Ojadili felt the fear before he understood it.
The shadows did not rush him.
They let him absorb their impact.
Not fear—
recognition.
Ojadili trembled .
He did lost the earlier fight despite having the power of Amadioha, now the power had refuse to show what will happen to him .
The shadows did not move like things that hunted.
They adjusted.
Like they had always been there—
and were only now deciding to be seen.
The ground beneath him darkened—
not from absence of light—
but from something rising through it.
His breath shortened.
because something else had begun to share it.
Then—
they touched him.
Not all at once.
One hand first.
Cold—
but not empty.
It pressed against his wrist—
and for a moment—
he could not feel his own pulse.
Then another.
And another.
Not grabbing—
placing.
Positioning.
His arms lifted—
slowly—
not by force—
but by agreement his body did not remember making.
"No—"
The word did not come out.
His throat moved—
but the sound stayed inside.
Something was already there.
His chest tightened.
Not from pressure—
but from occupation.
His lungs expanded—
but the breath did not feel like his.
Then—
His jaw stretched—
wider—
then steadied.
The shadows gathered closer.
Not around him—
into him.
Hands—too many, cold and weightless yet impossibly strong—wrapped around his wrists, his ankles, his chest.
He was lifted from the ground, limbs forced outward, bound in a cruel symmetry, his body stretched and pinned as though skewered for fire.
And then—
they spoke.
Not in his ears.
Through his voice.
Layered.
Old men.
Women.
Children.
The cracked cries of newborns.
Voices that had never belonged in the same place—
forced into one sound.
Ojadili's eyes widened.
He tried to bite down.
To close his mouth—
to stop it—
but his body did not answer him.
His fingers twitched—
delayed.
Like signals traveling through something else first.
Inside his chest—
something shifted.
Not pain.
Not yet.
Alignment.
Like something adjusting him—
to fit.
His spine arched—
slightly—
then locked.
His legs spread—
not violently—
precisely.
Positioned.
Prepared.
Like a structure being assembled.
For a purpose he did not understand.
And then—
he felt it.
Not on his skin.
Not in his bones.
Deeper.
Something reaching—
past thought—
past memory—
into the place where his sense of self began.
And pressing.
Testing.
"How much of him is his?"
The voices asked—
still using him.
Still wearing him.
Ojadili screamed.
But nothing came out.
Because the scream—
was not his to make.
They approached— stretching longer as they moved, their edges tearing slightly against the earth like wet cloth dragged across stone.
The air thickened. His breath shortened.
The pressure burned.
Not pain alone—violation.
The shadows folded inward, merging now into him.
Trying to take over his body .
Ojadili could no longer tell where one ended and another began.
His mouth twitched.
His throat moved—
without permission.
And for a moment—
he felt it something else trying to wear his voice.
A chorus without language.
But not just Voice .
The whole of his body.
*****
"Ah… it's time for the second phase of daily training," Udonkanka muttered to himself as he crept out of his small homestead.
Ojadili and a few others had helped him build it when he first arrived—custom demanded that strangers be received, no matter how broken.
The village missed Udonkanka's jokes now that he was sober, though sometimes they paid him to entertain them anyway.
He never drank palm wine anymore.
Instead, he hid local gin.
As Udonkanka passed through the village toward Ojadili's home, he caught fragments of gossip drifting in the dark.
"The divine flames—gone." "All shrines. Every one." "Do you think they'll return?"
He shook his head and quickened his pace.
*****
"Leave me alone " Ojadili finally managed to scream as he resists thier voices making them incapable of fully bonding into him .
The command came from everywhere at once.
Ojadili was unsure if he should be —begging or threatening, he wasn't sure—but the thought begins to die
in his mind as he begins to loose his personality.
Yet Ojadili's will was the only thing fighting trying it's best to avoid the shadows total bonding into Ojadili.
The shadows pulled out from him a bit as they are incapable to totally bond to him
Fangs emerged where faces should have been.
"You will do to the gods exactly as we tell you," the voices said, "or—"
The fangs inched nearer.
Sharp.
Brutal.
And soul piercing.
Not just trying to scare Ojadili but also his will to resist them.
Udonkanka reached where Ojadili's being attacked.
The air changed before Udonkanka saw it.
Not darker—
wrong.
Like the night had shifted out of place.
Udonkanka stopped breathing.
His body remembered before his mind did.
That same cold.
That same silence that listened back.
His legs refused to move.
For a moment—
he almost turned back.
"No… no… I need to run," Udonkanka whispered, freezing at the edge of the clearing.
He remembered the last time.
The cold.
The darkness.
His hands trembled.
Then something inside him hardened.
"No," he said again, louder. "This is the time to use what I've learned."
Udonkanka saw him—
and froze.
Ojadili was not struggling.
That was the first wrong thing.
His will had been weakened as the shadows now fully overtakes his body.
Arms raised.
Head tilted slightly back—
mouth open—
as if waiting to receive something.
And the shadows—
were not attacking him.
They were working.
He rushed forward—straight into the void of shadow—pulled the flask from his bag, took a mouthful of the local gin, and spat.
The reaction was instant.
A scream tore through the night—raw, unified, furious.
The shadows recoiled, loosening their bond.
Ojadili crashed to the ground, gasping, ribs screaming in protest.
Udonkanka froze.
Only then did he see Ojadili.
He tried to hide the flask.
"Do it again!" Ojadili rasped , weakened.
Saliva pours out from his mouth.
Udonkanka spat again.
The moment the liquid touched them—
they recoiled.
Not outward—
inward.
Like something had been forced out of alignment.
The voices broke.
Not into silence—
into fragments.
Incomplete.
Angry.
Denied.
They didn't see it coming.
The shadows fled, unraveling into the twilight as if dragged backward by an unseen tide.
Silence fell.
It felt watched.
Like whatever had touched him—
had not gone far.
Ojadili did not stand immediately.
He listened.
Not with his ears—
but with the part of him that had just been touched.
Waiting—
to see if it would reach again.
"Thanks," Ojadili said weakly, exhaling.
"So… you're not angry?" Udonkanka asked, voice trembling. "That I still drink… behind you?"
"You saved my life," Ojadili said. "That matters more."
He winced, touching the red marks blooming across his body.
"When I said stop drinking, I meant excess. I know how it works. One sip becomes habit. Habit becomes hunger. Hunger becomes you again."
Udonkanka lowered his eyes.
"But it's okay," Ojadili continued. "We'll finish your training. We'll still be friends."
A pause.
"I missed your jokes."
Relief flooded Udonkanka's face.
" Let me take a piss first " udonkanka excuses himself for a minute .
He whispered something to a young boy on errand.
Minutes later, palm wine arrived.
They drank .
Udonkanka took a long breath, looked at the darkness where the shadows had vanished, then shook his head.
"You see why I stopped drinking palm wine?" he said
"Even evil spirits know bad breath when they meet it."
Ojadili laughed—once, short and broken.
"Next time," Udonkanka added, lifting the cup, "I'll charge them. Fear is expensive these days."
Ugomma and Obiagheli arrived.
Ugomma stopped cold when she saw the marks.
Her anger was immediate.
Obiagheli sensing what's to happens knows that the two lovers needs space and also she and udonkanka needs .
She steals him away as they leave .
He grabbed the wine before she dragged him away.
Ugomma made a loyalty gesture to Udonkanka.
He's the one who sent the kid earlier to call ugomma as he thinks that's what Ojadili needs at the moment not him.
"I was attacked again," Ojadili said simply.
"But why only you?" Ugomma demanded. "What did you do to them? Are they tied to your… return from death?"
"I didn't tell you everything," Ojadili said.
He told her all of it.
Line by line.
No omissions.
Not once did he stop.
Not once did he soften it.
He gave it to her exactly as it had happened.
And with every word—
something inside him felt less his.
When he finished, the night felt heavier.
"And Chi?" Ugomma asked desperately.
"No," Ojadili said. "He lied. Twisted the truth. If you had asked me, I would have told you."
She nodded.
"I'm not judging you," she said. "I'm...I'm with you."
But her voice was not steady.
Not from doubt—
but from fear.
Not of him—
but of what was now attached to him.
"Good," Ojadili said exhausted.
But it did not sound like relief.
She stepped closer.
For a moment—
neither of them spoke.
The night pressed around them.
Too quiet.
Too aware.
Ojadili did not feel safe.
But he also did not want to feel alone.
" I think I should take better care of you " ugomma made romantic gestures towards Ojadili as he immediately felt the impulse .
Ojadili generational load wakes to view as he drags her into his home .
The village slept uneasily.
Elsewhere, the Chief Priest stood in his shrine, staring at the unmoving divine water.
"If I cannot bring him to the shrine," he said, gripping his staff, "then I will bring the shrine to him."
He stepped into the night.
The gods had gone silent on him.
So he is no longer going to ask them.
He would force his decision.
Even if it meant breaking what little remained between man—
and what watched above.