POV: Kunle "Scrap King" Adeyemi
The Dumps of Ago-Iwoye never slept.
They coughed. They screamed. They bled rust.
At 3:17 AM, the rain came down like broken wires, sizzling on hot metal. I was knee-deep in a mountain of corpses that used to be cars, drones, and God only knew what pandora Dynamics dumped here when they were done harvesting them.
My name is Kunle Adeyemi.Twenty-one.No family.No papers.No decent future that life would give me.
But I had hands And in 2147, hands that could fix were worth more than prayers.
"Scrap King," the other dump-rats called me. Because I could look at a pile of junk and see the weapon inside it,working my way to make the most treacherous devices you could think of in minutes
But Tonight I was looking for something else.
A rumor,A red light.
"Three blocks in, past the leviathan hull," Old Taju had wheezed yesterday before the Corp took him. "Red core.still humming. Don't touch it, boy. That's not scrap. That's god-stuff.he shouted at me to the point i thought the old bastard had finally lost it.
Old taju wasn't so loved in the slumps,having a record for been a blackhearted trader,serves him right for catching the eyes of the great hegemon that his pandora dynamics
God-stuff. Right.(I scoffed inwardly)
Since "The Silence" 100 years ago, when Olodumare went quiet and the sky turned white, people had been desperate for anything divine. The mega-corps built God-Machines to fake it. The cults sold fake Àṣẹ in bottles and terror and chaos reign all around
This is a dog eat dog era
I just wanted enough credits to get out of this pit.
The smell of ozone hit me first. Then the hum. Low. Like a heartbeat.
There. Buried under a collapsed pandora hauler.
A sphere. About the size of my fist. Red,pulsing. Cracks of black light running through it like veins. It wasn't warm. It was cold,The rain around it evaporated before it touched the surface.
Ọ̀gún's iron.
The word came from nowhere. My mouth said it before my brain did.
I reached for it.
The sky tore open.
"UNAUTHORIZED DIVINE SIGNATURE DETECTED. TERMINATE."
Three pandora Enforcer Drones dropped from the clouds. Sleek,Black. Each one with a Thunder Cannon mounted on the shoulder. Corp issue. Meant to kill Demi-Gods.
Meant to kill me.
"Drop the asset, civilian," the lead drone buzzed. "Or be recycled."
My heart slammed against my ribs. I was Initiate level at best. I could fix a carburetor and hotwire a truck. I couldn't fight that monstrosity
The core pulsed in my hand. Once.
Pain shot up my arm,Not burning.forging,like someone was hammering my bones on an anvil.
Visions. Flash.
A man with a hundred arms, all holding hammers. A road cut through a mountain. Blood on iron. A voice, ancient and tired"the path is broken. Forge it anew."
Then the pain stopped And the anger came.
"I'm not a civilian," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine,it sounded deeper. Older. "I'm a smith.
The first drone fired.
I moved or the core moved me.
I threw myself behind the hauler as blue lightning tore the spot I was standing. The heat washed over me and peeled paint off the metal.
Second shot. Third.
I had maybe ten seconds.
The core was burning now, but not me. It was feeding me. I felt it in my teeth. In my marrow. Àṣẹ: Divine authority. The thing cultivators spent decades meditating to get a drop of.
I had a flood.
Scrap surrounded me. Tons of it. Twisted rebar, engine blocks, drone limbs.
"Path of Ọ̀gún,I whispered. The words felt right. "Iron, obey."
The rebar moved
It ripped itself from the ground and slammed into the first drone. Crushed it. Sparks and hydraulic fluid.
The other two drones pivoted.
"Threat level upgraded. Lethal force authorized."
They fired together.
I grabbed a car door and swung. Not with muscle. With Àṣẹ. The door became an iron shield, glowing red. The lightning hit it and I screamed,My arm bones felt like they were melting.
The shield held. For one second. Then shattered.
Shrapnel went into my side. Three pieces. Hot. I hit the ground, tasting blood and copper.
Near death. That was the word for it. I could feel it. The cold coming in.
The drones hovered over me.
"Target neutralized. Recover core."
The core was still in my hand. It was screaming now. Not with sound. With need.
_Forge_, it said. _Or be broken._
I looked at my arm. The shrapnel. The blood.
Ọ̀gún didn't heal. Ọ̀gún took what was broken and made it stronger.
"Fine," I choked. "Then forge me.
I drove my hand into my own wound.
The pain was white. I pulled the shrapnel out and slammed it, with the core, into the open flesh of my forearm.
The core melted.
It poured into me like liquid metal. Down my veins. Into my bones.
The last thing I saw before black was the drones. Their cannons charging.
Then fire.
I woke up to the smell of burnt circuitry.
Dawn. The rain had stopped.
I was standing.
My left arm was... different. From elbow to wrist, it was iron. Not a prosthetic. Veins of red light ran under the metal skin. Where my hand should be, there were five fingers of layered plating. And in the palm, a faint red glow.The core.
The two remaining drones were scrap around me. Melted. Twisted. Like something had wrung them out.
My side didn't hurt. The wounds were closed, sealed with scar tissue that had iron flecks in it.
I flexed my new arm. It moved. Heavy. Perfect. I could feel the metal in the ground 20 meters away. I could feel the shape of things. What they could become.
A vision hit me. Not gentle like before. A command.
Above.
I looked up. Past the haze and smog. Past the pandora tower in the distance.
From up there, Ago-Iwoye wasn't a city. It was a machine. Gears of roads. Pipes of rivers. And at the center, a black spire drinking the sky.
A higher standpoint.
"The treacherous man sits on the throne," the voice in my head said. It was mine, but not. "He harvests gods. You will unmake him.
Then it was gone.
Footsteps.
I turned, iron arm raised.
A kid. Maybe 12. Dump-rat. Eyes wide.
"Scrap King?" he whispered. "Is that... is that you?"
I looked at my arm. At the wreckage. At the red light in my palm.
"Yeah," I said. My voice was my own again. But underneath it, something else. A hammer. Waiting. "It's me."
The kid pointed to the sky. More dots. More drones. Coming.
I smiled. It hurt.
"Then we better forge something," I said.
And the Iron Path began.