The dawn over the Atlantic was not golden; it was a bruised, metallic grey that bled into the hazy horizon.
Femi woke with his face pressed against the cold concrete. Every muscle in his body felt as though it had been replaced by rusted wire. He tried to move his hand, but his fingers were locked in a claw-like grip, a lingering ghost of the effort it took to seal the tower.
Beside him, Lola was still asleep, her breathing shallow and jagged. Even in rest, she looked like she was fighting. Small, erratic sparks of violet static danced between her fingertips, occasionally scorching the cement floor.
Femi dragged himself upright, his joints popping like dry wood. He looked toward the center of the floor where he had reinforced the stairwell. The stone was silent. No one had tried to break through yet, but the silence felt like a coiled spring.
He crawled toward the edge of the unfinished skyscraper. The wind up here was a constant, mournful whistle. Fifty stories below, the city was waking up. He could see the tiny, ant-like movements of cars on the coastal road and the white foam of the waves hitting the reclaimed shoreline.
He reached into his mind, trying to feel for the connection he had made with the Wardens back in Surulere.
He gasped as the connection snapped back like a taut rubber band. It was like touching a live wire. He didn't see the room; he felt the *weight* of it. The clay he had used to anchor them was no longer just mud—it had become a part of their circulatory systems. He could feel two heartbeats, slow and heavy, vibrating through the earth itself.
"Femi?"
Lola was awake. She was sitting up, rubbing her eyes, her hair a wild, tangled mess. She looked small against the vast backdrop of the ocean.
"They're alive," Femi rasped, his voice sounding like it had been dragged through sand. "But the anchor is draining me. I can feel them, Lola. Every breath they take is pulling from my own."
Lola moved toward him, her expression a mix of awe and terror. "Is that why you look like... like you've aged ten years overnight?"
Femi caught his reflection in a shard of glass near the edge. His hair, usually a deep black, was streaked with ash-grey at the temples. His eyes were sunken, the skin around them dark and bruised.
"The Council designed the Wardens to be temporary cages," Femi explained. "By forcing them to stay human, I'm fighting a divine expiration date. I'm holding a door shut that the universe wants to open."
Lola knelt in front of him, taking his hands in hers. The static didn't shock him this time; it felt like a warm, humming current that temporarily eased the ache in his bones.
"Then we find a way to make it permanent," she said, her voice hardening. "We find whoever knows how to fix this. Not Adeyemi, and not the Hunter. Someone else."
"Who?" Femi asked. "The only people who know about *ase* are either hunting us or hiding from us."
Lola looked out at the city. Her gaze fixed on the dense, low-rise sprawl of the mainland, far beyond the gleaming towers of the Island.
"The market," she whispered. "My mother used to take me to the deep parts of Balogun Market. Not the places where they sell lace and shoes. The places where the air smells like sulfur and dried herbs. She used to talk to a woman there—an old woman who sold 'bits of yesterday.' I always thought she was just a herbalist."
Femi frowned. "An Elewe-Omo?"
"More than that. My mother feared her, but she respected her. If there's anyone left in this city who remembers the old laws without wanting to enforce them, it's her."
A low, vibrating hum began to resonate through the concrete floor.
Femi froze. It wasn't the wind. It was a frequency. A sonar ping.
"They found us," Femi said, scrambling to his feet. He grabbed his stone blade from the floor. The orange light in the etchings was dim, flickering like a dying candle.
"How?" Lola asked, her hands already beginning to stir the air. "You sealed the building!"
"Technology," Femi spat. "Adeyemi doesn't need to break the door if he can just scan the structure for divine heat."
Above them, the sky began to ripple. A stealth drone, invisible to the naked eye but outlined by the shimmering heat of its thrusters, descended toward the open floor. It wasn't carrying cameras. It was carrying a payload of glowing, green canisters.
"Gas!" Lola yelled.
She didn't wait for the canisters to drop. She threw her arms out, creating a massive, outward-facing wall of wind. The drone was caught in the turbulence, spinning wildly, but it managed to release its cargo.
The canisters shattered against the pillars, releasing a thick, emerald mist that didn't behave like gas. It moved like a predator, seeking out the gaps in Lola's wind, crawling along the floor toward their feet.
"It's not poison," Femi realized, his scientific intuition screaming a warning. "It's an inhibitor! Lola, don't let it touch you!"
As the mist neared, Femi felt his connection to the earth falter. The heavy, comforting weight of the concrete felt like it was slipping through his fingers.
They were being neutralized.
"Jump!" Femi roared.
"What?"
"We can't fight here! The mist is killing our *ase*! We have to get to the ground!"
Lola looked at the fifty-story drop, then at the creeping green mist. She grabbed Femi's hand, her eyes flashing one last time with a defiant purple light.
"I hope you're good at landing, Sculptor!"
They didn't fly this time. They plunged.
As they plummeted toward the surf of the Atlantic, Femi focused every last ounce of his remaining strength into the water below. He didn't want to hit the liquid like it was concrete. He needed to change the surface tension. He needed to turn the ocean into a cradle.
The wind screamed in their ears as the world turned into a blur of grey sky and blue water. Just before impact, Femi felt the ocean respond—a deep, ancient pulse that welcomed its exiled son home.