Esiri Adolo believed in systems.

She believed that if you understood how something was built, you could understand why it failed, and that when collapse came, it was never the work of fate. Failure came from human error, ignored warnings, or a decision someone made because it was easier than doing the right thing. This belief shaped her life entirely. It was why she studied law, trusted evidence over instinct and process over prayer, and why she had never once, in twenty-four years, waited for a god to intervene on her behalf.

Gods, in her experience, made poor administrators.

That morning, the city of Erunon woke with its usual impatience. Solar trams slid along elevated rails, broadcasting headlines in looping gold script. Market drones dipped between apartment balconies, ferrying bread, batteries, and last-minute groceries. Below her window, a woman argued loudly with a customer over the price of Akara, and the exchange drawing laughter and commentary from passersby the way such moments always did. Life moved on, unbothered.

Esiri watched it all from her apartment window as she pulled on her jacket. She liked mornings best, before the usual chaos of the day took over.

Her wrist chimed and she glanced at it. Constitutional Law Seminar. She dismissed the alert and reached for her bag, already organising the day in her mind. There would be a presentation she did not trust her classmates to prepare properly, lunch with Ada, who would complain about her supervisor while stealing food from Esiri’s plate, and a long evening of reading she would pretend not to enjoy.

The wristband chimed again, this time with priority.

Granny.

Esiri frowned. Her grandmother did not interrupt her day without reason. If she reached out during work hours, it meant something had gone wrong or someone had tested her patience beyond restraint. Often both.

She accepted the call at once.

“Granny?”

For a moment, her grandmother’s image appeared in front of her, her expression intent as though she had been about to speak. Then the projection cracked, thinned, and dissolved into static before collapsing entirely.

In typical Esiri fashion, irritation rose first. Communication failures were rare now, with redundant relays, mesh routing, and local buffering guaranteeing continuity even when a node went dark. Granny’s district had been upgraded the previous year; there was no practical reason for the call to fail.

She attempted a return connection, but the system searched briefly and returned nothing.

A pressure settled in her chest as she reassured herself that her grandmother was fine, missed calls were common, and worry solved nothing. Still, she remained standing long after the interface faded.

She stepped closer to the window just as a flare of light rippled across the sky, bright enough to register before vanishing. It left no sound or disturbance, just the uneasy feeling of having seen an unnatural thing.

From this height, she could see the river cutting through Erunon in a long silver curve. Beyond the city’s horizon, Esiri could picture her parents’ house, modest and stubbornly unchanged by the city’s constant reinvention; they had refused upgrades more times than she could count, insisting that what already worked did not need improvement.

She told herself they were fine.

The city kept moving. Trams glided past one another, voices rose and fell, and somewhere below, a generator coughed to life.

Esiri left the apartment minutes later, locking the door with more force than necessary.

By the time she reached the street, she’d already decided what she’d do if the call didn’t go through by lunchtime.

As usual, the tram station buzzed with impatience. Commuters argued with turnstiles, vendors shouted over one another, and a man in a rumpled suit complained loudly about a delayed route as if the city was obligated to answer him. Esiri joined the flow on autopilot while her mind catalogued the morning’s irregularities despite her effort to dismiss them.

The flare lingered with her because it defied context. As the tram glided forward, she replayed the moment, wondering if it signified anything or if her mind was simply drawn to anomalies in the mundane.

By the time she reached Iwosan University, its juxtaposition of colonial stone and modern glass strung with Aṣẹ-Tek conduits almost mirrored her own internal clash of curiosity and indifference.

Students crossed the quad in loose clusters, arguing about deadlines, politics, and which cafeteria had diluted their stew again.

At the heart of the roundabout, the statue of Ọbatálá rose as a solemn relic of a bygone era. It was once central to the spiritual life of the old Erunon, where it was honoured with prayers before exams and libations before court hearings. Now, it stood as art and reminder of a forgotten faith.

Esiri crossed the quad with long strides. Today’s seminar mattered more than most, not for her grades, but because she was tired of listening to arguments built on reverence rather than accountability.

The debate hall was already brimming with attendees when she arrived.

Tiered seating rose in a shallow arc facing a central floor cleared for speakers, with screens lining the walls looping the day’s topic:

MORALITY WITHOUT FAITH: CAN JUSTICE EXIST WITHOUT GODS?

Ada spotted her right away and waved from the second row, her dark curls bouncing as she slid her bag aside to make space.

“You’re late,” she whispered as Esiri sat. “It looks like you just got into a fight.”

“Only with myself.” Esiri murmured.

Professor Adenle stepped forward stepped forward, with a soft voice that carried gravitas as he explained the rules, timing, and expectations.

Esiri barely listened. She had already written her argument twice and dismantled it three times in her head.

“Ms. Adolo,” Adenle said, looking directly at her. “Your opening statement.”

She stood without hesitation and walked up to the podium. The room fell silent, hundreds of faces turning expectantly toward her; law students, faculty, and a few guests from the university’s political wing.

She looked out at them, her brown eyes brightening under the spotlight.

“This question assumes morality must rely on unseen forces,” Esiri began. “Faith. Religion. Fear of divine consequences.”

She avoided starting with a story because it invited sentiment, and sentiment blurred accountability.

“Justice is not a gift handed down by divine authority,” she asserted. “It is a structure built by people who understand that injustice requires response, and that accountability does not disappear simply because belief exists.”

She paused to let the words sink in as a murmur ran through the hall.

She cited precedents, reforms, and policy shifts that had separated shrine from state. Systems could be examined and corrected, she argued, while faith, when positioned as moral authority, often escaped scrutiny.

“When justice is attributed to gods, it is surrendered,” she said. “Failures are excused, and outcomes accepted without challenge. That is not morality; it is abdication. In Erunon, justice is not handed down by invisible powers. We designed it. Imperfect and evolving, but ours. When morality is rooted in belief, accountability is surrendered to something beyond argument. The law, however, is what makes us human.”

The pendant under her shirt warmed against her skin, a persistent presence she was used to ignoring. It was a simple thing she had worn for years, a gift from her grandmother, close enough to feel even when she forgot it was there.

Across the floor, her opponent rose.

Arinze Nwoye of the Faculty of Philosophy had a reputation for asking questions that sounded polite until you realised they were meant to dismantle you. He adjusted his sleeves, then looked directly at Esiri.

“You speak of the law as if it were incorruptible,” he said arrogantly. “But the law is made by people governed by bias, fear, and greed. If justice is only human, how does it rise above human nature?”

A few heads nodded. Someone murmured approval.

Arinze turned slightly, allowing the room to see him as well as hear him, and smiled as if they were partners in reason. “Without belief in a higher authority, call it faith, conscience, or destiny if you prefer, justice becomes negotiation. It becomes a contest of volume and leverage rather than truth.”

Without breaking eye contact, Esiri replied, “You’re right. People are flawed. But invoking the divine does not solve that problem. It only changes who defines justice. A god can be as cruel as any human, with the added convenience of being beyond accountability.”

A hush settled throughout the hall.

Arinze’s smile tightened, his brows drawing together as he studied her, no longer amused. Esiri glanced away briefly when a cough broke the silence, followed by a ripple of uncertain laughter.

When she looked back at Arinze, her attention narrowed, and for the briefest instant, the space above his head flared with a crown-shaped arc of golden light. It vanished before Esiri could react, but not before her breath stalled and the pendant burned against her chest.

Arinze frowned at her, as if he had felt it too, then shook it off and returned to his seat.

She drew a deep breath and finished her opening statement.

“Justice is a promise we make to one another, and we break it only when we stop believing in ourselves. It is a human construct, upheld by action and accountability. It survives when we hold ourselves to shared standards, not through divine intervention, but through mutual trust and the courage to stand for what is right, even when it is inconvenient. My mission today is to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that justice does not require gods to exist.”

Applause broke loose, rolling through the tiered seats. Esiri stepped aside and lowered herself into her chair as the sound swelled, with her hands folded neatly in her lap. Around her, teammates leaned in with quiet praise, their voices carrying admiration she registered without absorbing. Ada caught her eye from across the aisle and flashed a triumphant grin.

Esiri did not return it.

One of the overhead panels flickered, so quickly it might have gone unnoticed, but Esiri caught it, the momentary disruption drawing her attention.

“Impressive as always, Ms. Adolo,” Professor Adenle said from the podium. “Your argument was… unsettlingly convincing.”

She inclined her head and murmured her thanks, though her focus had already drifted.

Her gaze turned to Arinze.

He sat with his shoulders squared and raised, as if he was carrying the room on them. Esiri found his posture irritating. When he turned toward her, their eyes met, and his brow creased with the not so subtle enmity between them. A chill traced its way along her spine, and she looked away first.

“Mr. Nwoye,” Professor Adenle called, “your opening remarks.”

As Arinze rose and made his way toward the floor, the debate resumed its rhythm, voices shifting, attention redirecting.

It was familiar in a way she could not explain, melodic and intimate, and entirely out of place.

Then a whisper brushed the far corner of her mind.

Ibáwì.

Her breath caught. For an instant, the hall wobbled, sound and movement blurred before snapping back into focus. Applause followed Arinze’s first words. Pens scratched against tablets. The room continued as though nothing had happened.

But Esiri sat frozen, her wit no longer as solid as it had been minutes before.

For the rest of the session, she heard the arguments without registering them. The law student who had built her life on logic and proof found herself distracted by a question she could not frame, let alone answer.

Whatever had spoken her name did not belong to law, or systems, or reason.

And it had left her with the certainty that something was wrong.