It was a memory carved in spirit.
Afolabi landed with a breathless thud. The dust beneath him rose in swirls—golden, weightless, and alive, like ash from a sacred fire. It clung to his skin and cloak, humming with the faint rhythm of à??, the divine force that whispered through all things.
He staggered upright, chest tight, breath shallow.
Around him stretched an endless savannah beneath an inverted sky. Constellations spun in slow spirals—eyes of long-departed ancestors watching, waiting. The horizon shimmered with every breath, bending and twitching like the landscape was breathing with him.
The golems had fallen with him—each landing in a wide arc, as if placed by an unseen hand.
Now, they stood still—quiet, grounded, shifting subtly in the golden dust.
But something about them had changed.
The fire-forged sentinel bore dark glyphs etched into its plated shoulders, faintly glowing like embers carved by scripture. The water golem shimmered with thin, living veins of light, pulsing like the tides of a divine ocean. The iron giant gave off a slow vibration with each movement, a heartbeat from the bones of the earth. The wind-sister moved with unsettling silence, her form blurring at the edges like breath vanishing into prophecy.
Afolabi felt it too—something inside him had changed.
The glyph on his palm no longer simply glowed—it pulsed.
It sang.
Not in sound, but in sensation—a living rhythm that moved through his bones.
“What is this place?” he whispered, not to them, but to the very spirit of the realm.
Oya’s golem stepped forward. The dust at her feet swirled inward, forming a spiral of symbols glowing dimly beneath the surface. Afolabi crouched, brushing his hand against them. The moment his skin touched the glyphs, the world flickered—
A blade raised beneath stormclouds.
A woman in gold whispering to fire.
Children screaming as rivers flowed backwards.
Visions cracked into his skull like echoes from a soul he didn’t remember having.
The symbols beneath him resolved into a proverb—but it was fractured:
“?m? tí a kò k?, ni yóò gbe ilé tí a k? tà.”
The child who is not trained will sell the house that was built.
The last word—tà—was broken. Its glyph split and bleeding into nonsense.
“It’s not real,” he said softly. “It’s… trying to remember something. And failing.”
He stood, uneasy. His mother’s pendant pressed cold against his chest. It pulsed—not with warmth, but with resistance. He knew that feeling. The trial was beginning.
A ripple of corrupted à?? tore through the sky like a scream. The golems turned in unison.
On the far edge of the golden savannah, a shape emerged—tall, faceless, and robed in smoke and bone. It glided rather than walked, its presence pulling shadows behind it like memory unraveling.
Then it spoke—not aloud, but between heartbeats:
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“The past forgets you, son of Aiyé.
Do you remember it?”
Afolabi’s knees trembled. The ground beneath him cracked. His balance wavered, and the sky above bent in protest.
The glyph in his palm pulsed, and his golems took formation around him.
“I don’t… remember everything,” he said, voice unsteady.
“But I think I’m meant to carry it forward.”
The being didn’t answer.
It split—right down the center, like parchment torn by divine hands. From the rift stepped a second figure—smaller, denser. Its head bore a warped crown of rusted iron, and its chest glowed with a twisted mirror of Afolabi’s glyph. Inverted. Bleeding shadow.
An Ajogun construct.
It didn’t speak.
It charged.
Afolabi froze. Every instinct screamed to run.
But the fire golem surged ahead, intercepting the blow with a shield of searing heat. The collision scattered dust into starlight. The impact rang through Afolabi’s chest like thunder. His legs nearly buckled. His vision blurred.
He’d almost flinched.
The golems hadn’t.
This is real. This is a test.
He lifted his hand on instinct. The glyph responded. The fire golem released a second burst of heat, knocking the Ajogun back a few steps.
It didn’t fall.
But it faltered.
Afolabi's hands trembled. He hadn’t issued a command. And yet—
“It’s not control,” he breathed. “It’s resonance.”
He felt it—barely, like a distant hum. A thread connecting his will to theirs.
The sky rippled again—brief visions surfacing like bubbles under glass:
A forest suspended in water.
A city built from bone.
A desert where the wind whispered forgotten names.
“These portals… they’re not just realms. They’re wounds.
This one is Yoruba memory—corrupted, bleeding, asking to be remembered.”
The Ajogun flickered—and then it vanished, folding into the wind like a trick of light.
Afolabi gasped. His eyes darted. Behind? No—above?
It reformed mid-air, crashing down toward him like a blade. Only the wind golem’s sudden shield diverted the strike.
“It can adapt. It’s not just mindless—it remembers too.”
Oya’s golem stepped forward. With fluid grace, she clapped her hands together. A spiral of wind burst outward, scattering the Ajogun’s reforming limbs into mist. It twisted in protest.
Then the iron giant slammed both fists into the ground. Tremors rippled outward. The earth hummed.
“They’re not just guardians,” he thought.
“They’re listening.”
The Ajogun’s body pulled itself together again—but now it flickered between smoke and failing form.
“You were made from what broke,” Afolabi said, more to himself than the creature.
“But I… I come from what endured.”
It lunged.
All four golems moved as one, forming a wall between him and the shadow.
And Afolabi did not flinch.
The glyph on his palm burned. But this time, it didn’t feel foreign. It felt… alive.
And through it, he felt them:
Iron: steady, watchful.
Water: precise, cautious.
Fire: loyal, burning.
Wind: alert, distant.
He closed his eyes.
A phrase rose—not in his voice, but in something older.
It rose like memory, like bone-deep truth.
“??run m?? mí, Aiyé gba mí, à?? s?r?.”
Heaven knows me. Earth receives me. à?? speaks.
Beneath his feet, glyphs bloomed like light-born flowers. They formed a circle, each symbol humming in harmony with his breath.
This wasn’t summoning.
This was synchronization.
The Ajogun charged again—but the world had shifted.
Roots erupted from the ground, drawn by Ogun’s golem. Wind channels twisted into sudden cross-blasts, funneling its movement. The battlefield itself was no longer passive.
“This isn’t mastery,” Afolabi realized. “But it’s beginning.
And that’s enough.”
The Ajogun’s form fractured—limbs glitching, aura flickering like dying coals.
The golems raised their arms. Afolabi stepped forward, hand outstretched, voice firm.
“? sùn.”
Return to shadow.
Light erupted from his palm—not a blast, but a decree.
The Ajogun screamed—not in pain, but protest—and unraveled into ash.
Silence.
The sky stilled. The dust settled.
Afolabi stood, trembling—not from fear… but from awakening.
His palm still glowed. The pendant around his neck warmed softly now, no longer resisting. It had seen something in him.
So had the world.
He didn’t yet understand what he was becoming.
But the ancestors were listening.
And the world, at last, had started to respond.