CHAPTER ONE — THE OMEN AT DAWN
Dawn broke reluctantly over Aiyegun village, its first light crawling like a shy child across rooftops of rusted zinc. The morning was quiet, too quiet for the season of harvest. The birds that usually fought for the first chirp kept an uneasy silence, as though waiting for something older, darker, to speak first.
And it did.
A heavy thunder tore through the village. Palms paused mid-sweep. Goats froze mid-chew. Mothers exchanged glances. The elders frowned at the sky.
Only one person did not look confused—Iya Arike, the oldest woman in Aiyegun, whose back had bent but whose eyes had not dimmed. She whispered a name that tasted like ancient iron. “Abẹ́lẹ́jayán… the land is stirring again.”
Arike, a young woman with eyes sharp enough to cut fabric and a spirit restless as wind, had never believed the old stories. She grew up hearing about Abẹ́lẹ́jayán — the spirit-child who steals blessings, the shadow who walks without footsteps, the hunter who hunts the living.
But stories were for entertainment. Fear was for children.
Until her mother, on her dying bed, had grabbed her wrist with a strength illness shouldn’t have allowed and whispered: “Before this year ends, the land will call… and it will call your name. Run when you can. Fight if you must. But never answer directly.”
Arike had laughed then, thinking it grief speaking. But now, years later, as she stepped out of her doorway and saw the villagers gathered around a strange mark burned into the dusty ground, she felt her mother’s voice return in a cold whisper.The mark was a circle. Inside it was the image of a curled fetus, drawn with such precision no human hand could have carved it in sand.
Arike’s heart thudded.
Abẹ́lẹ́jayán. The spirit of unborn debts.The reminder that all promises—even forgotten ones—demand payment.
Till next time…
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