Choas and change

•Chapter 1 – The Silence Before the Storm

James had grown comfortable with silence.

Not the peaceful kind that wrapped around you like a warm blanket, but the hollow kind the kind that echoed in rooms filled with unspoken words and half-lived truths. The kind of silence that reminded you just how far you’d drifted from where you started.

It had been six months since he last prayed. Not for lack of faith at least that’s what he told himself but because prayer had become a mirror. And James couldn’t stand to look anymore.

He sat on the edge of his bed, the morning sun stretching shadows across his bedroom floor. His apartment was clean, sleek, and cold -all glass and minimalism, like a showroom designed for someone with better emotional health. On his nightstand lay his Bible, untouched. Covered in a thin layer of dust. Right next to it was a letter.

It had arrived two days ago. No stamp. No return address. Just his name written in gold ink across thick ivory paper and sealed with wax a cross imprinted in the center.

He hadn’t opened it.

James had spent the past 48 hours pretending it wasn’t there. But it sat quietly, insistently, like it knew something he didn’t. And maybe it did.

He exhaled, running a hand across his jaw. His beard was slightly overgrown, his eyes bloodshot from another night of half-sleep and overthinking. He’d spent the early hours pacing — no answers, just questions. And that name.

Eliora.

He had heard it in a dream the night before the letter came. A woman’s voice, soft but strong, calling out through smoke and storm. He hadn’t seen her face. Just her eyes. Golden. Piercing. Like fire wrapped in peace.

He hadn’t told anyone. Not his brother Marcus. Not even Amara, the one friend he still trusted with his truth.

James reached for the letter. His fingers brushed the edge of the seal. Warm. Strangely warm.

Before he could break it open, his phone buzzed a reminder for his 10:30 AM branding session with a corporate client downtown.

“Later,” he whispered, standing up. “I’ll read it later.”

But the truth was, part of him was afraid. Not of what the letter said, but of what it might awaken.

Downtown Lagos was already pulsing by the time James pulled into the private lot beside the gallery space. He wore a crisp charcoal suit, no tie, sleeves slightly rolled up. Clean. Controlled. As always.

Inside, the space was flooded with natural light and minimalist art curated to impress without overwhelming. His client, a tech founder looking to rebrand after a public scandal, was already waiting.

“James,” the client greeted him. “I hear you’re the man to call when chaos needs order.”

James smiled politely. “Chaos and change — it’s all about how you manage the transition.”

His own words tasted bitter.

He moved through the presentation smoothly outlining strategy, brand positioning, audience engagement. He said all the right things. But his mind was elsewhere.

When the meeting ended, he stepped out for air and walked into the adjoining art wing something he rarely did. It was there that he saw her.

She stood in front of a large canvas earth tones and oil textures depicting a lone tree in a storm. She wore a simple cream dress, her hair pinned back loosely, curls brushing her shoulders. There was something about her stillness focused, yet fully present.

He couldn’t see her face, but something in him stirred. A memory? No. A recognition.

As if she felt his eyes, she turned slightly and their eyes met.

Her gaze was steady. Familiar.

Golden eyes.

James froze.

“Beautiful piece,” she said quietly, gesturing to the painting without turning away from him.

He nodded, trying to steady his voice. “Storms usually are… after they pass.”

She smiled gently. “Sometimes even while they’re raging.”

He didn’t respond. He couldn’t.

“Take care, James.”

He blinked.

How did she know his name?

But before he could speak, she was already walking away disappearing behind a row of sculptures as if swallowed by the light.

Back home, the apartment felt different. Charged. Quiet, but not empty.

The letter waited for him on the nightstand.

James sat down, heart pounding. He stared at the seal, then slowly broke it.

Inside, a single sheet of paper. Handwritten. Slanted, elegant strokes.

“The fire is coming. Don’t run.

She will lead you, but only if you follow.

What you lost is not gone it’s buried.

Return before the sixth day.”

No name. No sender. Just that.

James stared at the words. The air felt thick.

He rose and walked to the window. The Lagos skyline stretched out before him, bold and chaotic and alive. But inside, something was unraveling.

Something was waking up.

He closed his eyes.

And for the first time in months — a single word slipped from his lips:

“God…”

End of Chapter 1🤭

•Chapter 2 – Sundays Without God

Sunday mornings had become quieter in James’s world.

Not because the city was silent Lagos never was but because he’d grown used to dodging its traditions. Once upon a time, Sunday meant worship, sermons, and shared prayers around a table with his family. Now, it meant sleeping in, coffee instead of communion, and sometimes, vague guilt gnawing at the edge of his chest.

But not today.

Today, guilt took a different shape — a soft, unwelcome weight in the form of a handwritten letter burning a hole in his back pocket.

James turned the corner into Surulere, his old neighborhood, navigating familiar streets that still smelled of fried akara and sun warmed dust. His mother had insisted on Sunday lunch, and he didn’t have the energy to argue. He figured showing up would be easier than explaining why he didn’t.

The family house looked the same whitewashed walls, rusted gates, mango trees still leaning in the backyard like silent witnesses to everything they were never asked to understand.

He parked beside Marcus’s black SUV. The engine was still ticking Marcus must’ve just arrived.

James exhaled, bracing himself.

As soon as he stepped through the gate, he was greeted by the strong, spicy aroma of his mother’s pepper soup. It was how she softened every blow — with food, love, and the hope that you wouldn’t leave the table angry.

“James!” his mother called from the kitchen window, her face lighting up. “You’re early.”

He smiled. “Miracles still happen.”

She gave him a playful frown. “Come and help me carry the chin-chin jar, miracle worker.”

Inside, everything was as he remembered: the lace doilies on the center table, the framed picture of his late father still sitting next to the dusty KJV Bible, and the small gold cross above the TV, hanging slightly crooked.

“Where’s Marcus?” he asked.

“Still arguing with himself in the backyard,” she said, handing him a tray.

Of course. Marcus never came in calm.

When the three of them finally sat to eat, conversation began with laughter — football, politics, neighborhood gossip. But it didn’t take long before the tension surfaced. It always did.

“You’re still not coming to church?” Marcus asked, casually wiping his mouth with a napkin.

James didn’t look up. “Nope.”

His mother sighed.

“It’s been, what, eight months?” Marcus said. “You haven’t even stepped inside the building. You used to teach Bible study, James.”

“I used to believe people were honest,” James replied flatly.

A pause.

“Is this still about Grace?” Marcus asked, his tone suddenly quieter.

James’s hands froze mid bite.

Grace.

The woman he once loved. The woman who had been his ministry partner, his fiancée, and in the end the reason he stopped trusting God.

“She’s married now,” Marcus continued. “Moved to South Africa. That chapter’s done.”

James set his fork down slowly, wiping his hands.

“I didn’t stop going to church because of her,” he said carefully. “I stopped because I couldn’t tell the difference between the altar and the stage anymore.”

His mother said nothing, but her eyes filled with pain. Marcus opened his mouth to speak again but thought better of it.

The room grew still.

“I’m not lost,” James said after a long silence. “I’m just… searching without the noise.”

Later, James sat outside on the front steps, letting the sun soak his face. In his hand was the letter.

The fire is coming. Don’t run.

She will lead you, but only if you follow.

What you lost is not gone it’s buried.

Return before the sixth day.

He traced the lines with his finger. It didn’t feel like a threat. It felt like a promise. Or maybe a warning.

He didn’t know who “she” was.

Except… he did.

He saw her again in his mind. The golden eyes from the gallery. The strange woman who knew his name before he spoke. The voice from his dream.

Eliora.

He hadn’t told anyone. Not Marcus. Not even Amara. It didn’t make sense. And yet… it made more sense than anything else lately.

His phone buzzed.

Unknown number.

“You saw her today.”

His heart jolted.

He stared at the message. Typed back:

“Who are you?”

No reply.

Another buzz.

“Don’t run from the wind. Let it carry you.”

James stood abruptly, scanning the quiet street. No one. Just a little boy kicking a stone down the sidewalk, a hawker balancing oranges on her head, and a black bird watching him from the neighbor’s roof.

He pocketed the letter. Walked toward his car.

“God,” he whispered, gripping the door handle, “am I losing my mind?”

No voice answered. No flash of revelation. Just the distant echo of church bells and the heavy hum of spiritual tension building under the surface.

But James felt it.

Something had shifted.

The storm wasn’t coming. It had already begun.

End of chapter 2🤭

•Chapter 3 – Eliora’s Eyes

James dreamed again.

He was standing in the middle of an open field barren, silent, wrapped in thick white fog. The sky above was endless and gray, without sun, without time. He couldn’t see where the field ended, but something told him it didn’t matter. What mattered was the fire.

It burned ahead of him, not violently, but steadily a controlled, golden flame that danced without consuming. It pulsed as if alive. Around it stood seven pillars, cracked but unbroken, each etched with words in a language he didn’t understand. At the center stood a figure cloaked, face hidden. And yet, even from the distance, James recognized her.

Eliora.

She turned, slowly, like she knew he’d be watching. And when her eyes met his gold, glowing, unwavering the fog parted.

James tried to speak, but no sound came. Instead, she raised a single hand and pointed behind him.

He turned.

The field was no longer empty.

Behind him were graves. Hundreds of them. Each one bearing his name.

James woke up gasping, his sheets tangled, heart pounding. The digital clock beside his bed blinked 3:33 AM in soft red light.

A scripture verse he hadn’t thought of in years whispered through his mind: Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.

He sat up slowly, pressing his palms into his face. The dream hadn’t been metaphor. It had been a summons.

And he knew it.

The next morning, Lagos moved as it always did — fast, chaotic, unconcerned with the inner turmoil of a man like James. But as he walked into the café near Freedom Park, something in the air had shifted.

She was there.

Sitting by the window, drinking tea.

Eliora.

She looked exactly as she had in the gallery — calm, composed, golden-eyed, and very much real.

He paused at the entrance. His instinct screamed: turn around. But his soul whispered: go closer.

She saw him. Smiled.

He approached slowly, like a man walking toward the edge of a cliff.

“Good morning, James.”

No surprise in her tone. No question of how she knew his name.

“You again,” he said, sitting across from her, unsure of his voice. “Are you stalking me or… is this divine scheduling?”

Eliora tilted her head slightly, eyes gleaming. “Neither. I was sent.”

He swallowed. “By who?”

“You already know.”

James looked down, trying to gather the composure her presence disarmed. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“My name is Eliora,” she said softly. “It means ‘the Lord is my light.’”

He gave a hollow laugh. “Fitting. I’ve been living in darkness.”

She didn’t flinch. “That’s why I’m here.”

James leaned in. “Okay. I’ll bite. Are you… an angel?”

“No,” she said. “But I carry a message. And a choice.”

He shook his head. “I don’t do riddles.”

“It’s not a riddle. It’s an invitation.”

She slid a small envelope across the table. The same ivory paper. The same gold seal. His initials etched into the wax.

James hesitated, staring at it.

“What happens if I open it?” he asked.

Eliora leaned closer, her voice barely above a whisper. “Then your journey begins.”

He didn’t open it right away. Not in front of her. Something told him this moment required privacy.

So, after she left vanishing into the noise of the street like mist into air James sat in his car for a long time. Hands shaking. Letter unopened.

When he finally did, the message was simple:

“You must return to where it broke.

On the fourth night, the storm will speak.

Obedience, not understanding, is the way through.”

At the bottom, a symbol a tree cracked by lightning, but still standing.

James closed his eyes.

He knew what where it broke meant.

The church. That church.

Grace Chapel.

The same building where he had stood on the altar and proposed. Where they had prayed for revival. Where betrayal had pierced him like a sword.

He hadn’t stepped foot inside since the day she left him. Since the pastor his mentor had covered up her affair to “protect the ministry.”

Now, the letter wanted him to go back there?

To return?

James let out a bitter laugh.

“God… is this really you?” he whispered.

A soft wind rustled through the open window.

He didn’t know if it was divine confirmation or coincidence.

But for the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel alone in his questioning.

He felt watched. Seen. Called.

And the storm inside him grief, betrayal, confusion was beginning to feel less like a curse.

And more like a path.

End of Chapter 3🤭

•Chapter 4 Where It Broke

The rain came softly at first, like a whisper on the roof of James’s car. He sat in the parking lot of Grace Chapel, engine off, hands on the steering wheel, staring at the building he swore never to enter again.

It hadn’t changed.

The red-brick walls still carried the same streaks of weathered dust. The sign above the gate still read: GRACE CHAPEL MINISTRIES A Home for the Broken, A Flame for the World. The irony cut deep.

Home for the broken?

He had left this place broken. And no one had come looking.

James closed his eyes, steadying his breath. The letter sat on the passenger seat beside him, open now, stained at the corners where his fingers had clenched it too hard.

“Return to where it broke.

On the fourth night, the storm will speak.

Obedience, not understanding, is the way through.”

Today was the fourth night since he first saw Eliora. The dream had returned twice since then the same field, the same fire, the same graves with his name.

And now, this.

God wasn’t asking for his opinion. He was asking for his presence.

The chapel doors creaked as he entered, the sound slicing through the silence like a memory he didn’t want to recall. It was empty, save for the scent of old wood and anointing oil. Dust swirled in the beams of light filtering through stained-glass windows.

James walked down the aisle slowly, each step an echo of past Sundays leading worship, laying hands, praying with boldness. He had once believed every corner of this sanctuary held holiness.

But it had held secrets too.

Betrayal had its own pew.

He stopped at the altar.

This was where it happened where he had once dropped to one knee and held out a ring with trembling hands. Grace had said yes, and the church had erupted in applause. People wept. The choir sang.

Two months later, she disappeared.

And the pastor the man James had trusted like a father had told him to “let it go for the sake of the ministry.”

That day, James didn’t just leave the church.

He left God.

Now, he was back.

He knelt slowly at the altar, unsure what to say. His body remembered the posture, but his heart felt distant, cautious, even rebellious.

“I don’t know what You want from me,” James whispered. “I’m here. Isn’t that enough?”

Silence.

He waited.

Still silence.

Until-

The air shifted.

It wasn’t a sound, not exactly. More like a weight. The atmosphere thickened. The hairs on his arms stood.

Then came the voice.

But not from outside.

From within.

“You still believe I failed you.”

James’s breath caught.

“Who what is this?” he asked aloud, heart racing.

“You tied your faith to people. When they fell, you blamed Me.”

The voice was not harsh. It was calm. Gentle. Like water against stone.

James clenched his fists. “You let them lie to me. You let them cover it up.”

“And yet, you are still breathing. Still called. Still mine.”

He stood abruptly, backing away from the altar. “I didn’t come here for guilt.”

“You came for truth.”

Something flashed in the air a faint pulse of light above the pulpit. And then she was there.

Eliora.

Not fully solid — like light formed into shape, wrapped in calm power.

James stepped forward, stunned.

“Are you even human?”

“I am a messenger,” she replied softly. “Nothing more. But you are fire.”

He shook his head. “I don’t feel like fire.”

She walked toward him, eyes locked with his. “That’s because you’ve spent too long hiding in ashes.”

James looked away. “I don’t know how to forgive. Not them. Not myself.”

“Forgiveness,” she said, “isn’t always a decision. Sometimes, it’s a surrender.”

He dropped to the first pew, head in hands. “Then how do I surrender what I don’t even understand?”

She knelt beside him.

“You begin by letting the pain speak.”

For the next hour, James sat in that pew not praying, not performing, just… being. Letting the memories come. The good ones. The hard ones. The betrayal. The anger. The silence. The void.

And in that place, something shifted.

Not a miracle.

Not magic.

Just truth.

He was still alive. Still called. Still seen.

The wounds didn’t vanish. But they felt less like chains. More like doors.

When he finally stood to leave, Eliora was gone. But in her place, on the altar, was a single white feather.

He picked it up. No note this time.

Just the feeling that this storm whatever it was had only just begun.

And James?

He was finally ready to stop running

End of chapter 4🤭

Chapter 5 – The Language of Fire

The days that followed were strange.

Not in the dramatic sense of lightning or thunder but in quiet, undeniable ways. James noticed things he hadn’t before. Subtle details. Numbers repeating. Words from strangers echoing thoughts he hadn’t spoken aloud. Dreams laced with light and symbols. The scent of myrrh in places he didn’t expect.

It was like the world had started speaking a language he was just beginning to remember.

And fire literal or symbolic seemed to follow him.

The flame from his gas cooker flickered unnaturally one night, rising in odd shapes, curling into symbols he couldn’t comprehend. A candle he hadn’t lit suddenly burned in the corner of his room not violently, but softly, like a presence had settled in to watch.

The letter from Eliora, now kept folded in his journal, remained warm to the touch.

He didn’t know if he was going mad.

Or waking up.

James sat by the lagoon the next morning, watching birds skim across the water’s surface. He needed stillness. A compass. A voice that wasn’t his own.

In his journal, he wrote:

“Lord, what do I do with this fire?”

The breeze moved lightly, ruffling the pages.

His eyes caught on the verse written faintly at the bottom of the page a verse he didn’t remember writing:

“Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” Jeremiah 23:29

He stared at it.

Then he whispered, “Speak, then. Speak through this fire. Because I’m ready now.”

Later that evening, he visited an old place the home of his maternal grandmother in Mushin. She had long passed, but the house still stood, now occupied by his aunt. Something in his spirit tugged him there.

She welcomed him in with a quiet smile and a bowl of hot ogbono soup. “You look tired,” she said. “But also different. Something in your eyes.”

James smiled faintly. “Maybe I’m starting to see again.”

After they ate, he wandered into his grandmother’s prayer room untouched, preserved like a shrine. Her Bible still lay on the table, worn and falling apart from decades of use.

On the wall, beside her old oil lamp, were handwritten scriptures and symbols some in English, others in a strange dialect that didn’t belong to any Nigerian tribe James knew.

One in particular caught his eye. It looked familiar identical to the pattern the candle flame had formed in his room.

He stepped closer.

“Auntie,” he called. “Did Grandma ever say what this was?”

She looked in from the hallway, then nodded. “She called it ‘The Tongue of Fire.’ Said it was the old language the one that speaks when the Spirit moves without words.”

James’s pulse quickened.

“She said it only shows up in the bloodline once every few generations,” his aunt continued. “When someone is chosen to carry what she called the Flame Mantle. She believed it was a burden and a blessing.”

A chill ran through him.

He traced the symbol on the wall gently with his fingers.

Fire.

Mantle.

Bloodline.

He left that night with his grandmother’s Bible in his bag and the sense that what was awakening in him didn’t start with him.

The dreams deepened that night.

This time, the flame in the field was larger taller, wilder, yet still somehow controlled. The seven cracked pillars had begun to glow with golden light, their markings clearer.

This time, James stepped closer.

And Eliora was there again, standing by the flame.

But so was someone else.

A woman, older, dressed in white lace. She had his grandmother’s face younger, but still hers.

“Grandma?” he asked.

She nodded. “You have seen the beginning. But to carry the fire, you must understand what it burns.”

James’s voice trembled. “What does it burn?”

She looked at him, not with softness but with holy warning.

“It burns lies. Compromise. Fear. Ego. It will strip you. But it will also free you.”

Eliora stepped forward, holding out a scroll.

“Read it,” she said.

James unrolled it. The same symbol appeared again the flame spiral but beneath it was a single phrase:

“Speak when the fire speaks. Obey, even if your voice shakes.”

He looked up.

And the dream shattered like glass.

When he woke, the first thing he saw was his grandmother’s Bible on the nightstand.

It had fallen open on its own.

The verse stared back at him:

“He makes His ministers a flame of fire.” Hebrews 1:7

James didn’t feel like a minister. Not anymore.

But fire had its own language. And maybe now, finally, he was starting to hear it.

Not just with his ears.

But with his spirit.

End of Chapter 5🤭

•Chapter 6 – The First Sign

It began with a child.

A boy no older than eight, standing alone at the back of the street church in Bariga. James wasn’t even meant to be there. He had only accompanied his old friend Tope, who insisted on visiting a Sunday outreach to donate food. James had intended to stay outside anonymous, unseen.

But something shifted the moment they entered the tiny gathering.

The space wasn’t impressive just wooden benches under a tarp roof, with a cracked speaker screeching worship from a dusty microphone. Yet the presence was thick. Tangible. Heavy with expectancy.

James recognized it instantly.

The flame had followed him here.

The pastor, a tall, broadshouldered man in a threadbare suit, was preaching a sermon on obedience. His voice rang with passion, but something felt… dissonant. Like the truth was being used, not lived.

James tried to ignore it, focusing instead on the small boy seated apart from the others. The child’s eyes were glazed, body still, as though caught between this world and another.

James couldn’t look away.

“Go to him.”

The whisper hit his spirit with force. He froze.

Again: “Go to him.”

Before he realized what he was doing, James stood up and walked toward the boy. The preacher faltered, momentarily distracted by the movement.

James knelt before the child.

His lips moved on their own. “Can you hear me?”

The boy didn’t respond.

Then his eyes flicked open glowing faintly, unnaturally, like embers behind human skin.

The congregation gasped.

And in a voice that was not his own, the boy spoke:

“The first flame has awakened. But the altar is cracked. Let him who carries fire rebuild what was broken.”

James staggered back, heart pounding.

“What-what is this?” the pastor shouted, stepping forward.

But the boy’s eyes turned to him next.

“You speak from your lips but deny truth in your heart. Your secrets are firewood. Prepare for exposure.”

The pastor stopped cold, color draining from his face.

James’s knees buckled. He dropped beside the boy again, but the child had collapsed breathing, but unconscious.

Then — silence.

Utter, heavy silence.

Until a woman screamed.

“He’s a prophet!” she cried. “The fire is back!”

And the murmurs began.

Tope drove James home in stunned silence, hands shaking on the steering wheel.

“What just happened back there?” he asked finally. “Did you plan that?”

James stared out the window. “You think I would plan… that?”

Tope exhaled. “It was like God showed up and ripped the mask off everything.”

James nodded slowly. “That’s what fire does.”

Back home, James barely made it through the door before collapsing into prayer. Not the gentle, contemplative kind but the kind where spirit and soul wrestle beneath the weight of divine interruption.

“God, what is this?” he cried. “Why me? Why now?”

No voice answered audibly this time.

But a scripture formed clearly in his mind:

“Then the Lord put forth His hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, ‘Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.’” Jeremiah 1:9

James opened his grandmother’s Bible again. That verse was already underlined not by him.

His phone buzzed.

A message from an unknown number.

“The boy is fine. But the fire in you has stirred other forces. Be careful who you trust now. You have three days. Prepare.” E.

His hands trembled.

Three days… for what?

That night, he couldn’t sleep.

The dreams were different louder, messier. Flames licked the sky. The seven pillars cracked again, and shadows moved around them, whispering in tongues older than language.

One of the pillars collapsed.

And James heard a voice cry out:

“What you carry must be rebuilt not just in spirit, but in structure.”

Then a second voice harsher, darker:

“But he is not ready. He still bleeds doubt. Let him burn before he builds.”

James jolted awake, drenched in sweat.

The flame within him was no longer just stirring.

It was starting to roar.

End of Chapter 6🤭

•Chapter 7 – The Three Days

James locked the door behind him.

He didn’t tell anyone where he was going. Not Tope. Not his aunt. Not even Eliora, though he imagined she already knew.

He rented a small one-room retreat center outside Ibadan. No distractions. No service. No mirrors. Just walls thick with silence, and windows overlooking bushland and sky.

He brought only his journal, his grandmother’s Bible, a bottle of water, and the last message from E:

“You have three days. Prepare.”

He didn’t know what he was preparing for.

But something inside him did.

Day One: Fire Within

The first day felt like shedding skin.

James fasted. Prayed. Cried.

He fell to the floor more than once, groaning with a pain that had no name a spiritual labor. Every memory of compromise, fear, failure surfaced like smoke drawn from a deep chamber.

He began to confess them aloud.

Not just sins. But weights.

“I confess every time I ran from my voice.

I confess the bitterness I swallowed in silence.

I confess my father’s absence and the shame I buried.

I confess the moments I believed I was too broken to carry purpose.”

Tears fell freely.

Not dramatic.

But cleansing.

At sunset, the first vision came.

He was standing inside a temple of light. No roof, only sky. In front of him: seven bowls. Each burned with a different color flame gold, white, blue, crimson, green, violet, black.

One voice said:

“Choose the one that reveals you.”

He reached for the blue.

It leapt onto his hand not burning, but bonding.

The voice returned:

“You are marked by revelation. Your fire reveals before it heals. Speak wisely.”

James woke up gasping, his palm warm as though kissed by heat.

A single word formed in his spirit: Discernment.

Day Two: Fire Around

The second day tested his senses.

He couldn’t focus. His thoughts blurred. His body trembled between hunger and awakening. Time stretched, bent, collapsed into itself.

He heard sounds footsteps that didn’t exist, whispers from corners of the room. The temperature shifted violently from cold to heat.

At one point, a shadow moved across the window. Human-like. Then gone.

James began to speak in tongues not forced, but flowing. Ancient syllables he didn’t recognize spilled from his mouth like wind through dry leaves.

He wrote down everything he heard between prayers:

“The spirit of confusion is not always from the enemy sometimes it’s your soul resisting transformation.”

“Fire teaches by burning what logic protects.”

“When you don’t recognize yourself, you are closest to becoming who you were meant to be.”

That night, James dreamt of fire pouring from his mouth not destructive, but alive. It spread through a crowd of people, lighting candles in their hands.

But behind him stood a man cloaked in smoke, holding a mirror.

The mirror reflected James but scarred, trembling, unsure.

The man whispered:

“Your fear is your first enemy. Until you burn it, your fire will be limited.”

James turned toward him and said, “Then burn me now.”

The figure vanished.

Only the mirror remained shattered.

Day Three: Fire Beyond

James woke before dawn on the third day.

His body weak. His spirit alert.

It wasn’t a voice that woke him it was presence. Thick. Heavy. Holy.

He knelt in silence. This time, no words came.

Not even tongues.

Just breath.

Just fire.

He felt it fill the room invisible, yet weighty. The hairs on his neck rose. His heart slowed. He opened his palms.

And that’s when it happened.

He began to see.

Not visions but people. Faces. Cities. Broken altars in government houses. Hidden shrines behind ministries. Prophets in hiding. Children carrying spiritual mantles.

He saw Lagos in darkness, then briefly lit by waves of fire from unexpected places markets, prisons, music studios, ghettos. Each flame rose from someone like him.

Carriers.

Voices.

James understood then: the fire wasn’t just about personal power.

It was for nations.

At exactly 3:33 p.m., his phone lit up with one bar of service just enough to deliver one final message.

E: “Your three days are complete. The next sign comes in the city. Prepare to speak. They will resist you. Do not shrink.”

James closed his Bible.

Put on his shoes.

And walked out of the retreat center no longer just a man.

But a messenger.

End of Chapter 7🤭

•Chapter 8 – The Shaking in the City

Lagos never sleeps.

Not truly.

Even at 5:42 a.m., the streets whispered — danfo buses rattling, vendors shouting, and the city’s pulse thudding just beneath the smog. But James could feel something else humming now. Something under the noise. A tension. A tremor. A crack in the city’s spirit.

The shaking had already begun.

As soon as James stepped off the bus from Ibadan, his phone vibrated again.

Another message from the unknown number. No name. Just three words:

“Freedom House. Tonight.”

He knew the place. A popular interdenominational gathering spot in Surulere, recently gaining fame for its political involvement and flashy prophetic declarations. James had been there once, months ago — before the fire found him. He remembered stage lights. Cameras. A worship team that looked like pop stars.

But something had felt… empty.

Still, the instruction was clear.

And James had learned in the last three days — obedience wasn’t optional anymore.

Tope met him at his aunt’s house in Yaba that afternoon.

“Bro, what happened to you?” Tope asked, hugging him like he hadn’t seen him in years. “You look… older. Heavier. But not tired.”

James gave a small smile. “I think I met myself.”

Tope’s eyes widened. “So… it’s real. All of it. The voice. The fire. That boy…”

James nodded. “It’s real. And it’s spreading.”

Tope sighed. “You’re going to Freedom House?”

“Tonight.”

Tope hesitated. “I have to warn you. People are talking. Ever since that boy spoke through you, strange things have been happening. Leaders are uneasy. A few prophets have gone silent. Some people even said there was a fire at a shrine in Ilupeju no damage, just heat. As if something supernatural was hunting.”

James didn’t flinch.

“It’s not hunting,” he said softly. “It’s revealing.”

Freedom House was already packed by 6:30 p.m.

Thousands filled the hall, hands lifted, phones recording, as the sound system boomed with worship. But James wasn’t watching the stage. He was listening to the walls. He could feel the spirit of performance twisting through the atmosphere like perfume sweet, but suffocating.

He didn’t announce his arrival. Didn’t take a seat. He stood at the back, waiting.

Until the atmosphere changed.

Mid-sermon, the pastor sleek, confident, microphone polished suddenly paused. His eyes darted to the back.

His voice faltered.

James hadn’t moved.

But something had entered with him.

The crowd stirred.

And then, without invitation, James stepped forward.

The pastor tried to stop him.

“Excuse me, young man, this is a closed altar”

But before he could finish, the lights flickered.

The microphone buzzed.

And James spoke without mic, without notes.

“The city is shaking because truth has been buried beneath applause.

The flame has returned not for entertainment, but for exposure.

Hidden altars tremble. Performances end tonight.

You who call yourselves prophets who told you you could merchandise fire?”

Silence dropped like a storm.

Phones lowered. Mouths opened. Even the ushers didn’t move.

James’s voice deepened not just in tone, but in weight.

“There is a storm coming. Not of weather but of witness.

God is raising those you refused. The voiceless. The wounded.

The burning ones. And they will not perform. They will proclaim.”

Suddenly, a woman in the front row began to wail.

Then another.

People fell to their knees.

The pastor stepped back face pale, hands shaking.

And then it happened.

A small tremor shook the building.

Not strong enough to cause damage. But enough to make lights sway. Enough to make fear rise. Enough to silence doubt.

James stepped down from the stage.

No applause followed.

Only tears.

Only fire.

By the time he stepped outside, the air was thick with whispers.

Journalists. Online bloggers. Elders. All scrambling to explain what had just happened. But James didn’t stay to talk. He walked quietly toward the road.

Someone followed him.

A woman older, graceful, wrapped in a purple scarf. Her eyes burned with knowing.

She handed him a folded note.

“You don’t know me,” she said, “but I dreamed of you three weeks ago. In the dream, a man with fire in his mouth shook the altars of culture and government. You wore that same shirt.”

James blinked. “What did the man do after?”

She smiled sadly. “He was hunted.”

James tucked the note into his pocket. “And did he survive?”

She looked him in the eye. “He didn’t just survive. He rose.”

That night, James opened the note.

It held one sentence:

“Your next instruction will come through the girl with thunder in her voice.”

And beneath it, a name he hadn’t seen in years.

Eliora.

End of Chapter 8🤭

•Chapter 9 – Thunder and Ashes

The sky cracked open the moment she stepped into the frame.

James didn’t know whether the thunder was literal or metaphorical but it fit. Because Eliora wasn’t just a girl anymore. She was a storm in skin.

She walked through the corridor of the abandoned cultural center in Ikoyi with the poise of a queen and the pace of a soldier. Her braids were longer. Her clothes simple a dark brown tunic with gold embroidery at the cuffs but her presence was loud. Alive. Covered in something ancient.

James rose to meet her, heart pounding like a boy caught between reverence and regret.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said.

Eliora tilted her head. “And yet you waited.”

A faint smile played on her lips, but her eyes remained sharp — the kind that saw through masks and memories.

“I got a message,” James said, pulling out the folded note. “Said you were the girl with thunder in her voice.”

Eliora stepped closer. “They were right. But thunder only follows fire.”

They sat inside the center’s main hall — once used for dance rehearsals and stage plays, now dust-choked and echoing with ghosts of forgotten stories.

“So, James,” she began, crossing her arms. “Tell me what happened after you disappeared from the last revival night. One minute you were a quiet boy with too many questions, and now you’re shaking cities.”

James leaned forward. “I didn’t disappear. I was called.”

“And did you answer?”

“Yes.”

“And now?” she pressed. “You’re ready for what comes next?”

He hesitated. “What does come next?”

Eliora stood, walking toward the shattered window pane. “The fire woke you. But the thunder? The thunder breaks everything soft that fire didn’t burn.”

She turned back. “You’re about to lose comfort, James. Friends. Even faith, as you knew it.”

He looked down. “I’ve already started losing.”

Eliora stepped closer. Her voice lowered.

“Then you’re finally ready to hear the rest.”

She handed him a journal -leather bound, worn, filled with symbols and notes written in three languages. “This belonged to my father,” she said. “He was one of the last of the Thunder Voices a company of people called to awaken truth through confrontation.”

James flipped through the pages. Ritual codes. Maps. Dreams. Warnings.

“He died when I was sixteen,” Eliora continued. “Murdered by a council of false prophets who feared the judgment he carried. I ran. Hid for years. Until the Voice came to me in a dream, saying: ‘You will meet a boy with fire in his mouth. When you hear him, your thunder will return.’”

James looked up. “And it did?”

Eliora nodded. “The night you spoke at Freedom House… I felt it.”

Suddenly, the atmosphere shifted.

The ground beneath them shook subtly, like a warning.

Eliora grabbed his arm. “They’ve started tracking the shifts. The old altars. The hidden ones. You woke them.”

James stood, gripping the journal. “Then let’s burn them down.”

She shook her head. “Not yet. First, you must pass through ashes.”

That night, they prayed.

Not softly.

They roared.

Eliora prayed in thunder calling down heaven with guttural force, breaking through veils in the spirit realm with each shout.

James, beside her, prayed with flame quiet at first, then rising until his words ignited the air around them. His hands trembled. His eyes watered. He saw visions again a crown, a sword, and a nation bleeding beneath golden dust.

Then Eliora stilled.

And spoke words that shook him deeper than anything before.

“You must choose between your calling and your comfort.

You cannot carry both.

You must bury your father.”

James blinked, shaken. “What?”

Eliora opened the journal again, turning to a specific page an entry from her father written years before:

“There will come a boy marked by inner flame, whose journey begins only after he buries what gave him identity. His father — literal or symbolic must be laid to rest before his voice becomes a sword.”

James froze.

His father gone for years. But never buried.

Not properly.

He had avoided it. Emotionally. Spiritually. His father’s absence was a wound. A memory. A silence that spoke louder than any curse.

“Tomorrow,” Eliora said, gently placing a hand on his shoulder. “We go to the place where your ashes begin.”

At dawn, they stood at the edge of the old village in Ogun State, where James’ father had been born. An unmarked grave lay beneath a baobab tree.

James brought a stone etched with Psalm 68:5: “A father to the fatherless…”

He knelt.

Placed it on the earth.

And wept.

The tears weren’t bitter. They were baptism.

Beside him, Eliora whispered thunder.

Behind them, the wind stirred.

Ahead of them, war waited.

But for now, in this sacred silence…

James was whole.

End of Chapter 9🤭

•Chapter 10 – Council of the Hidden Altars

They met in silence.

No livestreams. No offerings. No worship music. Just a cold stone table surrounded by men and women cloaked in luxury and laced with fear. These weren’t ordinary ministers. They were architects of influence bishops, prophets, cultural icons, media moguls, and politicians who had long traded oil for power and scripture for control.

The council was real.

And now, it was restless.

Because James was awake.

Eliora stood beside him as they approached the iron gates of an estate in Victoria Garden City. The address had been whispered to her by an old intercessor who had once escaped the council’s grip. Eliora’s fists clenched. James’s palms burned faintly.

“They won’t welcome us,” Eliora said.

“We’re not here for welcome,” James replied. “We’re here for war.”

Inside, the air felt manufactured — like it had been filtered of conviction. The room was scented with expensive oils, but spiritually bankrupt. Men in designer suits glanced at the pair like museum pieces out of place.

“Ah,” said one with silver hair and sharp eyes. “The boy who thinks he carries fire.”

“And the girl who mistakes her defiance for anointing,” another muttered.

Eliora said nothing. But her gaze did not flinch.

The head of the council Bishop Zaphan stepped forward. A giant of a man, elegant in movement, monstrous in motive.

“You’ve stirred panic, boy,” he said, voice smooth like oil. “Our people are confused. The press is swirling. Altars are catching fire.”

“Because they were built on lies,” James said quietly.

Zaphan smiled thinly. “And you think truth alone can hold a city? Innocence is cute. But it’s not strategy.”

“I didn’t come to strategize,” James answered, stepping into the center of the room. “I came to speak.”

The room stirred.

Zaphan scoffed. “Speak then, prophet. Let us hear this holy thunder.”

James looked around at the ornate robes, the golden rings, the screens tracking influence like stocks.

And then he opened his mouth.

“You have turned altars into stages,

sacrifices into product launches.

You use fear to herd the lost,

and power to silence the burning ones.

But I see you.

The Lord of Hosts sees you.

There are scrolls written with your names

not of fame, but of fire.

And the shaking you feel is not demonic.

It is judgment.”

The room grew still.

Then hostile.

One man rose. “Who gave you authority to condemn elders?”

Eliora stepped forward before James could speak. Her voice thundered like an ancient drum:

“You call yourselves elders,

but your wisdom was bought by bribes.

You prophesy for kings and curse the hungry.

You are not fathers. You are merchants.

And the day of your exposure has begun.”

The chandelier overhead cracked. Not by hand. Not by storm. By spirit.

A cold wind blew through the room yet no doors were open.

Suddenly, Bishop Zaphan’s smile vanished.

“Enough,” he hissed. “You don’t understand what we keep at bay. We maintain spiritual equilibrium. If you burn everything, chaos will come.”

James stepped closer, eyes glowing faintly.

“Chaos is already here. You just kept it hidden behind offerings.”

He opened the journal Eliora gave him and read aloud a prophecy from decades past one her father wrote:

“The council of false altars shall be exposed by a boy with fire in his lungs and a girl who speaks with thunder. When they confront the hidden, the nation will split revival or ruin. No middle ground.”

The walls groaned.

Half the council trembled. Some wept. Some whispered prayers.

Others rose enraged.

Zaphan, too, stood. “You dare threaten what we built?”

“I’m not threatening,” James said softly. “I’m warning.”

The meeting ended in chaos.

Security escorted James and Eliora out — but not before one elder slipped a card into James’s hand. No words. Just coordinates.

When they reached the street, James opened the card.

A location.

Benin City.

A date.

Three days away.

And beneath it, a phrase:

“The true altar is buried under centuries of silence.”

Eliora read it and nodded. “It’s beginning.”

James looked ahead.

His hands burned again but this time, the fire felt deeper.

It wasn’t just judgment anymore.

It was justice.

And justice had a destination.

End of Chapter 10🤭

•Chapter 11 – Blood and Blueprints

Benin smelled like memory.

Thick, heavy, sacred the air hummed with ancestral tension. James stepped off the bus and felt the ground speak to him. Not with words, but with weight. It was as if the soil remembered what he’d forgotten.

Eliora adjusted her satchel and took a deep breath.

“This is where altars go to bleed,” she whispered.

They had three days to find it. The altar buried in silence. The blueprint of the original covenant. The place where fire and thunder were once married and where they would either be rekindled or consumed.

The coordinates led them to a crumbling estate on the outskirts of the old city once a cathedral, now swallowed by vines and time. Ivy choked the stained glass windows. The front doors were padlocked, rusted shut.

James reached out. His fingers brushed the metal.

A jolt pulsed through him.

He saw visions: flames on red soil. A child with eyes like his. A figure holding blueprints etched in blood. A scream then silence.

“Did you see it?” Eliora asked, gripping his arm.

James nodded, breath caught in his throat. “We’ve been here before.”

Inside, the cathedral groaned under their steps. Dust spiraled like spirit fragments. In the center of the sanctuary, a cracked marble pulpit stood tilted, almost bowing.

They walked in silence.

Eliora knelt near the altar steps and traced an old inscription half-buried in grime:

“Oba no r’ekhue, evbo no r’uwe — when the king forgets the altar, the city forgets its soul.”

James lit a candle from his bag. The flame flickered blue.

Suddenly, beneath the altar, something shifted.

Wood.

Stone.

Bone.

They dug.

Their hands bled.

Their spirits pressed.

And after an hour, they uncovered it: a sealed compartment, hidden under the altar base. Inside parchment, old but intact. The seal was royal, ancient Benin dynasty. Carved in iron and gold.

Eliora unfolded it with trembling hands.

Blueprints.

Not of buildings.

Of movements.

Sacrificial rhythms. Revival patterns. Songs written in blood. Codes of prayer once uttered in ancestral tongues. Instructions on how heaven once communed with earth before colonization, before corruption, before compromise.

James studied the markings.

It wasn’t just instruction.

It was invitation.

That night, they lit a fire in the center of the cathedral. No music. No microphones. Just the flame, the parchment, and the silence of many years breaking.

James read aloud the first phrase on the blueprint:

“Before change can come, blood must speak.”

Eliora looked at him, eyes glistening. “It already has.”

Suddenly, James cried out a sharp, echoing sound.

His palm ignited again but now, the flame burned gold.

Not pain.

Power.

And then a name came to his spirit:

Ajayi.

“My grandfather’s father,” James said aloud, stunned. “He was a builder. Not of buildings… but of bridges between realms.”

He stood.

“This blueprint is in my blood.”

Outside, the wind howled.

Figures moved in the dark.

Spirits awakened.

Old guardians.

And one final guardian stepped forward a woman in full native regalia, face painted in white clay, holding a staff of thorns and bronze.

She looked at James.

And bowed.

“Welcome, son of Ajayi. The land remembers you. The altar remembers you. But will you remember it when the fire tests your love?”

He swallowed. “Yes.”

She pointed at Eliora. “And you, daughter of thunder will you protect him, even when the rain blinds you?”

Eliora nodded. “Even then.”

The woman smiled faintly.

“Then let the bloodline awaken.

Let the blueprint rise.

Let judgment begin not to destroy, but to rebuild.”

And just like that, she vanished in mist.

Morning broke with golden clouds.

James stood over the blueprint, now fully unrolled. And etched at the bottom, barely visible:

“Only those who surrender ego will survive awakening.”

Eliora looked at him. “Ready?”

James folded the parchment and nodded.

“We go back to the city.”

“To tear it down?”

“No,” he said. “To rebuild it from the ashes.”

End of Chapter 11🤭

•Chapter 12 – The Seven Lies of Power

The city was louder than before.

Billboards flashed prophetic events. Speakers blasted twisted sermons. Pastors went viral for miracles they never performed. Something had shifted not upward, but inward. A deep rot was spreading under the surface of Lagos.

And James could feel it in his chest like static.

He stood at the edge of Third Mainland Bridge with Eliora, the wind tugging at their clothes, the sky heavy with gray clouds.

“The blueprint told us the fire would attract enemies,” James murmured.

Eliora looked out at the city skyline. “The enemies were already here. The fire just exposed them.”

That night, back at their hideout a modest apartment above an old printing press in Surulere-James unrolled the blueprint again. The golden ink shimmered faintly under lamplight. His fingers traced the next instruction.

“Before rebuilding, confront the foundation of lies. Seven spirits hold the city hostage. Each one speaks as truth, but hides decay.”

Eliora leaned closer. “What are the seven lies?”

The fire on James’s palm flickered, and the words illuminated themselves on the parchment, one by one:

1. Control is love.

2. Fame is favor.

3. Performance is presence.

4. Fear keeps order.

5. Silence is safety.

6. Wealth equals worth.

7. Numbers mean God is near.

James exhaled slowly.

“These are the pillars of false revival,” he said. “And they’ve become doctrine.”

They split up the next day.

Eliora went to a youth rally in Lekki where a self-declared prophet promised “supernatural riches for every seed.” She watched teenagers shout in tongues while swiping credit cards at digital offering kiosks. The worship was choreographed. The testimonies scripted. The leader’s sermon? A self-help speech soaked in holy vocabulary.

“Don’t just walk into your season,” he shouted, “BUY IT!”

Eliora’s spirit recoiled.

She closed her eyes and whispered one sentence from the blueprint.

“Performance is not presence.”

The lights dimmed. The microphone sparked. And a heavy stillness settled across the stage.

People froze.

As if the act had ended and the truth walked in.

James, meanwhile, visited the central cathedral downtown a place once built on prayer, now funded by politics.

He was escorted in by a young deacon with cautious eyes.

“Our overseer isn’t taking visitors,” the boy said, “but… something about you felt familiar.”

The office of the overseer was palatial glass table, imported sculptures, framed photos with governors and celebrities.

The overseer looked up. “Ah. You’re the flame boy.”

James didn’t smile. “And you’re the shepherd with soldiers.”

The overseer leaned back. “I don’t fight sheep.”

James placed the blueprint on the table.

“You built this altar on fear.

You said God needed silence to move

but it wasn’t heaven that needed silence.

It was you who couldn’t risk people speaking.”

The overseer stood. Furious.

“You dare accuse me? After all I’ve built?”

“You built walls,” James said. “Not a church.”

The room began to shake.

Glass cracked.

The air thickened.

A golden flame danced over the blueprint.

The overseer staggered back. His mouth moved, but no sound came.

And when he finally spoke, it wasn’t to defend himself it was to confess.

“I was anointed once. But I traded obedience for influence.

I didn’t know… the cost would be this.”

James said nothing. He picked up the blueprint and left.

Sometimes the greatest judgment was remembrance.

Later that night, James and Eliora sat together again, watching the city pulse like a beast.

“We’ve broken two lies,” Eliora said.

James nodded. “Five remain.”

She glanced at him. “You think we’ll survive them?”

He looked at the burning mark on his palm — now shaped like a sword.

“I think we were born because of them.”

Outside, voices rose in a stadium across town.

A popular influencer turned evangelist led a crowd in declarations of wealth and dominance. Cameras flashed. The gospel was drowned in hashtags.

But far above, in a place no drone could reach, the heavens trembled.

A voice thundered across realms.

“Let the false fire fall.

Let the remnant rise.”

The blueprint glowed.

And somewhere in the dark, a hidden intercessor whispered one phrase into the night:

“They’ve come.

The ones who remember the real altar.”

End of Chapter 12🤭

•Chapter 13 – The Remnant and the Revolt

The invitation came in a dream.

A voice, low and firm: “Come to the broken bell.”

When James awoke, the air was humming again — like it always did before something sacred revealed itself. Eliora was already up, flipping through the blueprint. She paused at a symbol neither of them had noticed before: a bell cracked down the middle, surrounded by a circle of flame.

James whispered, “It’s not just a symbol.”

“It’s a place,” Eliora replied. “And we’ve been summoned.”

They journeyed east, far from the noisy corridors of the city, to a place unmarked on maps. The only directions came from a chain of whispered instructions: from a widow who once led night vigils in Makoko… to a street artist who’d painted fire on his walls since childhood… to a mute drummer whose beats unlocked memories long buried.

All of them spoke one word when asked about “the bell.”

“Remnant.”

The ones who remembered the ancient ways.

The ones who resisted the performance.

The ones who hid in plain sight while pretending to blend in until now.

The “Broken Bell” was not a building, but a ruin the skeletal remains of a burnt down mission house from the 1900s. It stood alone near a forgotten rail line, vines twisting around its bell tower, the bell itself split in two like prophecy scarred by time.

James stepped inside.

They were already there.

Dozens of them.

Men and women of all ages. Eyes alert. Faces worn but radiant. No one wore collars or carried titles, but the air was thick with authority real, raw, undressed power.

They sat in silence until an older woman stood. She wore a faded wrapper and had a prayer shawl draped loosely across her shoulders.

Her voice rang out with strength and peace.

“You carry the flame, boy of the torn lineage. And youdaughter of thunder have the winds at your back. We’ve waited for you.”

Eliora stepped forward. “Why us?”

“Because the blueprint burns again. And only those who’ve bled for truth can read its final codes.”

For three nights, James and Eliora stayed with the remnant.

They fasted.

They worshipped.

But most of all they listened.

They heard stories of how true worship had been outlawed quietly. Of how genuine intercessors had been branded rebellious. Of how unity had been replaced with ambition dressed up as fellowship.

And they learned that for every lie of power, there had always been a quiet revolt.

“Some of us never left the fire,” one man whispered. “We just hid the flame… in our lungs.”

On the fourth night, something changed.

A young man named Chuka-bold, charming, and suspiciously wellinformed stood during prayer.

He lifted his hand.

And the bell above them rang.

No one had touched it.

No one had repaired it.

Yet the sound echoed across the hills like a war cry.

James stepped back. Eliora’s eyes narrowed.

Chuka smiled faintly.

“It’s time,” he said. “The city will not fall silently. If we’re going to reclaim the altars, we need to make noise. We need the world to see us. Hear us. Follow us.”

Some clapped.

Some shouted “Yes!”

But James felt the flame in his palm dim.

He looked to the elder woman.

She did not clap.

She watched.

Silent. Concerned.

Eliora leaned toward James.

“He wants revival… but he wants to lead it.”

And James knew then revival led by ego would only repeat the ruin.

That night, James confronted Chuka privately.

“You carry truth,” James said. “But it’s mixed with hunger.”

Chuka tilted his head. “What’s wrong with wanting to be seen?”

James held out the blueprint. “Because this fire doesn’t promote. It purifies.”

Chuka’s smile faded. “So you want the glory?”

James stepped back. “No. I want the altar rebuilt. With or without me.”

There was silence.

Then Chuka said: “Then you better prepare to be betrayed.”

At dawn, the remnant gathered to pray.

The blueprint pulsed with new words:

“The revolt begins not in the crowd,

but in the consecrated.

Not with volume, but with vision.”

James raised his voice over the circle:

“We’re not here to trend.

We’re not here to replace influencers with new ones.

We’re here to burn down the system of ego

and build what was once holy again.”

Tears filled eyes.

The bell rang again this time, by the Spirit alone.

And deep within the city, those who ruled by manipulation felt it.

The revolt had begun.

End of Chapter 13🤭

•Chapter 14 – The Judas Within

They gathered at dusk.

Thirty seven of them, encircled beneath the crumbling arch of the Broken Bell. The atmosphere was electric with expectancy. Something was rising not just in the city, but in the hearts of those present. The blueprint had pulsed all afternoon with instructions that felt more like warnings.

“Before the fire ascends, the fracture must bleed.”

James stood in the center, the flame on his palm flickering unnaturally. It burned blue tonight a color he’d never seen before. He didn’t mention it to Eliora. Not yet.

Instead, he lifted his eyes to the remnant.

“We’re not fighting systems of men. We’re wrestling spirits that built those systems. We need unity not just in cause, but in character.”

They nodded. Most of them.

But not all.

Chuka stood in the back, arms folded, face unreadable.

That night, after prayers, James couldn’t sleep. The fire inside his palm throbbed like a heartbeat. He walked to the old railway near the bell ruins, needing silence. Needing air.

That’s when he saw it.

Chuka.

Leaning into a shadow.

And in that shadow… someone else. Dressed in black. Voice like sandpaper and smoke.

James crouched behind a rusted train car.

He listened.

“We need the blueprint,” the shadow said. “We don’t care about the boy. Just bring the map.”

Chuka was silent.

Then: “He trusts me. They all do.”

The shadow dropped something heavy into Chuka’s hand.

A pouch.

Money? A charm? James couldn’t tell.

“You’ve done well,” the voice hissed. “Tomorrow, end it.”

James backed away slowly.

And stepped on a broken glass bottle.

It cracked loud.

Too loud.

Chuka turned.

Their eyes met.

And James ran.

By morning, James had told no one.

Not even Eliora.

Instead, he called a private meeting with the elder woman Mama Nkechi. The fire on her breath never needed matches. She listened in silence. When James finished, she didn’t respond with shock.

She simply said: “Every remnant carries a Judas. The question is will you kiss him, or will you confront him?”

Later that day, as the remnant prepared for a prayer walk through the city, James stood beside Chuka, who pretended nothing had happened.

James leaned in.

“I heard everything.”

Chuka didn’t flinch.

“I thought you might,” he said quietly. “That’s why I didn’t deny it.”

James’s chest tightened.

“Why, Chuka?”

Chuka finally looked at him eyes sharp with something broken.

“Because I was the flame, James. Before you showed up with your fire and your visions. I led people in circles, yes but at least I gave them something. And now? Now they look at you. Like you’re the second coming of Moses.”

James stepped back. Pain washed over him, unexpected.

“You could’ve walked with me.”

Chuka’s voice cracked. “But I wanted to lead.”

At the prayer walk, James stayed silent.

They walked from Surulere through Yaba, declaring scriptures, worshipping without music, commanding atmosphere shifts through pure unity. People stopped. Watched. Joined.

The heavens listened.

But behind the crowd, Chuka slipped away.

And that night while the remnant celebrated the success of their prayer walk police raided the Broken Bell site.

Riot vans.

Tear gas.

No warning.

They said it was “unauthorized religious activity.”

James knew better.

Someone had told them.

In the chaos, James shielded a young girl from smoke.

Eliora screamed across the field, trying to help an elder being dragged away.

Mama Nkechi prayed in tongues until she collapsed from the gas.

And in the distance, James saw him.

Chuka.

Watching from the edge of the hill.

Eyes dim.

Hands clenched.

Torn between guilt and commitment to a lie.

James moved toward him but Chuka ran.

After the raid, only fifteen of the remnant were left. The rest had scattered, arrested, or gone into hiding.

The blueprint was soaked in water and smoke, but still intact.

James sat alone on the edge of the ruins, staring at it.

Eliora sat beside him.

“Betrayal feels heavier when it wears your brother’s face,” she said.

James didn’t respond.

Eliora continued, softer: “But even Judas had a choice until the very end.”

That night, the fire on James’s palm turned gold.

A new word burned onto the blueprint:

“You will lose some

but what remains

will shake the city.”

And far away, in a hotel room lit only by a flickering lamp, Chuka stared at the pouch he’d been given.

He opened it.

It wasn’t money.

It was ash.

And a note:

“This is what happens to those who sell fire for fame.”

Chuka’s hands trembled.

He realized he hadn’t betrayed James.

He’d betrayed himself.

End of chapter 14🤭

•Chapter 15 – The Ashes We Inherit

The Broken Bell no longer stood.

By morning, it was rubble. Scattered pews, shattered stained glass, and the blackened remains of sacred wood. Smoke still curled in the air, as if reluctant to let go.

James stood barefoot in the wreckage.

The blueprint, though singed, remained in his hand pulsing faintly like a tired heart. Eliora stood beside him, face streaked with ash and resolve.

Mama Nkechi sat quietly on what remained of the front steps. Her prayer shawl was gone, replaced with a blanket someone had found in the chaos. She hadn’t spoken since the raid.

Until now.

“This is where many would quit,” she said.

James turned to her. “And you?”

She smiled faintly, her eyes glowing with something ancient.

“This is where the called begin.”

They buried the remains of the altar by hand.

Not because it would change what had happened.

But because it was sacred.

Each stone lifted was a declaration: We are still here.

Eliora found a small metal box beneath the rubble. Inside, folded with precision, was an old journal wrapped in oilskin. Its pages held prayers written in a language James could not fully read, but the Spirit inside them burned like fire.

“Someone was here long before us,” Eliora said.

James nodded. “And they never left.”

The remnant regathered what was left of them.

Only thirteen.

Many were injured. One had a broken arm. Two had burns. But all of them came back. Not out of loyalty to James. But to something higher.

To a flame that refused to die.

They met underground now in a vacant basement beneath a closed down café in Mushin. The ceiling dripped. The power was unreliable. But it was enough.

James stood before them and spoke plainly.

“We’ve been reduced not defeated. God does His best work with what’s left.”

He unrolled the blueprint. Gold letters shimmered across it again.

“The altar must rise again in the place no one looks.”

Eliora frowned. “Where’s that?”

James paused.

And whispered, “The slums.”

That night, he dreamed again.

He was in a crowded alley. Children ran barefoot through puddles. Smoke curled from open fires. And in the center of it all a small, glowing stone buried in the mud.

When James reached for it, hands pulled him back.

Chuka.

But his eyes were different.

Empty.

He didn’t speak. He just shook his head, as if warning James: If you dig too deep, you’ll find pain you can’t fix.

When James woke, his fist was clenched around real dust.

Ash.

The next day, they entered Makoko.

Not as missionaries.

Not as saviors.

But as listeners.

They walked the narrow planks between homes on water. Sat with old men who remembered the first churches before the crusades. Ate with single mothers who prayed silently at dawn. And in the dirt of a schoolyard that hadn’t had electricity in years, they saw it:

A stone shaped like a flame.

James bent to pick it up.

It was warm.

Alive.

The fire on his palm surged, and the blueprint glowed brighter than ever.

Eliora stepped back, tears in her eyes.

“This… this is the next altar,” she whispered.

A place forgotten by governments, ignored by movements, untouched by ambition.

And yet—chosen.

They called it the Ember Ground.

No stage.

No microphones.

Just worship, intercession, teaching under tarpaulin, with candlelight.

The Spirit moved, not with drama, but with depth.

A woman who hadn’t walked in three years rose to dance.

A boy with nightmares was delivered mid-song.

And James?

He stayed in the background.

He no longer needed to be seen.

He just wanted to obey.

But even as the altar burned brighter…

Far away, a man sat in a dark room.

Chuka.

Unshaven, hollow eyed, holding the pouch of ash and the note.

This is what happens to those who sell fire for fame.

He had lost everything except the truth.

And that truth haunted him.

The remnant had survived.

But Chuka?

He wasn’t sure if he could ever be part of it again.

Back at the Ember Ground, as the night wind howled through the slums, James stood alone near the flame stone.

Eliora approached, holding the old journal they’d found beneath the ruins.

“I translated one of the prayers,” she said, her voice soft.

She read:

“When all is ash, You are still altar.

When the house falls, Your Spirit finds shelter.

When they scatter us, You gather fire from the wind.”

James exhaled.

No applause.

No spotlight.

Just peace.

The kind that doesn’t come from victory.

The kind that only comes from surrender.

End of Chapter 15🤭

•Chapter 16 – The Fire That Walks

The Ember Ground had no walls, but it echoed like a temple.

For seven days straight, they gathered the children of the slum, the weary souls, the angry, the hungry, the hopeless. They came not for spectacle, but because something burned here. Something not made by man.

James had stopped trying to explain it.

He simply stood each evening beneath the tarpaulin, hands lifted, letting the presence move as it wished.

On the seventh night, a boy named Uzo began to glow.

Not metaphorically literally.

A soft shimmer radiated from his skin as he lifted his arms in worship. No one moved. No one breathed. Uzo had never spoken a full sentence in his life. But that night, he sang.

“Jehovah, we walk in fire,

because You walked in flesh.”

The words weren’t in his language.

But his mother wept.

And when he finished, three people who had come to mock fell to their knees.

The blueprint pulsed in James’s satchel.

A new word burned through the linen:

“The fire no longer waits for altars.

It walks.”

James sat alone with Eliora that night, by the canal.

“Have we done enough?” he asked.

Eliora didn’t answer immediately. She dipped her toes into the dark water, letting the silence stretch.

“Revival is not a performance,” she finally said. “It’s a permission. And now… it’s been granted.”

James nodded slowly.

Then paused.

“Do you feel it? The city watching?”

She turned to him.

“I feel the war.”

They came the next day.

Not with guns, this time.

With microphones.

A popular influencer -silver car, perfect teeth, two million followers walked into the Ember Ground with a camera crew.

He smiled at James.

“Your fire’s trending. We’d love an interview.”

James hesitated.

Eliora stepped in.

“Why?”

The man laughed. “People want inspiration. The streets are dark. You’re light.”

James studied him.

“You want to package this.”

The influencer didn’t blink. “Of course. Why else would God make you visible?”

James smiled gently.

Then turned away.

“No comment.”

That same night, a government official came.

Her name was Aunty Dide — sharp, suited, and too calm.

She waited until after worship, then approached James quietly.

“You’re gathering hundreds,” she said. “Do you have a permit?”

James wiped sweat from his brow.

“We’re gathering hope.”

She didn’t smile.

“Hope needs structure. Regulation. Documentation.”

James looked at her.

And for a moment, his palm burned — not with flame, but with warning.

A message pressed into his spirit:

Control disguised as care

Is still control.

“We won’t be silenced,” James said softly.

She nodded.

“I know. But you can still be shut down.”

Then she left.

The next day, fire walked again.

A girl named Tolu, age nine, touched a blind man’s face.

He screamed.

Then saw.

He fell to his knees sobbing, thanking God in three languages.

People screamed. Others ran. Some stayed and sang louder.

The fire wasn’t just healing now.

It was choosing.

Random.

Raw.

Ruthless in its precision.

But darkness noticed.

Not just human powers.

Other powers.

At midnight, as James prayed in the canal slum, a wind rose not natural, not holy.

A man in white stood across the water, barefoot on the trash, watching him.

No eyes.

No mouth.

Just skin.

James didn’t move.

The figure raised a hand.

The canal shook.

Fish died instantly, floating to the surface.

James stood tall.

The fire on his palm answered golden, fierce.

The blueprint whispered from within his coat:

“The fire must walk

before it runs.”

James took a step forward.

The figure disappeared.

By morning, James called a remnant meeting.

“This is no longer a movement,” he said. “It’s a march.”

Eliora asked the question on everyone’s mind.

“To where?”

James opened the blueprint.

A new phrase blazed on the page.

“To the Gate of Smoke.”

Silence fell.

Mama Nkechi gasped.

“The Gate of Smoke… Lagos Island. Obalende.”

James nodded.

“Where kings were buried. Where deals are made in blood.”

Eliora whispered, “Where no one comes back the same.”

James looked at them all.

“That’s where the fire will run. But first… it has to walk there.”

That night, they left Makoko.

Not in buses. Not in secret.

They walked.

Thirty of them now — joined by strangers who’d witnessed miracles and refused to stay behind.

As they moved through the city, people joined them.

Some laughed.

Some cried.

A few threw stones.

But the fire walked.

In song.

In silence.

In presence.

And Lagos, for the first time in decades, watched.

•End of Chapter 16🤭

•Chapter 17 – The Gate of Smoke

Lagos Island had many names.

The elders called it Isale Eko the lower city. The traders called it the throat of commerce. But to the spirits, it had another name:

The Gate of Smoke.

Because here, sacrifices spoke louder than sermons. And blood, once spilled, never left the soil.

The remnant arrived at dawn.

They wore no uniforms, carried no banners, sang no chants.

But they came glowing.

Children, students, mothers, artisans. Not polished. Not perfect. But burning.

James led them down Broad Street in silence. His palms twitched the fire inside them flickering wildly.

The blueprint had been blank since they left Makoko.

But now, as they reached Tinubu Square, gold ink surged across the page.

“This is the gate where covenants were made

Without consent.

Where smoke replaced spirit.

Where light must return.”

They camped near an abandoned colonial church bricks faded, bell tower crooked.

Eliora placed a small lantern at the center and lit it.

“This place remembers things,” she whispered.

Mama Nkechi nodded. “The city doesn’t forget blood.”

By noon, people began to gather. Not out of curiosity out of memory.

Some had dreamed of this day. Others had felt fire in their sleep.

But not everyone came with peace.

He came in black.

Face covered.

Barefoot.

Silent.

He carried no weapon.

Only a carved staff.

His name was rumored, not spoken.

Olodude.

An intermediary. A vessel. A gatekeeper of shrines long abandoned.

He stood at the edge of the gathering.

Eliora noticed him first. “He doesn’t breathe.”

James approached slowly.

“Are you here to observe?”

The man lifted the staff.

“You stand on the bones of kings.

Do you have their permission?”

James didn’t blink.

“I have the flame.”

The man laughed — a hollow sound that shook the birds from the trees.

“Flame burns quick. But oaths… oaths linger.”

Then he vanished.

That night, the fire refused to light.

No candle caught.

No coal warmed.

The remnant sat in darkness, praying.

Until a child stood.

It was Uzo the glowing boy.

He walked to the center, raised both hands, and whispered a single word:

“Return.”

The lantern lit instantly.

But it wasn’t orange.

It was blue.

Cold. Ancient. Alive.

And from it rose a soft voice:

“Break the vow beneath the stone.”

James turned sharply. “What stone?”

The blueprint answered with a single symbol a circle, split in three.

Mama Nkechi gasped.

“The slave seal.”

At dawn, they dug behind the colonial church.

They found it buried beneath two feet of soil.

A flat stone, black as oil, carved with strange letters.

Eliora brushed her hand over it.

Her skin burned.

James stepped forward.

“Whatever this is… it must break.”

He placed both palms on it.

And prayed.

But nothing happened.

Until Uzo joined him.

Then the air ripped.

Not like sound.

Like reality.

From the sky, something fell a ring of fire, spinning with eyes.

It hovered above the remnant, screaming in silence.

A wind blasted outward, knocking most of them flat.

James stayed standing.

So did Mama Nkechi.

So did Chuka.

Yes Chuka.

He had returned.

Tired. Thin. But burning again.

He stepped forward, eyes locked on the stone.

“I was part of the vow,” he said.

James blinked.

“What vow?”

Chuka knelt.

“I helped them bury the fire. For influence. For platform. For applause.”

James lowered his head.

Then reached down.

Together, the three of them James, Chuka, Uzo lifted the stone.

And it cracked.

Smoke erupted.

Not dark white.

It twisted upward, forming a column that reached the sky.

In it, faces swirled men, women, children.

The enslaved. The forgotten. The silenced.

And they began to sing.

Not a hymn.

A release.

Their song became light.

Their light became wind.

And the wind became fire.

Not a burning fire.

A walking one.

It moved through the streets.

Down alleys.

Through markets.

Into courthouses.

Into brothels.

Into banks.

Into places where no sermon had ever gone.

And it whispered to every heart:

“You are not forgotten.

The altar lives again.”

James stood, shaking.

The blueprint disintegrated in his hand its final words glowing as they fell like ash:

“The fire walks alone now.

You must follow it.”

Eliora stepped beside him, tears in her eyes.

“What now?”

James smiled faintly.

“Now we stop chasing crowds.”

He looked around the remnant stunned, awed, humbled.

“Now we follow the flame.”

But far across the ocean, in a white office filled with screens and men in suits, a light blinked red.

A map zoomed in on Lagos.

The voice in the room asked coldly:

“What happens when the spiritual becomes political?”

Another answered:

“You shut it down.”

And in the corner, a name flashed on a file:

James Adekunle.

End of Chapter 17🤭

•Chapter 18 – Embers in the System

The fire moved faster than rumors.

By the third day after the vow broke, Lagos had changed.

Not visibly not yet.

But the undercurrents shifted.

Whispers passed between market stalls.

A politician called his mother in fear after waking up to the smell of incense in his sealed office.

A banker wept uncontrollably after a dream where widows placed coins on his desk, and the coins burned through.

The fire was not just healing.

It was correcting.

And not everyone welcomed it.

James returned to Makoko only briefly.

He sat by the same canal, holding nothing.

The blueprint had vanished with the smoke. No guidance. No plan.

Eliora sat beside him, a scarf around her hair, eyes closed.

“People are starting to call you The Ember Prophet,” she said softly.

James chuckled.

“I’m not a prophet. I’m a man who obeyed fire.”

She turned to him.

“And the fire obeyed God.”

They didn’t organize crusades anymore.

They infiltrated systems.

Not by design by presence.

Uzo started attending a public school. Within days, the headmistress confessed fraud and offered restitution.

Chuka got a job at a construction site. Three foremen gave their lives to Christ after he prayed during lunch break.

Mama Nkechi volunteered at a maternity ward. Three stillbirths reversed themselves infants cried after being declared gone.

The remnant scattered.

But the fire followed them.

James called it kingdom leakage.

But others called it spiritual terrorism.

Across the city, a quiet war began.

Not with weapons.

With paperwork.

Legal notices. Shutdown threats. Surveillance.

The system began closing ranks.

One morning, as James walked toward a bakery in Ebute Metta, a man in a grey suit intercepted him.

“Mr. Adekunle, you’ve been summoned for questioning.”

James blinked. “By who?”

The man smiled tightly. “National Spiritual Security Taskforce.”

James laughed. “That doesn’t exist.”

The man didn’t smile back.

“It does now.”

The interrogation room was clean.

Too clean.

James sat in a chair bolted to the floor.

Across from him sat a woman in a navy suit. Her badge read: A.S.S.E.T. — Agency for Spiritual Surveillance and Ethical Tracking.

She folded her hands.

“You are causing systemic disruption.”

James raised an eyebrow. “By praying?”

She stared at him.

“By influencing mood, memory, and monetary decisions through undocumented metaphysical practices.”

James exhaled. “You mean miracles.”

“No,” she replied. “We mean unlicensed awakening.”

He smiled faintly. “You can’t license God.”

She leaned forward.

“But we can silence His messengers.”

James stood.

The chair didn’t stop him.

Fire glowed in his eyes.

“Then you’ll have to silence the thousands who carry it now.”

He walked out.

They didn’t stop him.

But his name was marked.

The remnant met in a basement later that night.

No longer thirty.

Now over two hundred.

Eliora stood at the center.

“We need to decide. Stay quiet or go underground.”

Mama Nkechi shook her head.

“There is no underground. Not when the fire walks.”

James looked at them all.

“We don’t need buildings. We need boldness.”

A young man named Sam spoke up.

“They’ll freeze our accounts. Cancel IDs. Ban public meetings.”

James smiled.

“Then we’ll become what they fear most.”

He raised a candle.

“A holy virus. Uncontainable.”

That week, embers reached Abuja.

Then Accra.

Then Johannesburg.

Videos surfaced of small children laying hands on leaders.

Of prisoners weeping in tongues.

Of nightclubs turning into worship tents.

The fire had no headquarters.

It had hosts.

And in a lab beneath London, the red blinking light returned.

A voice muttered into a headset:

“Target profile expanding.

Recommend asset termination.”

Another voice answered:

“Not yet. Let him burn.

The system needs a scapegoat.”

James had one final dream that week.

He stood inside the city.

But everything was upside down sky below, earth above.

He walked on clouds. Skyscrapers dangled like roots.

And in the center, a throne of thorns.

On it sat a child.

The child looked at him and whispered:

“You’re not here to save the system.

You’re here to set it on fire.”

James woke up weeping.

He called Eliora.

“We start tomorrow.”

“Start what?”

He grinned through the phone.

“Operation Upper Room.”

End of Chapter 18🤭

•Chapter 19 – Operation Upper Room

There was no press release.

No posters.

No venue announcement.

But Operation Upper Room began.

Not in a stadium.

In homes.

All across Lagos, remnant carriers opened their doors.

Living rooms turned into sanctuaries. Kitchens into altars. Bedrooms into healing tents.

No mics. No stage lights. Just presence.

Some called it revival.

But James called it alignment.

Because this wasn’t a church movement.

It was a kingdom leak.

Chuka hosted the first Upper Room in Surulere.

Nine people showed up.

By the third night, there were fifty-three.

On the sixth night, as he prayed over a woman with partial blindness, the walls of the apartment glowed amber.

Literally.

Neighbors called the fire department.

The woman opened her eyes and screamed with joy.

The firemen found no blaze just warm air and a floor soaked with oil.

Mama Nkechi’s house turned into a midwife hub.

Young girls who had attempted abortions found peace.

Wounded mothers returned with babies they once gave away.

One afternoon, a police officer came to shut her down.

He ended up kneeling in tears, confessing unpaid bribes and broken marriages.

She didn’t call it deliverance.

She called it reversal.

Eliora’s Upper Room was different.

Quiet.

No shouting.

Just soaking.

People would come in, lay on the floor, and leave changed.

She called it “the water gate.”

James visited once and cried for three hours without understanding why.

But not all responses were spiritual.

The government noticed.

Banks began freezing accounts linked to certain names.

News stations aired segments accusing the movement of mental manipulation and “emotional extremism.”

One popular talk show host mocked James live on air.

He laughed, “Lagos is not for fireflies. It’s for hustlers.”

That same night, his studio cameras short-circuited for the first time in ten years — on air.

The next morning, he resigned.

James rarely appeared now.

He had become more presence than personality.

When he did show up, things moved.

Literally.

At a gathering in Ikeja, a paralyzed woman danced without realizing it.

In Agege, he whispered “restoration” over a widow, and her deported son called that same night from Spain.

People asked him, “How?”

He answered: “Because it’s not me.”

The Agency tried again.

Another summoning.

But when they reached his location, he was gone.

Only ashes remained where he had stood.

That night, one of their lead agents the same woman who questioned him weeks earlier wrote in her confidential journal:

“We were warned.

The flame is not a rebellion.

It’s a restoration.”

She resigned two days later.

But the system wouldn’t fall silently.

One evening, as Chuka returned from a home gathering, he was attacked.

Two men.

Masked.

Professional.

They didn’t take his phone or wallet.

They just whispered: “Shut it down.”

And vanished.

He was hospitalized with bruised ribs.

Eliora wept when she saw him.

James didn’t.

He knelt beside the bed and prayed aloud:

“Father, send the chariots.

We are ready.”

That night, something cracked in the atmosphere.

The clouds over Lagos turned red for seven minutes.

Hundreds recorded it. Others ignored it.

But those who carried the flame?

They understood.

Then came the message.

A broadcast signal hijacked every TV and radio frequency for 13 seconds.

A voice genderless, echoing:

“This is your final warning.

End the fire. Or face the silence.”

People panicked.

Social feeds exploded.

Was it hackers?

Was it spiritual?

James smiled when he heard it.

Because he recognized the voice.

It was the child from his dream.

He met the remnant one last time before the final stage.

They gathered in an old warehouse in Apapa.

Some wore tattered clothes.

Others came barefoot.

James stood before them, candle in hand.

“Tomorrow is not just a showdown. It’s a signal.”

He paused.

“If I don’t return”

Eliora interrupted. “Then we carry it.”

He smiled. “Yes. Burn it into every corner.”

Chuka winced, still healing. “Even in pain?”

“Especially in pain.”

They nodded.

Then they knelt.

And the candle in James’ hand turned blue.

End of Chapter 19🤭

•Chapter 20 – The Last Flame (Alternate Version)

The morning James disappeared, the clouds refused to move.

It was the kind of stillness that demanded reverence. Lagos had never been so quiet.

The wind didn’t blow.

Even the birds, ever chirping on power lines and rooftop edges, stood frozen, as if they too were watching history pause.

James walked alone through the city, barefoot.

His clothes were plain,no symbols, no banners, just linen and scars.

But inside him, heaven and earth were wrestling.

The old James-the fearful orphan boy, the doubting dreamer, the running man had died somewhere along the chapters.

What remained?

A vessel.

A carrier.

The last flame.

In the distance, the Agency’s compound shimmered under the July heat.

Their walls, once symbols of control and intimidation, now seemed exhausted like tired gods facing the wrath of mercy.

Inside the gates, the boardroom was filled with suits and silence.

The Director sat with trembling hands.

Every plan they’d formed, every manipulation undone.

Every scheme exposed.

And now, the one they couldn’t break was coming willingly.

James didn’t knock.

He stepped into the building and whispered: “I’m ready.”

They tried to threaten.

He smiled.

They tried to negotiate.

He wept.

“Don’t you see?” he asked them. “You don’t need to end me. You need to end this.”

The Director shouted, “You’re the rebellion!”

“No,” James replied, “I’m the result of your rebellion against light.”

In that moment, a surge of wind swept through the room-impossible wind, moving against closed windows.

The lights flickered.

One by one, each bulb shattered, not violently, but like surrendering soldiers.

Then came the fire but not burning fire.

Glory fire.

Outside, Lagos lit up in strange places.

In prisons, inmates knelt in silence.

In hospitals, nurses watched monitors stabilize without touch.

In markets, traders dropped to their knees, weeping, overwhelmed by peace.

There were no miracles like in movies only alignments.

A deep, holy reordering of everything broken.

Eliora stood on the rooftop of a ten-story building in Yaba.

She felt it -the release.

The transition.

James was not dying.

He was ascending.

Not into clouds, but into legacy.

Not into history, but into eternity’s present tense.

Back inside, James turned to the last person who still doubted.

A young agent, no older than he was when it all began.

“Do you fear what this fire will consume?” James asked gently.

The agent nodded, hand shaking.

James reached forward and placed two fingers on his heart.

“It won’t destroy you. It will reveal you.”

And then, James stepped into the center of the room…

…and vanished.

No noise. No light.

Only one thing remained.

A single flame, floating mid-air.

It hovered for forty days.

People came from across Nigeria to see it.

They wept. They sang. They changed.

Years later, the system rebuilt.

But differently.

New voices. New leaders. People of light.

Not perfect but purified.

And in small homes across the country, candles were lit every night.

Not in memory of James.

But in honor of change.

The kind that starts in chaos.

And ends in fire.

End of chapter 20🤭

End of Chaos and Change.