Feyi did not answer Esiri immediately. Instead, she lifted two fingers and three stations adjusted at once.

One analyst restored the Idanre archive to the basin. Another pulled the live intake feed. The third widened the viewing angle so the entire centre could see without crowding the rim.

Kosi stayed near her, arms crossed over his chest.

“Tell me what I need to do,” Esiri said again, keeping her voice low so it would not betray her irritation.

“Watch,” Feyi replied. “And do not touch the basin.”

Esiri folded her arms. “Explain what I’m watching.”

“This is the omi-írìrán,” Feyi said. “It renders OrunNet intake in a form the eye can follow.”

“So it is a wet transcript,” Esiri said.

Kosi made a quiet sound that might have been laughter if Esiri wasn’t determined to hate it.

“It is not wet,” Feyi clarified, looking offended. “The omi-írìrán uses water as a display medium to project data like a screen.”

Esiri leaned in, close enough to see her face reflected on the dark surface and smell camwood on the brass rim. The basin did not shimmer or glow. Instead, the map of Idanre rose on the surface; streets and slopes forming clearly, while the timestamp scrolled along the rim like a clock’s hand.

Feyi pointed without looking. “Your brother’s route is here. That line is his movement, and that break is where OrunNet loses view.”

Esiri followed the path with her eyes, and her stomach turned as it cut toward the old road her grandmother had mentioned.

“Why does it lose view there?”

“The corridor interferes with intake,” Feyi said.

“How?”

Kosi answered before Feyi could. “The corridor in question is lined with ancient infrastructure that interferes with modern intake, and this is by design.”

Esiri turned her head slightly. “Who knows enough about OrunNet to create a blind spot?”

“Take a pick. The shrine council, or every monarch who understood that if the Assembly had full access to every record, they would weaponise and politicise it. They would also bury what they chose to,” Kosi replied.

“So that’s why you hide your data and tech from them,” Esiri said as it all started to make sense. Though, she still didn’t understand why the monarch and the government were always caught in some bitter feud.

“We restrict access,” Feyi corrected. “The wrong hands are not neutral hands.”

A sigh escaped Esiri. “The law is built on access, and evidence belongs to everyone, regardless of their intent.”

Feyi’s eyes narrowed at her now. “When people stop turning every crisis into an entertainment event, they will be safe. Until then, we owe nothing to no one.”

As always, the urge to argue rose, but she didn’t know where to point it, because she’d watched Idanre vanish. She still couldn’t admit what it meant: that everyone in Idanre at the time was dead. The evidence was right in front of her, and she’d be remiss to dismiss it. It made her wonder how her grandmother and Tobi made it out. She shut the thought out of her mind; she needed to find him first, then get back to granny before letting the painstaking evidence of her parents’ demise break her.

“So what now?” Esiri asked, forcing her voice to steady without using the words she hated. “You say he’s alive and moving, but you can’t see him. What exactly do you have?”

Feyi glanced at Kosi once, and he gave the smallest nod. Then Feyi said, “We have a live marker we can follow. And we have the fact that OrunNet reacts to your presence.”

Esiri arched a brow. “What good does a fault line you can’t explain do us?”

“No one called it a fault line,” Kosi said, and his voice had bite now. “Do not put words in our mouths because you are angry at your own fear.”

Esiri turned fully, and for a moment, she saw why palace staff obeyed him before he finished speaking.

“Don’t psychoanalyse me,” she told him.

The corners of Kosi’s mouth curled. “I’m the only one who can do it accurately.”

Esiri stared at him, almost offended at how quick his response was. She narrowed her eyes at him, unsure whether to laugh or snap back. His confidence was infuriating, but it had a certain charm to it.

Feyi intervened before Esiri could respond. “There will be no pointless arguments in my command centre.”

A woman at the nearest station said, “Your Highness, the feed is changing.”

Feyi’s attention snapped to the basin. “Show it.”

The map adjusted on its own. Idanre flattened, and then the record slipped away from streets and buildings into a pattern Esiri had no idea what to make of. It looked like the system was tracking a path under the city instead of through it, in a direction that didn’t line up with roads.

Esiri frowned, her brows drawing together in frustration. “That isn’t Tobi’s path.”

“No, it is not,” Feyi agreed, her voice tinged with a trace of unease. “That is an interference trail.”

Without thinking, Esiri’s fingers curled around her pendant. The metal felt warm against her skin, as if it had absorbed the heat of her hand earlier. But then she forced her hand away, her knuckles nearly white as she pressed her palm against her thigh instead.

Feyi leaned over the basin, the soft clink of her slate tapping against the rim console echoing in the command centre. The record crept forward again, and the room’s attention moved with it.

Along the old corridor, the interference trail widened.

Esiri’s throat went dry. “Is that where he is?”

“The corridor leads there,” Feyi corrected. “We don’t see him because the interference blocks us, but his movement pattern shows he’s alive; it stops, starts, changes speed, and reacts to obstacles.”

Esiri leaned in closer, and the basin revealed more detail around the corridor; a mix of old pathways and modern infrastructure coexisting uneasily, like two stacked cities.

“This corridor existed before the grid was built,” Kosi said. “It was abandoned during modernisation but never erased.”

Esiri glanced at him. “Why did the crown keep it?”

“We don’t erase what we don’t fully understand if it might connect to the Orisas or our forefathers,” he replied.

Esiri began to respond, but the basin pulsed, its surface pushing outward. The map’s lines bent and then reset. Analysts straightened in their chairs, and a man at a far station muttered a warning in Yoruba.

Feyi raised her head. “What has changed?”

“The system is pulling to the palace grid,” an analyst replied.

Esiri looked at Feyi. “Why?” she whispered.

Feyi ignored her, addressing the room instead. “Lock external requests and harden all access points.”

Kosi’s gaze moved across the stations, and Esiri noticed he was tracking people, screens, and exits in the same way she did. The difference was that his skill was ingrained from childhood, while she learned it by necessity and habit.

A new pattern formed in the basin, one that no longer resembled a map.

Esiri’s skin prickled. “What is that?”

Feyi’s jaw tightened. “Do not touch the basin.”

Esiri kept her hands still, but her body reacted regardless, the pressure behind her eyes growing heavy enough to force her to blink.

The basin’s surface formed a pale outline beside the record, a figure suggested rather than fully rendered, broad in the shoulders and still in posture.

Esiri’s breath hitched. “That looks like—”

Ibáwì.

The word crept into her mind again, and her hand went to her pendant before she could stop it.

Kosi stepped close, catching her elbow; not tight or controlling, but present enough to steady her. “Stay with me,” he said.

Esiri’s heart slammed against her ribs. “Don’t—”

“Stay,” he repeated, his tone leaving no room for argument.

She hated that his voice compelled her to listen, especially since he seemed aware she was hearing…things.

Feyi studied Esiri’s face, then glanced at the basin and back again. Her voice lowered. “You heard it again, Ibawi.”

So they knew something about it but had lied earlier?

Esiri swallowed. “Yes.”

Feyi’s eyes narrowed. “And you see that imprint?”

“Yes.”

Kosi’s gaze shifted between them. “Feyi.”

Feyi’s mouth tightened. “I know.”

Esiri’s voice came out thin, filled with anxiety. “Explain what’s happening.”

“Our system registers a reaction when the boundary moves, and OrunNet records it because the reaction leaves a signature,” Feyi explained.

Esiri kept her gaze on the basin. “So the imprint is not a person?”

“It is a rendering of presence,” Feyi replied. “And it is too close.”

A chair scraped behind them, and an analyst coughed, masking it with the sound of shuffling data.

Esiri folded her arms. “Presence of what?”

Feyi stepped closer to the basin, her fingers hovering above the brass rim without touching it. The water trembled in response.

“There are three realities in our cosmology,” Feyi said. “Aiyé, the world that is made. Ọ̀run, the world that makes. And the bridge between them. Some call it Ẹgbé, some call it covenant. The point is the same: there is exchange.”

Esiri almost smiled at the absurdity. “Exchange between physics and folklore.”

Feyi did not react to the mockery. “The Orisha are archetypal forces that govern the bridge. They are not idols or mascots for superstition but governance structures. Each one embodies an aspect of existence: wisdom, war, rivers, creation, order.”

“And you think one of these archetypal forces scorched Idanre out of existence?” she asked.

“I think something crossed the bridge without permission.” Feyi shrugged.

The analysts went still.

Esiri inhaled loudly. She grew up hearing these stories, usually at funerals or naming ceremonies. They had always sounded fictional to her.

“You’re telling me there’s a world that made this one, and sometimes things leak through a bridge into ours” she said.

Then Feyi corrected herself, “Maybe leak isn’t the best word. I’d say presses.”

“Hmm,” Esiri replied.

“And there are the children of the Orishas,” Feyi explained. “Their bloodlines carry essence, some dormant, some active, that reacts if the boundary weakens.”

Esiri scratched her brow. “How do they fit into all this?”

Kosi stepped closer but didn’t say anything.

“You wanted to know the truth,” Feyi said. “This is it. We monitor the bridge because the Crown learned a long time ago that misfortune doesn’t always stem from policy or poor government. There are times when things start outside of human causality, and it’s the Crown’s job to handle them.”

Esiri wanted to rip it apart, cross-examining every phrase and demanding data sets. Instead, she found herself staring at the basin as her scepticism drove her to question the premise. How was this myth wired into sensors and algorithms and working? Whether it was superstition or not, it knew about Idanre before anyone else.

Her mind wandered back to the hospital, the lights going out, the EKG spiking, and the whisper slithery in her head.

Just then, the doors to the OrunNet command centre sealed with a hard click.

Esiri turned her head sharply. “Did you just lock us in?”

Feyi’s eyes stayed on the basin. “No.”

“Then who did?” Kosi demanded.

The screens in the room flickered, then went black. Not one by one, but all at once, as if a hand had swept across the centre and wiped them out. The ceiling bots paused on their rails, suspended in mid-air. The hum of the building didn’t go away gradually. It stopped, leaving a silence so unnatural that Esiri’s ears rang with the absence of it.

It was exactly as it had been at the hospital.

Her skin prickled again, and the breeze moving through the centre felt like it had hit a wall.

Esiri’s throat tightened. “Feyi.”

Feyi’s answer was so whispery that Esiri had to lean in to hear it. “Do not speak its name.”

“Whose name?” Esiri snapped, and then regretted it, because the basin moved.

Water pulled downward like it’d been hooked by a force below, stretching and deforming the lines of the last rendered record.

Suddenly, the basin surged and the pale outline rose, forcing itself into visibility with the only medium available. For a second, Esiri saw a crown-like arc forming above the imprint, made of pale geometry that made her eyes hurt.

That’s the same thing she saw above Arinze’s head, wasn’t it?

Ibáwì.

This time the word struck her mind alongside a dizzying sensation. Her temple throbbed with a piercing pain, and she spat out “Stop” through gritted teeth without realising it.

Kosi’s hand moved to brace her shoulder. “Look at me,” he said.

Esiri snapped her gaze to him.

In the dark, she could still see him clearly as her eyes had adjusted. He stood right in front of her. His expression was calm but his focus was locked on her as if she were the only point in the room that mattered.

“You are fine,” he said.

A station behind them sparked with a dry crack of current. Then the basin rose again, and the white outline turned, as if it had noticed Esiri properly.

Feyi’s whisper came through the darkness. “Kosi, move her away from the basin.”

Kosi did not argue. He pulled Esiri back one step, and the basin fell.

The water returned to a flat surface as if the rendering had been cut, but the silence did not lift. The doors remained sealed, the bots paused.

Then the building’s systems returned.