The camera of a mobile phone zoomed in, the image shaking with the frantic pulse of the person holding it. On the top left of the screen, a red icon blinked: LIVE.
The "Shout-Out" app was doing what it did best—broadcasting chaos to millions in real-time. The bottom of the feed was a blurring waterfall of emojis—fire, screaming faces, and skulls—interspersed with a chaotic stream of comments:
@LagosBoy: IS THIS REAL?? 😱
@TechSister: Look at the light! That's not a flashlight!
@AreaFada: Police are finished o. Wetin be this?
@GidiNews: Stay away from Kara! Total lockdown!
The street had become a graveyard of abandoned vehicles. Yellow Danfo buses sat skewed across lanes, their doors flung open like the wings of dead birds. Police Hiluxes were parked in a tense, vibrating semi-circle, their blue and red lights flashing rhythmically against the encroaching dust. Behind them, TV reporters ducked behind their vans, clutching microphones like life preservers, while a curious crowd stood behind the police tape—trapped in that narrow, dangerous space between primal terror and religious awe.
A male police sergeant, a veteran of a dozen riots, muttered a prayer to himself. His hand was trembling so violently that the grip of his rifle clattered against his tactical vest.
"Who are these terrorists?" he hissed, his voice cracking. "And why are they not responding to the megaphones?"
A female corporal beside him didn't look up from her screen. Her face was pale in the glow of her phone. "They made several posts on Shout-Out, sir. They've identified themselves as the Sons of the Earth. They're not responding because they aren't negotiating. They're calling this the 'Breaking of a New Dawn.'"
"Where is the ATS, anyway? We were supposed to have backup ten minutes ago!" The sergeant's eyes widened. "Uh-oh! Activity! Eleven o'clock!"
A dozen masked men, wearing tactical gear branded with a strange, stylised mountain symbol, stormed out of the dig site. Their automatic weapons began to bark—a sharp, rhythmic tat-tat-tat—but they didn't aim for the sky. They aimed for the engine blocks and the windshields.
The police scrambled, diving into the dirt, returning fire in a desperate, uncoordinated exchange. Amidst the smoke, a man with a megaphone stepped onto an overturned car.
"Behold!" his voice boomed, amplified and distorted. "The gods have returned! And we—the Sons of the Earth—are their emissaries. Behold, Lord Ile!"
The air seemed to grow heavy, the atmospheric pressure dropping so sharply that the corporal's ears popped. From the swirling amber dust of the excavation site, a figure emerged. He was tall, skin the colour of deep mahogany, draped in ancient warrior garb that looked like it had been woven from the roots of an Iroko tree.
He didn't walk; he glided. He surveyed the police line with a look of profound boredom, as if he were a giant looking at a line of ants that had dared to ruin his picnic.
"Who is this bozo?" the sergeant gasped, trying to find his courage through an insult.
The figure's head snapped toward the sergeant. His eyes weren't human—they were spheres of shifting sand and cracked stone.
"I am Ile," the figure declared, his voice vibrating in the chests of everyone present. "Your new lord. Your master. All of you... bow."
"Fire!" the sergeant screamed.
A policeman panicked and squeezed the trigger. To the millions watching on Shout-Out, it looked like a glitch in the matrix. Large chunks of asphalt erupted from the street in front of Ile, hovering in mid-air. They knit together into a floating, jagged shield. The bullets hit the stone with dull thuds, flattening and falling harmlessly to the ground.
"Not a single bullet is getting through!" the corporal shouted into her phone, the camera tilting wildly as she ducked.
Ile's lips curled into a sneer. "My turn."
He thrust both arms forward. The chunks of earth didn't fall; they ignited with kinetic energy, launching at the police line with the whistling scream of cannonballs. The Hiluxes were crumpled like soda cans. Screams tore through the air as the police line shattered, men and women diving into the gutters to escape the rain of stone.
Thirty Minutes Earlier
"We have to do something," Amina whispered. The sound was barely audible over the distant thud of gunfire.
Her phone had finally caught a bar of signal, and the four friends were huddled in the darkness of a half-collapsed trench. The "Shout-Out" feed was muted, but the silent images of Ile crushing the police were more terrifying than any sound.
Tade watched the gunmen guarding the perimeter. They were distracted, their faces lit by their own phones as they cheered for the monster they had unleashed. He looked at the two other stone slabs nearby—the ones the terrorists hadn't touched.
"Guys, I think we have to awaken those two," Tade said, his voice shaking. "Ile called them his nemesis—Ina and Omi. If the Earth One is this powerful, and he's still afraid of them... they are the only ones who can stand against him."
"Are you mental?" Edet hissed, grabbing Tade's arm. "Look at what he's doing! If we wake up two more, we might just be inviting more gods to kill us."
"He's already killing us, Edet!" Tade argued, pointing at the screen where a police van was being flipped into the air. "It's our only chance."
Fortune favours the desperate. The lead terrorist had left the Shard of the Source Stone sitting on a supply crate, glowing with a soft, rhythmic amber light.
Tade didn't think. If he thought, he would stay in the hole and die. He inched out from the debris, his stomach scraping the dirt. He snatched the stone. The moment his fingers closed around it, a shockwave of warmth pulsed through his arm. It wasn't burning—it felt like a heartbeat. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It was as if the stone was relieved to be held by him.
He crawled toward the first slab. The figure inside was a man frozen in a roar of defiance. Tade pressed the Shard to the stone.
"[Ina, ji dide. Ogede-atijo n pe o...]"
He didn't know where the words came from. They felt old, tasting like smoke and copper on his tongue.
The slab didn't break; it melted. From the liquid stone stepped a man who seemed to be made of cooling lava and living coal. He held twin blades that hummed with heat. Seconds later, Tade touched the second slab. Omi rose like a fountain of sapphire, her hair flowing like a waterfall that never hit the ground.
They stood in the dim light, looking at their hands, then at each other.
"[Where are we, Ina?]" Omi asked. Her voice sounded like the tide pulling back from the shore. "[How did we get to this strange place?]"
"[I was just awakened, too, Omi,]" Ina replied, his voice like the crackle of a forest fire. He looked at the modern debris—the plastic crates, the flashlights. "[None of these people speak with a tongue I know.]"
Tade stepped forward, his hands raised. "[Please. Our people... they are dying. The Earth One has lost his mind. We need your help.]"
The two ancients froze. They looked at the skinny teenager in the cracked glasses. To them, he was a blink in time, but he was speaking the language of their ancestors.
"[Ile is nearby,]" Ina snarled, his blades beginning to glow white. "[I wonder how long we have been asleep for the world to look this... grey.]"
Omi stepped closer to Tade, her presence cooling the humid Lagos air. "[You awakened us. How?]"
"[He has a piece of the Source Stone,]" Ina answered, pointing at Tade's hand.
Tade quickly explained—through broken sentences and gestures—how the gunmen had used the stone to "jumpstart" Ile.
"[Irin must have stalled Ile,]" Ina mused. His eyes flickered with a dark, complicated emotion.
Omi caught the look. "[Where is the Iron One?]"
Tade pointed toward a distant, heavily guarded tent. "The gunmen took one other statue. Ile called him Irin."
Omi looked at Ina, her face clouding. "[We are a circle. We need Irin.]"
"[I'll find him,]" Ina snapped. "[You stay here. Protect the Linguist.]"
Ina vanished into the smoke like a flicker of light. There were screams from the darkness, the sound of metal melting, and the heavy thud of bodies hitting the dirt. When he returned, he wasn't alone. Tunde and the excavation team stumbled out behind him, wide-eyed and trembling.
Tunde saw Tade and nearly collapsed with relief, but his eyes were fixed on Ina. "Tade... what have you done?"
Ina didn't look at them. He looked at Omi, his flames dimming to a low, sombre orange.
"[Irin is no more,]" Ina announced. "[His calcified form... it was shattered by the humans' machines during the dig. He is gone. It is just us.]"
Omi's face fell. The temperature in the trench dropped so sharply that Tade's breath misted in the air. But there was no time for a wake.
A roar echoed from the street above. The Earth was screaming.
Present Moment
"You puny humans refuse to bow?" Ile's roar was loud enough to crack the glass of the nearby skyscrapers. "Then I will bury you in the dirt you came from!"
He stomped his foot. The tremors were rhythmic, intentional. The asphalt ripped open like wet paper. People screamed as they fell into the widening gullet of the earth.
Ina and Omi vaulted onto the street. Ina didn't hesitate. He pulled the heat from the air, forming a massive sphere of white-hot plasma between his palms. He hurled it. Ile dodged with the grace of a dancer, the fireball melting a hole in a nearby bus instead.
Ile stomped again, trying to trigger a localised earthquake that would swallow the guardians whole.
"Omi! Find the deep veins!" Ina shouted, throwing a flurry of fireballs to keep Ile behind his earthen shield. "I'll burn the wall down!"
Omi crouched, her fingers digging into the broken road. She wasn't looking at the fight; she was listening to the hydrants, the sewers, and the deep, ancient aquifers miles below the Lagos crust.
Ina brought his fists together, unleashing a continuous beam of fire. It hit Ile's shield with the force of a jet engine. The stone began to glow red, then white, and then it started to crack.
But Ile was a master of the battlefield. He stopped the tremor and used the dust from his crumbling shield to create a blinding sandstorm. Ina stumbled, his flames sputtering as the oxygen was choked out of the air.
"I have you now, Fire-Starter!" Ile shouted. He levitated a boulder the size of a city bus, his face contorted with a mad, divine joy.
Before he could drop it on Ina, a massive jet of water—pressurised and cold—exploded from beneath Ile's feet. It sent the Lord of Earth tumbling into the air. Omi had found her vein.
Ile crashed back down into the mud, his ancient robes soaked. He was no longer bored. He was livid. He slammed both hands into the ground. A massive chasm—a literal canyon—split the street, separating Ina and Omi by thirty feet of empty air.
Ina was thrown back against a concrete pillar, the impact knocking the breath from his lungs. He looked at the chaos—the terrified kids, the dying police, and the absolute, unchecked power of the Earth Master.
He looked at Tade, who was shaking nearby.
Ina made a choice. He ran to the boy. "[Tade. The Stone.]"
Tade handed it over, his fingers brushing Ina's burning skin. The Shard began to scream—a high-pitched frequency that only Tade could hear.
Ina didn't turn back to help Omi. He didn't launch a final attack. He looked at the darkness of the excavation site and ran to it. Tade watched in horror as the Fire Master disappeared into the shadows, clutching the only power source they had.
He left us, Tade thought, his heart sinking into his stomach. The god of fire just ran away.