EKPOMA CITY— THE HOTEL RUINS — SAME TIME
The sky was grey.
The hotel where Scotto had first manifested still stood—barely. Broken windows. Cracked walls. The city had rebuilt around it, but the building itself had never been the same. Something lingered. Something dark.
The Lord stood in the lobby, holding a blue dagger loosely in his right hand. Not his Gift. Hope's. A beacon. A promise.
Sonia stood beside him, her dark hair falling past her shoulders, her eyes closed.
"Finally," the Lord said.
Sonia opened her eyes.
A Darkness poured into them—not shadow, not smoke, absence. It swirled, contracted, and disappeared. The room grew colder.
The Lord rang his bell.
The world shifted.
They were in Benin.
---
PORT HARCOURT — THE SUV
Marcel had found a clearing.
The fighting was distant now—muffled explosions, the crash of falling debris, the occasional scream. He had driven until the road ended, then kept going, until the trees closed around them and the city became a memory.
Ruth sat in the back seat, her hands folded in her lap. Rachel sat beside her, staring out the window.
"Mom," Rachel said.
"I know."
"Do you want to forget?"
Ruth didn't answer.
Marcel opened his Bible. The pages were soft, worn, marked with years of use. He found the passage—Psalms, the old words, the ones that had sealed Ruth's memories once before.
"I'm ready," he said.
He began to chant.
The words were old. Older than the Covenant. Older than Phobias. They resonated in the air, vibrating through the glass, through the metal, through the bodies of the women in the back seat.
Ruth closed her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said to Rachel.
"Don't be."
"I should have told you."
"You couldn't."
"I should have tried."
The chant continued. Ruth's face relaxed. The tension in her shoulders eased. The memories—Joseph, the Covenant, the Phobias, the life she had fled—began to fade.
Marcel's face turned blue.
Not pale. Blue. His lips. His fingertips. The whites of his eyes.
He stopped chanting.
He fell.
Hope stood behind him, her blue daggers humming. Embedded in Marcel's back.
"No one cares what kind of personality you are on the battlefield," she said. "All sorcerers are frauds."
She pulled her dagger from Marcel's spine. He didn't move.
Ruth screamed.
Rachel grabbed her mother's arm, pulled her out of the SUV, and ran.
Hope didn't chase. She raised her dagger. The other one—the one the Lord had been holding in Ekpoma—pulled her toward it.
She vanished.
Rachel and Ruth vanished with her.
David landed between them.
Green lightning crackled along his body—Hearth's Glimmer, borrowed, fading. His arm was gone. His clothes were torn. But he was there.
His hand closed on empty air.
"No—"
He spun. The clearing was empty. The SUV was empty. Marcel lay on the ground, face down, not moving.
Ivie stepped out of the trees just arriving. Her face was blank. Her hands were still wet. The blood of her brother was still drying on her skin.
"David."
"She took them."
"....."
"She took them, Ivie."
Ivie didn't answer. She just stood there, waiting for him to process what neither of them could change.
Ezra emerged from the treeline behind them just arriving too. His suit was torn. His face was bruised. His Gift was silent.
"We need to go."
"Go where?" David's voice cracked.
"Benin. They're not here anymore."
David looked at Marcel. At Ivie. At the empty space where Rachel and Ruth had been.
He didn't scream. He didn't cry. He just stood there, frozen, his one hand still reaching for nothing.
---
BENIN — COVENANT BASE — MAIN ROOM
The main room was quiet.
Jonathan sat on the couch, his gauntlets dormant, his hands wrapped around a cup of tea he hadn't touched. Praise stood by the window, watching the street. Joy was on her phone, texting Eloghosa, waiting for a reply that wouldn't come.
Osagie paced.
"Sit down," Jonathan said.
"I can't."
"You're making me nervous."
"You're always nervous."
"I'm not—"
"What are you saying sef."
"Abeg shut up."
Joy's eyes went glassy.
Not tired. Not distracted. Wrong. The same wrong as at saint philomena hospital. The same wrong as Fiss.
"Joy?"
She didn't answer.
A bell rang.
The room shifted.
The walls moved.
Not crumbled. Not collapsed. Reconfigured. The hallway that led to the armory stretched into darkness. The staircase that went up now went sideways. The ceiling became a floor. The floor became a wall.
Osagie spun, trying to orient himself. Jonathan grabbed Praise's arm, pulling her back from a window that was suddenly a doorway. Joy stood frozen, her glassy eyes tracking nothing.
A woman —Choima—in a white suit entered.
Choima opened her red purse.
The world burst.
Phobias poured out first—mindless, hungry, crawling over the floors and walls. Hosts followed, their twisted contracts flaring, their eyes empty. Hybrids walked through the chaos, their forms shifting between human and something else. And then the humans came—ordinary people, weeping, screaming, some fighting, some frozen.
Tens of thousands if not more. The base flooded.
"DAMN YOU TRAITOR,JOY! " Osagie shouted.
Choima smiled.
"Me??."
The Lord stood in the center of the chaos, Sonia beside him, Hope—now holding both her daggers—at his flank. Angel and Jeremiah moved through the crowd of summoned creatures, white suits immaculate, faces unreadable.
Rachel and Ruth were with them. Bound. Silent. Alive.
Osagie moved.
His red glove flared and he snapped his fingers. He teleported twenty meters forward—closing distance, reaching for Rachel's arm.
Choima closed her purse.
The Lord rang his bell.
The base screamed.
Rooms folded into each other. Hallways spiraled into impossible knots. The main room became a corridor became a staircase became a void. Osagie landed where the Lord had been. The Lord was already somewhere else.
"Where are they? Call Eloghosa now" Jonathan shouted.
Praise's Afterglow flickered—not gold, grey. The base was shifting faster than she could track.
"I can't—it's moving too fast—"
A wave of Phobias crashed into them. Jonathan's gauntlets flared. Praise's bolts flew. Osagie teleported, reappeared, teleported again.
Choima watched. Unmoved.
The Lord was gone.
JOSEPH'S ROOM—SAME BASE—
Joseph sat in his chair.
He hadn't left this room in years. The walls were bare. The window was painted over. The only light came from a single bulb, hanging from the ceiling, swaying slightly.
The door didn't open. The wall did.
A section of plaster folded inward, becoming an archway. The Lord stepped through. Sonia followed. Hope pushed Rachel and Ruth inside.
Joseph's eyes widened.
"Ruth?"
"Joseph."
Ruth recognized him. Her memories were jolted back to the love of her life. Her face was blank.
The Lord smiled.
"Long time no see, Joseph."
Joseph's gaze shifted to the man who had once been his friend. His brother in arms. The man who had destroyed everything.
"Aslam."
"You're Aslam?"Ruth said
"Hello Ruth. I've been waiting to meet you for a long time. Joseph, say goodbye." Aslam replied.
"ASLAM NOOO!!!!."Joseph screamed
The Lord's smile didn't waver.
He touched Ruth's shoulder.
She turned into a bone tree.
Not slowly. Not painfully. Instantly. Her body cracked, elongated, branched. White bone pushed through her skin, her clothes, her face. Her eyes—still open, still human—stared at Joseph for a heartbeat.
Then they hardened into wood.
Rachel screamed and then laughed mockingly as tears rolled down her cheeks and her eyes flickered red.
"Hello there Err." Lord said.
She fell to her knees, reaching for her mother, but Hope held her back.
Joseph didn't move.
He just stared at the tree where his wife had been.
"Now," the Lord said, "let's talk."
---
BACK AT PORT HARCOURT
David knelt beside Marcel.
The healing vial was empty. Marcel's color was returning—slowly, too slowly—but his eyes were open.
"What happened?" Marcel asked.
"You got stabbed," David said.
"Again?"
"Again."
Ivie stood apart, her back to them. Her hands were still wet. She hadn't spoken since they found her.
Ezra leaned against a tree, his arms crossed, his face unreadable. His Gift was still silent. His body was still recovering.
David stood.
He looked at Ivie. She didn't turn.
He looked at Ezra. Ezra's gaze was somewhere else—Benin, probably, or the past, or a future that no longer existed.
"Did we just lose?"
No one answered.
The wind blew through the clearing. Somewhere, far away, a building was still burning.
"Did we just lose?" David asked again.
Ezra spoke.
"We haven't lost yet."
"They have Rachel. They have Ruth. They have—"
"We haven't lost yet."
David's one hand curled into a fist.
"Then what do we do?"
Ezra pushed off the tree.
"We go home."
He started walking.
Marcel stood slowly, pressing a hand to his wound. Ivie followed without a word.
David stood alone in the clearing, his arm gone, his Faith drained, his friends scattered.
He looked at the sky.
It was grey.
He walked after them.