"In silence, the serpent coils. In darkness, the lion wakes." Ancient Proverb of Anin
The night before Adiro returned to the palace, the skies over Dakira split with thunder. No rain followed, only lightning and a burning wind. A bad omen, the old women said. The kind that comes before a king is overthrown.
He rode under cover of darkness with only one escort, Kwame, a trusted guard from his childhood who once served his mother in secret. They entered through the old servants' gate near the back of the palace.
"Are you sure about this, my prince?" Kwame asked, glancing at the high towers that loomed like judgment.
"If we wait too long," Adiro said, dismounting, "we give them time to destroy the truth."
He touched the pendant beneath his robes and stepped into the palace halls.
The place felt different now.
The marble floors echoed louder. The guards stared longer. Even the candles seemed to flicker with suspicion. Adiro's presence, once embraced with ceremony, now passed in silence.
In the eastern wing, Adiro went straight to the royal archive. A passage lay hidden behind a false bookshelf, a tunnel only his mother and closest aides had known. It led to a chamber beneath the council chamber, used during wartime for secure talks.
There, on a cracked table, lay a wooden box wrapped in faded silk.
Inside was a journal. The initials "Z.A." were branded on the cover; Zina Adepo.
Adiro opened it slowly. The pages were full of sketches, dreams, names. His mother had written of two boys, both gifted, both hunted.
"When the kings turn their faces, the earth shall find its voice in the children I bore in love. A storm and a flame. A crown in each hand, or fire in both."
In Oremi, Niko took on the name Tunde. It was a common name, easy to blend with. Sefa had arranged a contact for him in Oremi—a professor named Eda, once loyal to Akin, Niko's father.
Professor Eda lived on the outskirts of the capital, near the ancestral burial grounds. Her home was small but filled with relics, fragments of truth forbidden in the courts.
Niko entered her home in silence, but Eda greeted him without fear.
"You have your father's eyes," she said. "But your mother's anger."
Niko bowed slightly. "Then I hope I also have their strength."
Eda handed him a sealed scroll. "This was meant for you. Hidden until the signs returned."
Inside was a map; hand-drawn, with paths leading from Oremi's mountain shrine to a place marked with a symbol he now recognized: twin lions beneath a burning tree.
"Is it real?" Niko asked.
Eda nodded. "It's prophecy. But more importantly… it's a plan. One your parents began. And many died to protect."
Commander Zara knelt before King Mensah and the Royal Council.
"The princes are moving. One in each kingdom. We believe they are coordinating."
"Do they have followers?" asked Elder Kojo.
"Loyalists. Old ones. Quiet ones," she replied. "It's beginning to spread."
Mensah's hands gripped the arms of his throne. "Then we must strike."
Zara nodded. "I've dispatched two teams. One to the Eastern Palace in Dakira. One to Oremi, disguised as pilgrims."
"And the girl?" Kojo asked. "The informant?"
"Sefa?" Zara smiled faintly. "She has served her purpose. She won't leave Oremi alive."
In Oremi, Sefa watched Niko from the window of a quiet café near the university.
She regretted it now. Turning him in. But it had been fear, raw and primal that drove her to Zara. And now, the shadows were closing around her too.
A man brushed past her table and dropped something in her lap.
A black feather. Oremi's mark of death.
She shot up and ran.
Back to Niko. Back to the only thing that might save them both.
In Dakira, Adiro returned to the main palace archives to retrieve more documents. But the halls were already swarming with guards.
Too late.
He ducked into a side corridor, watching in horror as flames began to engulf the records room. The smell of burning paper choked the air.
A guard turned, one he recognized.
"Prince Adiro!" the man shouted.
Adiro ran.
Out through the royal gardens, over the stables, and into the old catacombs. Only Kwame knew where he'd gone. And if he was captured...
He hid among the tombs of long-dead kings, breath short, heart pounding.
Everything was unraveling.
Sefa found Niko that night. Bloodied, limping.
"They're coming," she gasped. "I didn't know they'd kill you, I didn't know they'd kill me!"
Niko stepped back, eyes burning. "You turned me in."
"I was scared!"
"You betrayed me."
Sefa dropped to her knees. "Let me make it right."
Niko wanted to scream. But he saw the tear in her shirt, the bruise on her arm.
She had been hunted too.
He knelt beside her. "Then help me get to the mountain. The shrine. If I can light the flame there… Oremi will listen."
"And Dakira?" she asked.
Niko looked east. "That's up to him."
Adiro lit a candle inside the tomb. His mother's tomb.
He placed the pendant against the stone, whispering, "I found him, Mama. He's real."
Behind him, a soft voice whispered, "And they'll kill you both before you can change anything."
He turned.
A girl stood at the edge of the light, no older than him, draped in the garb of the Ancestor Keepers, a secret order once thought extinct.
"You wear the mark of the Dove," she said. "That means the prophecy still breathes."
Adiro stood. "Are you with us?"
She nodded. "I'm with the truth."
Unrest brewed in both kingdoms.
In Dakira, protestors gathered in the lower city. Chanting. Lighting fires.
In Oremi, secret gatherings lit lanterns in the shape of doves, symbols outlawed for decades.
The kings tried to suppress it.
But truth, like fire, spreads.
And as Adiro and Niko made their final moves toward the ancient shrines of their respective lands, the skies began to darken again.
The thunder returned.
And the hunt was no longer quiet.
It was a war about to explode.