dragged elders across the floor for questioning.
One of them shouted from beneath rubble:
"Sir! Something's here!"
Koroba approached the overturned stone slab.
Inside—a crate. Heavy. Protected.
The man pried it open.
The smoke cleared.
A child lay inside.
Wide-eyed. Silent. Watching him.
Koroba's face hardened, then shifted into something darker.
"This is the relic?"
"A child?"
"No," one soldier muttered uneasily. "Not just a child."
Koroba lifted Taye.
The baby met his gaze without fear.
Something in the air tightened—an invisible thread binding them for the first time.
Koroba smirked.
"If this boy is what they were protecting… he will be shaped in my image."
He turned to his men.
"Take him. He belongs to me now."
And with that cruel, quiet command, Taye Adeniyi's second life began—
One of discipline, brutality, and training that carved him into something sharp enough to cut the world.
But deep inside him, beneath every order, punishment, and hardened lesson, one thing survived:
The ember.
The presence.
The pull.
The echo of someone missing—
Someone he could not name.
Someone with the same blood.
Kafé.