Dawn came slowly to the village, like a hesitant truth. Not with a shout or a blaze, but with a whisper that slipped between the palm fronds and kissed the earth with gentleness. The first light crept along the damp soil, brushing the tops of clay huts and casting long, golden shadows that swayed in rhythm with the waking wind.
Iyi stirred beneath the palm-leaf roof of his hut, his body stretched out on a woven mat that smelled faintly of smoke and healing herbs. The air was thick with the scent of wet earth, river mist, and the last embers of fires that had burned low through the night. Outside, the village was just beginning to stir, though the roosters had already started their morning song — that call both ancient and mundane, a reminder that life, no matter how sacred the day before, always returned to its rhythm.
But something was different this morning.
Iyi could feel it in his bones — that silent transformation that doesn't announce itself with thunder, but settles into the marrow with purpose.
He opened his eyes.
The soft rustle of trees greeted him, and the filtered glow of dawn spilled through the slats in the hut's walls. He lay still for a moment, letting the breath settle into his lungs, deeper and easier than before. For the first time in a long while, his chest didn't feel like a battlefield.
He was not the same man who had once wandered into the Market That Watches, desperate and disguised.
He was not the same man who had bartered with spirits and shadows, whose hands once trembled at the weight of unseen debts.
No.
Something inside had emptied — and in that emptiness, something else had awakened.
A hunger.
But not the old hunger.
Not the clawing, wild thing that used to wake him in Lagos's alleys, whispering of quick gold, escape, and survival at any cost. That hunger had teeth. It had driven him to lie, to hustle, to burn bridges just to build momentary ladders.
No — this was different.
This hunger had no claws. It pulsed instead, like a heartbeat buried beneath the ribs. Steady. Patient. Real.
It was the kind of hunger that came not from the belly, but from the soul.
He rose from the mat, the woven fabric whispering against his skin. He stepped outside barefoot, letting the cool soil ground him. The sun was just beginning to crown over the horizon, painting the village in soft amber light.
Children's voices began to rise in the distance — sleepy murmurs and laughter. Smoke curled upward from a few huts where women stoked fires. Chickens scratched the earth lazily, and old men sat beneath kola trees murmuring about dreams and warnings, sipping from shared calabashes.
Life moved on, simple and unassuming.
But for Iyi, everything felt renewed — as if the very air hummed differently now.
He walked slowly, barefoot across the packed earth, until he reached the riverbank — the place where his story had bent, broken, and re-formed.
The river flowed calmly this morning, its surface glassy, reflecting the trees that leaned over it like guardians. Mist hovered above the water, and the sound it made was like breath — exhaling stories too old to write.
Iyi knelt at the edge, dipping his fingers into the cool flow. The water welcomed him, circling his hand like it remembered.
This was where he had buried the sponge.
Where he had met the girl who bled songs.
Where debts whispered themselves into his flesh.
Where silence had once demanded answers.
He closed his eyes.
And listened.
The river said nothing. Yet it spoke.
It reminded him that change doesn't always roar.
That sometimes, becoming is a quiet undoing — and the loudest part of healing is the space that follows.
As he opened his eyes, he felt a presence beside him before he saw it.
Agba Oye.
The old spirit moved without sound, his long robes flowing like shadow and wind combined. His eyes, as always, carried the weight of forgotten histories, and the soft, knowing sadness of one who had seen too much.
"You awaken," Agba Oye said, voice deep and calm. "Bearer of burdens… and now, bearer of blessings."
Iyi didn't look up at first. He kept his hand in the river, letting the spirit's words echo into him.
"I thought I would feel full," Iyi said finally, his voice low. "But I feel… empty. Not in a painful way. But in a way I don't understand."
Agba Oye knelt beside him. "Emptiness is not the absence of life, Iyi. It is the space life needs to begin."
There was a long silence, broken only by the river's murmur.
"I still feel a hunger," Iyi said. "But it's changed. It's no longer the hunger that drove me to chase illusions… quick wins. It's not the Lagos hunger."
"What is it now?" the old one asked.
Iyi turned his gaze to the horizon.
"A hunger to give," he said softly. "To build something real. Not just survive. Not just escape."
Agba Oye smiled faintly. "True hunger is the call of the spirit. It does not demand silver or gold. It demands purpose. A man must eat to live. But to live well, to live fully — he must feed the world too."
Iyi let the words linger.
He thought of his past — the twisted alleys, the borrowed names, the friends lost to greed, and the innocence he had traded away for scraps of security.
He thought of the Market That Watches, and the boy who had once sold a piece of his own memory just to buy another week of running.
That boy still lived within him.
But now, he was no longer the only voice.
The rhythm inside him was stronger now.
Thump.
A steady drumbeat.
The rhythm of a heart that had stopped pretending.
Agba Oye placed a hand on his shoulder, firm and grounding. "There is work ahead, Iyi. The world does not wait for healed men. It tests them. Tempts them. Draws lines and dares them to cross. This new hunger — it will be tested too."
"I know," Iyi replied. "But I don't fear it anymore."
The wind stirred the river's surface.
Agba Oye rose. "Then begin again. With open hands. With clean sight."
Iyi stood beside him, taller than he remembered being. Lighter.
Not because he had gained power…
But because he had released the need to grasp.
He looked across the village — at the children now playing by the well, at the woman grinding millet, at the old man braiding palm leaves for roofing.
This place had its own rhythm. Its own hunger.
Perhaps he could feed it.
Not with gold.
Not with cleverness.
But with presence.
With truth.
With service.
He turned to Agba Oye. "What lies beyond this village?"
"Many things," the spirit replied. "But none more important than what lies within it. What you do here will echo far. Change begins at the root, not the fruit."
Iyi nodded.
The sun was now fully above the trees, casting light on every roof, every stone.
It was morning in more ways than one.
And Iyi was ready.
He walked back toward the heart of the village, the hunger within him no longer a curse to outrun, but a compass to follow.
A hunger for meaning.
A hunger to be more than the sum of what he had lost.
A hunger to give what had been so hard-won.
He no longer hungered for survival.
He hungered for purpose.