Ada talked the way she always did after a win, as if the hall had been a stage built for her entertainment and everyone else was simply lucky enough to witness it.

“You saw his face when you said you can’t take a god to court,” she said, walking backwards for a step so she could watch Esiri properly. “I almost stood up and clapped like an aunty at a wedding.”

Esiri adjusted the strap of her bag and kept moving. The corridor outside the debate hall spilled into the university walkway, and the crowd moved in loose waves, students laughing, arguing, replaying their own favourite lines as if the world had paused to make space for an academic contest.

“It was not a win,” Esiri said. “It was an argument.”

Ada scoffed. “That is what wins are. You people in law like pretending you do not enjoy this.”

Esiri wanted to tell her she did not enjoy it. She wanted to say she had said what she believed, and belief was not entertainment. Instead, she said, “I enjoyed his silence.”

Ada laughed. “There. Honesty. I can work with that.”

Outside, evening had begun to settle. Dusk in Erunon was quite noisy. Screens along the walkways looped headlines and event notices. Food stalls warmed the air with pepper and fried oil, and the smell of grilled chicken dragged people toward the street even when they insisted they were not hungry. A vendor near the gate called out prices in Yoruba and English, adding a third language when he spotted a foreign student hesitating.

Ada bumped Esiri’s shoulder. “You are quiet. Do not deny it. I know your face when your mind is elsewhere.”

“My mind is not elsewhere,” Esiri said, though she knew the lie sat awkwardly on her tongue.

They reached the end of the campus, where the transit lanes ran like clean seams through the city. A tram glided past on its elevated rail, the glass sides flashing a gold ribbon of news. Under it, hover-bikes traced the lower lanes, their lights weaving through traffic with the kind of confidence Esiri had always envied in machines. They moved because they were told to, and because their world obeyed the rules they were programmed with.

Her wristband chimed.

Esiri barely looked down at first. Priority alerts were rare. Most things that wanted her attention could wait, and everyone around her knew it. The space beside her blinked once as the interface unfolded into her sensory field.

Granny.

Esiri stopped so abruptly Ada took another step before noticing.

Ada turned. “What?”

Esiri lifted her wrist. “It is my grandmother.”

Ada’s expression softened. “You will call her later. She will complain you are becoming proud and forgetful, and then she will ask if you have eaten.”

Esiri would have smiled if she did not already feel the anxiety tightening in her chest.

She accepted the call.

“Granny?”

For a moment, her grandmother’s face formed from the pale light, close enough that Esiri could see the fine lines around her eyes and the set of her mouth. The image did not settle properly. It flickered at the corners, as if the system could not decide what to render behind her. There were shadows where lamps should have been, and the background did not look like her veranda.

“Esiri,” Granny said. Her voice came through hoarsely. “Child, are you alone?”

The question landed stranger than it should have.

“Yes,” Esiri said, then corrected herself because Ada was right beside her and there was no reason to pretend otherwise. “I am with Ada. What is wrong?”

Granny’s gaze darted, not to the screen, but past it, as if someone stood just outside the frame.

“Go home,” she said. “Now. Do not stop to argue. Do you hear me?”

“Granny,” Esiri said, keeping her tone steady, “tell me what happened.”

A sound crept through the connection, soft at first, then clearer. It was like wind through dry leaves, like paper dragged across stone, like something trying to speak without a mouth.

Granny inhaled, and when she spoke again, her voice sounded thinner. “There has been…”

The feed cut.

The projection collapsed in a burst of static so bright it stung Esiri’s eyes. The interface blinked out, leaving only the glow of her wristband against her skin.

“Granny?” Esiri said, pressing the control again. The system responded with a brief search, then nothing.

Ada had gone still. “Esiri.”

Esiri tried again, but there was no connection or fallback.

Ada reached for her wrist, peering at the band with that focus she reserved for faulty devices and arrogant men. “It might be the weather. There has been lag all afternoon. My lab’s drones kept dropping route data.”

Esiri heard her, but she didn’t hear her.

Her mind ran through possibilities. Network failure. Local node outage. A maintenance sweep that had been poorly communicated. Any explanation that allowed her to return the world to its normal rules.

Behind those thoughts ran another sensation, like a second rhythm beneath her pulse.

The pendant pressed hot against her chest again.

Esiri’s hand moved to cover it through her shirt, mostly because she did not know what else to do.

Ada’s voice came again. “Do not panic.”

“I am not panicking,” Esiri said, and she almost believed herself until she heard the strain in her own voice.

Ada studied her. “Then what are you doing?”

Esiri looked past her friend to the transit lanes, the trams gliding with indifferent order, and the people moving through their evening as if urgent warnings did not exist.

“I am going home,” she said.

Ada blinked. “To Idanre?”

“Yes.”

“That is hours away,” Ada said, then glanced at the sky as if it would offer a shortcut. “It is already night.”

Esiri’s wristband chimed again, but it wasn’t a call this time. It was a system alert. Transit Delay. Weather Advisory. Route Adjustments in Effect.

Ada pointed at it. “You see? Weather. That is the explanation.”

Esiri looked at the alert and felt nothing.

The warmth under her shirt intensified, so much so that she flinched without meaning to. It wasn’t pain yet, just a quiet demand for her attention that lingered as unspoken worry.

Ada noticed, and her eyes narrowed. “Your pendant.”

Esiri shook her head. “It is nothing.”

Ada made a sound of disbelief. “Your definition of nothing is always suspicious.”

Esiri took a step toward the tram entrance. “I will take the night line.”

Ada followed, then caught her arm. “At least call someone. Your uncle. A neighbour. Anyone. Confirm that Granny is even in trouble before you start running across the country like a heroine in a bad series.”

Esiri stopped and turned, her patience thinning. “Ada.”

Ada held her gaze. “What?”

“I cannot wait,” Esiri said, and the certainty in her voice surprised even her.

The humour drained away from Ada’s face. She had likely never heard that tone from Esiri before. Esiri did not raise her voice or dramatise. She simply stated a decision as if it were law.

Ada stared at her for a long moment, then exhaled. “Fine.”

Esiri felt relief flare briefly before the guilt came.

Ada lifted her chin. “I am coming with you.”

“No,” Esiri said immediately. “You are not.”

Ada’s brows rose. “You do not get to decide that.”

“Yes, I do,” Esiri said, more harshly than she intended, and saw Ada’s mouth tighten at the sound of her voice.

She steadied herself and lowered her tone. “Stay here. Please. I will call you when I arrive.”

Ada’s gaze held hers, stubborn as ever. For a moment, Esiri thought she would refuse simply on principle. Then Ada nodded reluctantly.

“Fine,” she said, then pointed a finger at Esiri. “But you will call, Esiri. If you do not, I will send the entire engineering faculty after you, and they will not be gentle.”

A weak laugh broke from Esiri. It did not reach her chest, but it was real enough to count.

“Deal,” she said.

Ada pulled her into a brief embrace. “Go.”

Esiri turned and disappeared into the tram station crowd before she could change her mind.

The city swallowed her in movement and sound. Gates opened and closed. Security scans hummed over wrists and bags. People argued with the machine voice that announced delays, as if volume could bend scheduling algorithms. A vendor sold raincoats at double price and still found customers.

Esiri boarded the night tram without looking back.

Inside, the cabin lights ran really low, designed to calm nervous commuters. She took a seat by the window and watched the city blur past, gold and smoke and neon, until the skyline dissolved into dark stretches of road and scattered lights.

Rain began as they left Erunon behind. It tapped against the glass in uneven rhythms. Lightning flashed far off, illuminating hills and the outlines of smaller towns huddled under the weather, their lights flickering under the storm.

Esiri tried to reconnect the call, and still got nothing.

She accessed the routing logs through her band, but the data returned incomplete. She pushed again, forcing the system to search deeper, and the interface lagged as if someone had poured sand into its gears.

Her pendant continued to burn hot against her skin, the sensation enough that it became its own discomfort, a constant reminder that something inside her body was responding to something outside it.

Esiri rested her head against the window, eyes open, watching darkness scroll past. She told herself to stay awake, and that sleep would be careless.

At some point, exhaustion won anyway and she dosed off.

When she woke, the tram had slowed, and the cabin was no longer quiet.

Voices rose in a confused swell. Someone stood in the aisle, pointing toward the window. Another person swore under their breath. A child began to cry again, and this time no one hushed them.

Esiri sat up.

Smoke was seeping through the vents as passengers pressed toward the glass, fear moving through them like contagion. Beyond the window, the night was lit in a way it should not have been.

Idanre glowed with a red, pulsing glare that painted the clouds from below.

Esiri’s mouth went dry.

Her wristband buzzed weakly, then went dead, the interface collapsing into darkness as if the system itself had turned away.

Logic abandoned her in that moment, because no part of her could explain what her eyes were seeing.

The tram doors opened and people surged out, some running, some frozen, some shouting questions no one answered.

Esiri stepped onto the platform and felt the heat hit her face.

She pushed through the crowd, ignoring hands that reached to stop her, and voices calling for people to stay back. Rain fell in thin sheets, hissing where it met the warmth in the air, and the smell of smoke wrapped around her until it coated her tongue.

Then she saw it.

A column of white fire rose from the heart of the city, too contained in its devastation. It did not roar the way fire should or scatter sparks and throw embers into the wind. It climbed upward like a controlled signal, as if the sky had been marked.

Esiri stopped.

Around her, everything blurred into the chaos.

People ran in every direction, shoes slapping against wet concrete, voices breaking as they shouted names and half-formed warnings. Sirens wailed somewhere beyond the smoke, arriving late and out of sync. Water streamed down Esiri’s face and into her collar, soaking her hair, flattening her clothes against her skin until she could no longer tell where the cold ended and the fear began.

Rain fell harder the closer she moved toward the city.

It streaked across the platform lights and turned the ground slick under her feet, splashing up her trousers as she pushed forward. Smoke coated her tongue with a metallic bitterness that made her cough even as she kept going. The city ahead of her burned in sections, it wasn’t one blaze but many, stretching across Idanre’s skyline in a jagged line of light and shadow.

Someone grabbed her arm from behind, fingers digging into her sleeve with desperate strength.

“Esiri,” a voice shouted. “Do not go there!”

She twisted free, her breath coming shallow, her heart hammering so violently she could feel it in her throat.

Her mind raced ahead of her feet.

Her parents. Her grandmother. Her little brother.

Timi’s laugh surfaced in her mind without warning, impossible to place in this moment. He had borrowed her jacket the last time she visited and forgotten to return it. Granny had scolded him for tracking mud into the house, then slipped him extra food when she thought no one was watching.

Where were they?

The city burned, and she did not know which streets were still standing, which homes were gone, or whether the places she loved still existed at all.

As she moved closer, the heat at her chest increased, no longer a warning but a pressure that spread through her ribs and into her breath. The pendant burned against her skin, searing enough that she gasped, her hand flying to it instinctively as if she could shield herself from whatever it was responding to.

In the midst of the fire, she felt an attention turning in her direction, like standing under the gaze of someone that did not blink.

Then that same whisper slipped into her mind, so intimate and unwelcome, cutting through every sound around her with cruel clarity.

Ibáwì.

Esiri stopped.

Her breath caught painfully in her chest as she stared at the burning city, rain streaming down her face, her clothes soaked through, her skin aching with cold and heat all at once. She did not know what the word meant, who had spoken it, or why it had been spoken to her.

What she knew, with a certainty that left no room for argument, was that the ordinary world she trusted had collapsed beyond repair.

And whatever had found her in the heart of that destruction was not finished yet.