The safehouse was not safe.

  Ojie knew it the moment he woke up. It wasn't a sound that alerted him, the Market of Whispers was never truly quiet, a constant background hum of distant arguments and water lapping against wood.

  It was the silence beneath the noise.

  The spiritual static of the city, the thousand tiny prayers, the friction of charms, the ambient hum of the Python shrines had vanished. It was as if a heavy wool blanket had been thrown over the soul of the world.

  Ojie sat up in the dark loft. His hand found the hilt of his sword instantly.

  "Dele?" he whispered, the name slipping out before he remembered. Dele was gone.

  "What is it?" Y?misí’s voice came from the other side of the room. She was awake too, sitting up on her mat, a dagger in her hand.

  "Something is wrong," Ojie said. "The air feels... dead."

  He stood up, moving to the window. He peered through the slats. The market below was empty. The lanterns still burned, but their light seemed thin, unable to push back the shadows that pooled in the corners.

  Down on the street, the stray dogs that usually fought over scraps were gone. The rats had vanished. Even the insects had ceased their chirping.

  Then he saw it.

  A shadow detached itself from the darkness of an alleyway. It didn't move like a man. It glided, a silhouette cut from the fabric of the night. It had no features, no face, only a smooth, white mask that reflected no light.

  Then another shadow slid down the wall of the building opposite them. And a third rose from the water of the canal, dripping oil that turned into smoke before it hit the wood.

  The Iparun? Ojie thought.

  No. The Iparun were hunters. They used hounds and hawks. These things... these things felt like the emptiness he had seen in his father’s eyes before the end.

  "We are found," Ojie hissed. "Move."

  Y?misí scrambled up, grabbing her satchel. Ebose, the young guard, was already at the door, his crossbow raised.

  "The back stairs," Y?misí ordered.

  Ebose kicked the door open.

  The darkness outside the door surged inward. It wasn't just shadow; it was a physical force, a cold wind that smelled of ozone and nothingness.

  A white porcelain mask lunged out of the gloom.

  Ebose fired. The bolt took the figure in the chest. It should have punched through lung and bone. Instead, the bolt passed through the figure as if it were made of smoke, clattering harmlessly against the far wall.

  The figure didn't slow. It reached out a hand—a hand with fingers that were too long, tapering to needle points. It touched Ebose’s chest.

  There was no blood. There was only a sound like a candle being snuffed out. Ebose’s eyes rolled back, turning grey, and he crumpled to the floor, dead before he hit the wood.

  "Ebose!" Ojie shouted.

  He charged. He drew the iron sword, the metal scraping loud in the muffled room. He swung a two-handed decapitating strike at the figure in the doorway.

  The blade passed through the shadow. It felt like swinging through freezing water. The momentum nearly carried Ojie off his feet.

  The figure turned its blank mask toward him.

  Ojie felt a cold pressure in his mind, a psychic weight pressing down on his thoughts. End, a voice whispered, not in his ears, but in his marrow. Cease.

  He staggered back. The itch in his shoulders flared, but it was weak, muffled. He tried to call on the Lion. Wake up. Fight.

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  Nothing happened. The connection was there, but it was like trying to shout underwater. The Void dampened everything.

  "Spirit magic doesn't work on them!" Y?misí screamed. She threw an oil lamp.

  The clay pot shattered against the figure’s chest. The oil ignited. Fire, at least, was real. The figure recoiled, its form flickering and hissing as the flames licked at its smoky substance.

  "The window!" Ojie grabbed Y?misí’s arm.

  They didn't climb; they jumped. They crashed through the rotten shutters and fell ten feet to the wooden walkway below. Ojie landed in a roll, jarring his knees, dragging Y?misí up.

  They ran.

  The Market of Whispers was a labyrinth of stalls and hanging cloth. They sprinted down the main alley, knocking over baskets of dried fish.

  Behind them, the three figures dropped from the safehouse balcony. They hit the ground with the sound of wet silk. They didn't run; they flowed, moving unnaturally fast, closing the distance.

  "What are they?" Ojie gasped.

  "Legends," Y?misí panted, her face pale with terror. "Void Walkers. They shouldn't exist. The Binding... the Binding forbids them."

  They turned a corner and ran straight into a dead end. A canal blocked the path, the bridge that should have been there missing, likely washed away or stolen for firewood.

  The water below was black and deep.

  Ojie spun around. The three Void Walkers stood at the mouth of the alley. They spread out, blocking the exit. The fire from the lamp had gone out. They were unmarked.

  There was nowhere to run.

  "Get behind me," Ojie said.

  He stepped forward. He held the iron sword in a guard position, though he knew now it was useless. Iron could not cut smoke.

  The lead Walker stepped forward. It tilted its masked head.

  It lunged.

  Ojie didn't strike. He dropped the sword. He clenched his fists and screamed.

  He didn't scream for help. He screamed at his own blood. He screamed at the blockage in his soul, the fear that had kept him small for twenty years. He screamed at the dampening field of the Void.

  He pushed. He didn't pull power from the atmosphere as there was none. He pushed from the inside out. He burned his own life force, his own memories, his own rage.

  Pain exploded in his chest. It felt like his ribs were breaking outward. The tattoo on his back didn't just heat up; it caught fire.

  His vision went red, then gold.

  The dampening field shattered.

  Ascension.

  It was an eruption.

  Ojie’s eyes turned from brown to a blinding, molten gold. His pupils constricted into vertical slits. His fingernails elongated, turning into translucent, razor-sharp claws of spiritual energy. The skin of his arms hardened, taking on the texture of golden hide.

  STAGE FOUR: THE CALL.

  For the first time, the Lion did not just lend him strength. It answered.

  Ojie roared.

  It was a sound that shattered the palm trees and wooden roofs of the nearby huts. It was a physical shockwave of sound and spirit pressure.

  The Void Walkers faltered. For a second, their smoky forms solidified, forced into matter by the sheer density of Ojie’s presence.

  They were solid.

  Ojie moved. He was faster than he thought, purely on instincts. He closed the distance in a blur of motion.

  He didn't use the sword. He used his hands.

  He caught the lead Walker by the throat. His claws sank into the shadowy flesh, and this time, there was resistance. This time, there was meat.

  The Walker thrashed, its touch trying to drain him, but Ojie was a furnace. He was too hot to touch.

  "Burn," Ojie snarled.

  He ripped.

  He tore the throat out of the shadow. Black ichor sprayed across his face, hissing like acid. The Walker dissolved, shrieking a sound that wasn't human, fading into a stain on the wood.

  The other two attacked. One swept a hand at Ojie’s face. Ojie caught the wrist, snapped it, and drove his knee into the thing's midsection.

  He spun, his leg sweeping out, heavy with the weight of the beast. He kicked the legs out from under the third Walker.

  As it fell, Ojie grabbed his iron sword from the ground. Now, infused with the golden aura of his Stage Four bond, the iron glowed red-hot.

  He drove the blade down. It pierced the white porcelain mask. The mask shattered. Beneath it, there was no face, only a swirling vortex of grey mist.

  The sword pinned the thing to the dock. It writhed, then dissipated into nothingness.

  Silence slammed back into the alley.

  Ojie stood panting, his chest heaving. The golden light clinging to his skin began to fade, flickering out like a dying ember. The claws retracted. His eyes returned to brown, though they were bloodshot and wild.

  He fell to his knees. The cost of the ascension hit him a wave of exhaustion so profound it felt like dying. He retched, spitting blood onto the wood.

  "Ojie!"

  Y?misí was there. She touched his shoulder, her hands trembling. She looked at the black stain where the first Walker had died. She looked at him with a mixture of awe and absolute terror.

  "Stage Four," she whispered. "You... you broke the Void."

  Ojie wiped his mouth. His hand was shaking uncontrollably.

  "They know," he rasped. “... they... it knows I am here."

  He tried to stand, but his legs refused. Y?misí hauled him up, draping his arm over her shoulder.

  "We have to move," she said. "The explosion... every priest in the city heard that. The Iparun will be here in minutes."

  A shadow fell over them from the rooftops above.

  Ojie flinched, trying to raise his sword, but he had nothing left.

  A figure landed on the walkway. It was not a Void Walker. It was a woman in the white robes of the priesthood, her skin marked with the scales of the Python. She held two long bone needles in her hands.

  Adaeze looked at the dissipating smoke of the Void assassins. She looked at Ojie, sensing the fading resonance of the Lion.

  "You are loud, Little Lion," the priestess said. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were hard. "Come with me. Unless you want to explain to the High Priest why you just tore a hole in the spirit world."

  Ojie looked at Y?misí. She nodded, once. They had no other choice.

  "Lead on," Ojie whispered.

  And then the darkness took him.