Esiri squinted as Feyi gestured toward the broad circular structure filled with water, waiting for something to happen.

She glanced sideways at Kosi beside her before letting her eyes sweep the room again. The floor dipped gently toward the basin at the centre. The water within it was dark and still, held by a brass rim fitted with sensor housings and thin rings that looked more like calibration fasteners.

Around them, analysts worked without flourish. A woman two stations down toggled between a city map and a dense column of figures that meant nothing to Esiri yet but clearly meant everything to the room. A man beside her murmured a timestamp. Another analyst corrected him without looking up.

“You’re counting exits,” Feyi said.

Esiri didn’t startle. “I always do.”

Feyi stepped into her peripheral vision, slate tucked under one arm. She wore no crown or ceremonial marker beyond the crest at her wrist. If Esiri hadn’t been told who she was, she might have mistaken her for a senior intelligence officer instead of a princess.

“Habit,” Esiri added. “Law school.”

Feyi nodded once. “Watch first. Then ask.”

Esiri exhaled and turned back to the basin. The water moved again as if it was responding to Feyi’s instruction . A small lattice surfaced under the surface, with thin lines forming a familiar geometry.

Idanre.

The city rendered itself in rippling layers, streets and elevation lines folding into place. Time markers slid along the rime. Esiri leaned forward before she realised she was doing it.

“Is this—” She stopped herself, jaw tightening. “Is this a reconstruction?”

“A rendering,” Feyi said. “Drawn from live OrunNet intake and archived municipal feeds.”

“So it’s not predictive.”

“No.”

“Interpretive?”

“No.”

Esiri nodded once. “Is it admissible?”

Kosi’s mouth curved slightly, but neither he nor Feyi answered.

The indicator slowed, and at 00:03, the map reacted.

A distortion formed on Esiri’s street. It didn’t resemble an explosion or heat signature, exactly. The water pulled inward as if pressure had collapsed into a single point, then flared outward in a violent strobe.

Esiri’s breath hitched.

“No,” she said quietly. “That’s not—”

The strobe passed, and the city map adjusted as if the damage had always been there. Streets near the epicentre dimmed, then warped. Structures vanished without logic.

Then the basin went still again.

Esiri straightened, pulse climbing. “Run it again.”

An analyst complied without comment. The strobe returned and it was just as she suspected.

Her palms dampened. It was the same streak of light she’d seen that morning.

“That light,” she said. “It’s the exact pattern.”

“Yes,” Feyi replied.

“No, I mean I saw it,” Esiri said, then corrected herself. “From Iwosan; before the fire.”

The room went quiet. Kosi glanced at Feyi who immediately flicked her slate, and a second marker appeared on the basin’s rim. The time adjusted to earlier.

It rendered Iwosan this time and Esiri’s throat tightened as she watched.

“There,” Feyi said, pointing. “There was a momentary registration, but it was too brief to trigger containment protocols. The bureau logged it as atmospheric interference.”

Esiri scoffed. “Let me guess, because it didn’t burn anything?”

“It didn’t linger,” Feyi corrected. “It was barely a second.”

Esiri’s mind moved fast. If it appeared in Iwosan and then struck Idanre, then this was not random. She had seen and felt it. And now she was watching it take shape in some mystical water basin.

“So you’re saying—” Esiri stopped. She refused to finish the sentence without proof. “You’re saying the same event brushed Iwosan, then struck Idanre.”

“Yes.”

She stared at the basin. Coincidence was one thing she never believed in. It was an excuse for people who did not want to investigate.

“Why didn’t OrunNet flag Iwosan?” she asked.

“It did,” Feyi said. “Iwosan was not the target.”

Esiri turned slowly. “You don’t know that.”

Feyi met her gaze without apology. “We do.”

“You don’t get to decide relevance after the fact,” Esiri snapped.

“We don’t,” Feyi replied calmly. “We measure everything and OrunNet registers where the boundary reacts.”

Boundary? What did that even mean?

Esiri pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, grounding herself. “Define boundary.”

Kosi answered this time. “The point where what is made meets what makes.”

She shot him a look. “Try again.”

He shrugged slightly. “The limit of human causality.”

Better. But, they were making this about gods again. Still, if this OrunNet could somehow predict acts of God, then it was a very understated technology.

She turned back to the basin. “So this thing crosses that limit.”

“Yes. Rarely. Never without consequence,” Feyi said.

Esiri folded her arms again. “The Assembly has been trying to access this centre and your technology for years. The Crown has consistently refused. Why show me?”

Kosi looked at his sister now and nodded to her as if giving her the permission to tell the truth.

“Because it reacted to you,” Feyi said.

Esiri eyed the siblings. “I don’t follow. What do you mean reacted to me?”

“The morning of the Idanre incident,” Feyi continued, “after the strobe appeared in Iwosan, OrunNet registered visual interference. Your debate feed flickered into the basin. Then, hours later, your image again outside your family home in Idanre.”

Heat rose along Esiri’s spine. Images of her. Debating. Standing outside her house.

She took a step back. Odd, could it have been the times when she heard that word in her mind? But she’d heard it at the hospital too.

“Are those the only times?” she asked.

Feyi’s expression softened slightly. “No.”

“Where else?”

“At the Akure hospital.”

Esiri inhaled slowly.

It was just as she thought. Her fingers brushed the pendant at her throat as she thought. Whatever this was happening to her, OrunNet was reacting to it.

Kosi stepped closer. “What are you thinking?”

She rounded on him. “Why would I tell you?”

Her wrist vibrated, and she glanced down at it.

Ada.

Esiri hesitated, then accepted the call.

“Please tell me you’re somewhere safe,” Ada said without preamble.

“I am,” Esiri replied.

“Then why didn’t you call like we agreed? I nearly lost my mind.”

“I couldn’t,” Esiri said quietly.

Ada huffed. “Police statements are already circulating about what happened in Idanre.”

Of course.

“How’s your family? Please tell me they’re okay too.” Ada asked.

Esiri closed her eyes briefly. “I don’t know yet.”

“Where are you?”

Esiri glanced at the basin, at Idanre frozen in its aftermath. “Somewhere safe.”

Ada exhaled. “I don’t like that answer.”

“I know.”

“Esiri,” Ada said softly, “don’t disappear on me.”

“I won’t,” Esiri promised and ended the call.

She turned back to Feyi. “What does it mean that your system reacts to me?”

“We don’t know yet,” Kosi answered. “But everything is connected to everything else.

Before she could respond, the basin pulsed and every analyst looked up.

Esiri felt a heavy pressure build behind her eyes, and winced against it. The water shifted again, and for a fraction of a second, whatever it was trying to render broke pattern.

She saw an outline beside the basin, the suggestion of a form where nothing should be. Her heart stuttered as she stared at it. Either her mind was starting to play tricks or she was seeing a ghostly rendering of Ọbatálá.

Ibáwì.

The whisper slid through her mind again, and she staggered back a step. Kosi was already there, hand at her elbow, steadying her. The basic rippled and for an instant, her own face appeared in the water, then it disintegrated..

So it could sense whatever that was before it happened?

“Are you alright?” Kosi asked.

She shook his hand off. “What does Ibáwì mean?”

Feyi did not answer immediately. “Did something occur before the basin reacted?”

“If you gave me the answer I’m looking for, I will know how to answer your question, your highness,” Esiri said. “Don’t mythologise the answer.”

“It is a summons,” Feyi replied.

“Who is summoning what?” she asked.

“I shall give you the answers you seek, but not now. There remains something else you should see,” Feyi said.

Feyi touched the basin again and a path illuminated across the map. And old road… no, the old road.

Esiri’s breath caught.

“He’s still moving,” Feyi said. “Your brother.”

The thin line marking movement trembled forward.

“He’s alive.”

Esiri closed her eyes, then opened them, jaw set.

“Where is he?” she asked.

Kosi answered immediately. “Somewhere beyond OrunNet’s reach.”

“I have to go.”

“You go unprepared,” Feyi said, steel entering her tone, “and you die before you reach him.”

Esiri stared at the map, and the thin line marking her brother’s movement.

Then, quietly, without looking at Kosi, she said, “I don’t believe in your gods.”

“I know,” he replied.

“I will treat this like any other case,” she continued. “Evidence first. Motive second. Accountability last. I will not kneel in shrines and pray to gods I cannot cross-examine.”

Kosi held her gaze. “I wouldn’t trust you if you did.”

Her jaw set.

“Fine,” she said. “Tell me what I need to do.”