Chapter 01

Chapter 01

Storm Over Nima

Nima was a city that never truly slept. From the crowded Nima markets of Old Town Road to the neon-lit towers rising along the shoreline, life pulsed through every street like electricity. But on the night the storm came, even the boldest fisherman and the noisiest trotro driver fell silent.

Adams Ibrahim was pushing his faulty okada motorbike across the Jamestown Bridge when the sky changed. One moment it was clear and warm; the next it churned with spiraling clouds that glowed an eerie blue. His radio buzzed with static, his bike lights flickered, and a wind like a living thing swept across the bridge.

Adams frowned.
“Ei… what kind of storm is this?”

Before he could turn back, lightning struck — not the sharp, white streaks he knew, but thick veins of shimmering blue energy. They didn’t hit the ground; they converged on the water below, swirling into a vortex that hummed like a giant heartbeat.

Adams dropped his bike and scrambled to the railing. Beneath the bridge, the ocean revealed something impossible — a crack in the seabed glowing from within. At the center was a cluster of crystals, pulsing like stars trapped underwater.

He didn’t know it yet, but he was looking at Nzuri, an ancient energy-rich mineral long buried under the Gulf of Guinea. It was older than any civilization, and for the first time in thousands of years, it had awakened.

The heartbeat grew louder. The air vibrated. The storm exploded.

A beam of blue light shot upward, engulfing the entire bridge. Adams felt his body lift off the ground, suspended in a flash that pierced him like fire and ice at the same time. He tried to shout, but the sound dissolved in the roar of energy.

Then came the rush.

A force blasted through his muscles, flooding his veins, rewriting something in his blood. Adams felt time stretching, slowing, bending around him. He saw the droplets of rain hanging motionless in the air. He saw his own heartbeat flashing like a drum in his chest.

Then everything went black.

Adams woke up on the bridge hours later, rain still dripping from his clothes. His bike lay twisted beside him. The storm clouds were gone, replaced by a calm sky as if nothing unusual had happened.

“What… what just happened?” he whispered to himself. The storm was so severe that people had decided to stay off the roads for hours afterwards.

He tried to stand — and the world blurred.

In one instant he was crouched on the bridge…
In the next he was somehow standing at the far end, heart hammering.

He gasped.
“No… no, no, no. That wasn’t possible.”

He turned to look back — but before he could blink, his body moved again on instinct, and suddenly he was halfway across the bridge once more.

“Ohhhhhh no.”

Adams clutched his head.

Something was wrong with him.
Something was incredibly, impossibly wrong.

Or… something was beginning.

Behind him, far out at sea, the blue glow flickered once more… and sank into darkness.

But a force had already chosen its vessel.

And Nima would never be the same again.