Smoke trailed across the skyline like bruises on glass. The cathedral lay behind them, gutted and lifeless, but the city pulsed on , unaware, or willfully blind.
Damilola stood on the rooftop, rain still whispering over her skin. Her fingers trembled, not from fear, but from something worse , recognition. Malachy's last words weren't just cryptic dogma. They were echoes. And echoes, she had learned, come from something buried deeper.
She turned to Adesuwa and Efe, who had gone quiet after the escape. Efe was scanning a salvaged tablet from the control room, and Adesuwa kept glancing toward the horizon like something might claw its way out of the clouds.
"We need to talk," Damilola said. "About Ajayi."
Efe paused. "What about him?"
Damilola took a breath. "I've met him before. But not as Ajayi. Years ago. At Saint Benedict's Orphanage. He was called 'Uncle Matthew.'"
Adesuwa froze.
"He ran the chapel there," Damilola continued. "Quiet. Kind. He used to bring food on Sundays. He told stories in Latin. The kids called him Saint Matt."
Efe sat down slowly, the weight of the moment dragging his limbs.
"That can't be a coincidence," Adesuwa said.
"It's not," Damilola replied. "He disappeared the same year the fires started."
Back in the safehouse, the decrypted data had evolved. The flash drive , still scorched at the edges , contained more than logs and codebooks. There was a nested directory, buried beneath layers of false flags. Efe unlocked it with a password: Psalm 44:22 , the verse Malachy quoted before the gas was released.
Inside: a series of audio files. Confessions. Dozens.
One played automatically.
"I was there when the first Circle was drawn. We thought we were saving Lagos from itself. But blood is a binding agent. Once spilled, it demands more."
Damilola recognized the voice. The cadence. The gentleness laced with menace.
Uncle Matthew. Ajayi.
"He wasn't recruited," she whispered. "He started it."
More voices followed , confessions from priests, judges, journalists. Each admitting to acts they'd justified as sacrifices for order.
Then came a photo , timestamped three weeks ago. Ajayi, cloaked in black, embracing a man whose face was hidden… but whose pendant bore the emblem of the Lagos state government.
"Is that, ?" Efe leaned in.
"The Deputy Governor," Adesuwa finished. "They're embedded in the government."
"No," Damilola said. "They are the government."
Elsewhere, beneath a colonial mansion in Lekki converted into a private chapel, Ajayi stood in a chamber lined with relics and surveillance screens. The cathedral's destruction played on a loop. He watched it silently.
A figure approached , a man with a prosthetic hand and eyes that twitched unnaturally.
"It's done," the man said.
Ajayi nodded. "Good. The Circle's outer ring has collapsed. Now, the core remains."
"What about Malachy?"
"He served his purpose. A zealot's death gives us martyrdom without consequence."
"And the girl?"
Ajayi turned, revealing a board lined with photographs , Damilola, Amaka, Adesuwa, Efe. String and tape connected their histories like a nervous system.
"She's closer than she knows. Her mother gave us the cipher. Her father, the vault."
The man hesitated. "Should we move forward?"
Ajayi's lips curled. "Begin Project Resurrection. Let them think they've won."
Amaka arrived at the safehouse that night, soaked and pale.
"You're not going to believe this," she said, holding out an envelope. "It was left at my doorstep."
Inside was a single sheet. Written in old Yoruba script, then translated in English.
"Not all saints sleep. Some are waiting. When the tombs crack, follow the bloodline."
Underneath it: a fingerprint. Burnt into the page.
Damilola's heart stuttered.
"It's my mother's," she said.
Adesuwa frowned. "But… your mother's dead."
"She died when I was ten. But the day before she passed, she left a puzzle in my room. A cipher wheel. I thought it was a game."
Efe pulled up the map again. "Then it's not over. The Circle isn't dying , it's shedding skin."
That night, a coordinated blackout hit Ikoyi, Surulere, and parts of Lekki. Drone footage showed silhouettes moving into abandoned schools and hospitals. Emergency broadcasts were jammed. Only one station aired , an analog channel hijacked with a static-riddled message.
A voice, modulated and warped.
"They built towers of ash and called them churches. Now we baptize in fire. Lagos will rise. And this time, there will be no saints."
The message looped.
Efe smashed the speaker. "We need to go underground."
"To where?" Adesuwa asked.
Damilola looked at the cipher note again. Her mother's words echoed now with chilling clarity.
"Where the tombs crack."
Amaka caught on. "Makoko. There's an ossuary there. Flooded. Sealed since colonial times."
"That's where we go," Damilola said. "That's where the bloodline ends."
"Or begins again," Adesuwa whispered.
As dawn broke over a city cloaked in false peace, a final twist revealed itself:
On the last page of the flash drive's data logs was a personnel file, classified, redacted, but traceable.
Codename: Shepherd Zero.
Real Name: Adesuwa Adefarasin.
The screen flickered.
Damilola turned to her friend, eyes narrowing.
"Adesuwa… what is this?"
Silence.
Then, a whisper: "I was born into the Circle."
Gun cocked.