In 1964, a child born during a solar eclipse

weeps black tears at his naming ceremony. His

father, a Yoruba schoolmaster, calls him

Oluwaseun—the chosen one—but the village elders

bury him in a tin roof before he turns three.

By 1965, Oluwaseun walks the slums of Lagos as a

barefoot messenger for a shadowy trading ring

that deals in relics, promises, and secrets. He

speaks only in coded riddles. When he chants,

women faint. Men whisper: “He sees what hasn’t

happened.”

He meets Adaora—a pastor’s daughter from Enugu

who returns to Lagos after her father’s sudden

death. She wears a red headwrap like fire. They

meet at a roadside stall where she buys roasted

yam and he slips her a paper folded like a bird.

On it, two words: “Don’t go.”

The next day, she vanishes.

Her name appears in a ledger kept by the trader

who owns Oluwaseun—his price, his bloodline, his

future. The ledger has no entries for lovers.

Only debts. Only sins.

Oluwaseun breaks the rule: he opens the ledger.

Inside, every page holds a woman’s photo, each

marked with a date of disappearance. All were

daughters of pastors. All disappeared after

being seen with men from the city’s new class of

“area boys”—men with sharp suits and no names.

The trader beats him. But when Oluwaseun screams

in Igbo, the walls tremble. The lights flicker.

A power outage crashes the entire district.

The ledger burns itself.

In the ash, a single name remains: Adaora.

Oluwaseun runs to the old cathedral on Ojuelegba

Road. There, under the cracked dome, he finds

her—alive, chained to the altar, eyes open but

unseeing. Her mouth moves. No sound comes out.

He touches her forehead. The vision floods him:

not her death, but her life. She had been

reading scripture aloud in the dark when she

heard a voice say “You are mine.” She ran. She

was taken.

He smashes the chain with a rusted iron rod.

She collapses. He carries her through the

flooded streets as sirens wail. At dawn, he

leaves her at a clinic near the railway station.

The nurse checks her pulse—she’s breathing.

But when the doctor looks up, he sees Oluwaseun

standing in the doorway—no longer a boy.

His face is gone.

Only a book remains in his hands. It is blank.

And in the wall behind the door, someone has

carved a single word: “Remember.”