The morning sun crept over the rustling palm trees, casting long golden fingers across the earth-hardened footpaths of Iremoje, a village tucked deep within the southern lands of Odanjo's forgotten borders.
To the people here, life was simple wake, work, eat, pray, and sleep. But to the boy known as Ayomide, every sunrise felt like an echo… as though life itself was repeating something he could no longer remember.
He stood by the well, his rough palm wrapped around a gourd as he drew water. His reflection in the water stared back at him, sharp eyes, skin like the midnight sky, cheekbones fit for royalty, but none of it meant anything.
Who am I, really?
"Ayomide! Are you fetching the water or dancing with it?" his mother shouted from their mud hut, a small wrapped baby on her back and firewood stacked by her feet.
"Coming, Mama!" he replied, forcing a smile.
She was not his real mother. He didn't need memories to know that. There was no blood connection, no divine bond between them. But she had raised him like a lioness, strong, fierce, and full of prayers. Her name was Iyalẹwa, and in this village, she was known as the healer, the widow who tamed snakes with herbs and soothed spirits with oriki.
She had found Ayomide in the forest one rainy night, twenty seasons ago, naked, glowing faintly, and crying with no voice.
"Omo àná," the villagers had called him. Child of yesterday.
They said he came from the gods. Others said he was cursed.
He never knew which one to believe.
Later that afternoon, Ayomide followed his usual routine, tapping palm trees for wine. His hands moved by instinct, his feet firm as he climbed each trunk with the agility of a panther.
But today, something felt... off.
Birds scattered from the canopy with no warning. The wind whispered his name, not the one the villagers gave him, but something older.
"Aremo…"
He froze.
"Who said that?"
No answer.
The rustle of palm fronds returned, but the silence underneath still felt alive watching.
As he reached the final tree, his blade slipped from his belt and fell into a thicket of red clay and roots.
When he bent down to retrieve it, he uncovered something strange, a carved ivory pendant, buried beneath the soil, glowing faintly with warmth.
He picked it up. Immediately, a pulse surged through his arm.
FLASH!
He staggered back, a thousand images flooding his mind:
A crown shattering into pieces.
A man with a scar across his face.
A black hawk flying over a burning palace.
A whisper: "You are not done yet."
"Ayomide!" a voice cried.
It was Tayo, his closest friend, running through the grove.
"Bro, abeg run! The chief's son is looking for you. Said you refused to give palm wine for the village offering."
Ayomide blinked, still dazed. "I didn't refuse, Mama said the sap was too bitter to drink."
"Well, they think it's disrespect. Come before he turns it into another flogging parade."
Back at the village square, Chief Aderoju's son, Kọ́lá, stood tall in his embroidered agbada, surrounded by guards.
"Ah, the spirit-boy finally arrives," Kọ́lá sneered. "Still too proud to bow, even though you're no more than a bastard of the bush?"
Ayomide didn't speak. His fingers clenched around the pendant still tucked into his wrapper.
Kọ́lá stepped closer.
"You dream too much, Ayomide. Dreamers do not survive long in real life. Give me the palm wine, or face the cane."
Something ancient stirred in Ayomide's chest.
And for the first time in his life, he replied without fear.
"Touch me," he said quietly, "and the gods will remember what you've forgotten."
Gasps filled the air.
A sudden gust of wind swept through the village, blowing open cloths and shaking cooking pots. A chicken dropped dead. A baby began to cry.
Kọ́lá's face twisted. "You think you scare me with your riddles, snake? You are nothing but a cursed leftover of the forest!"
Before he could lift his hand to strike Ayomide, a loud crack split the air.
The earth beneath them shook.
A fissure ran through the village square right between them.
Everyone screamed and scattered.
Even Kọ́lá stepped back.
Ayomide stood still. The pendant in his hand burned red hot.
From the crack came a voice dry like dust, deep like the ocean:
"The heir walks again. Odanjo's bones shall remember."
Then silence.
That night, Ayomide sat alone at the edge of the forest, staring at the pendant, which no longer glowed.
Tayo joined him silently, handing him a gourd of water.
"You're not normal, you know that right?" he said, trying to sound casual.
"I know."
"You going to tell me what's going on?"
Ayomide didn't answer. Instead, he looked up at the moon. It was full, hanging heavy like a forgotten truth.
"I think… I think I used to be someone else."
Tayo laughed. "We all were. You were probably a goat in your past life."
Ayomide didn't laugh.
He held the pendant tighter, whispering the word that had come to him in a flash earlier that day.
"Aremo."
The trees rustled. Somewhere deep in the forest, drums began to beat not of man, but of spirits.
Ayomide stood slowly.
"I need to find the old priest. The one they say lives beyond the river shrine."
Tayo blinked. "You mean Baba Ọlọrun? The mad one? No one goes there, not even hunters."
"I will."
Tayo shook his head. "You're truly possessed."
"Maybe I am," Ayomide said, stepping into the darkness. "But I think... I've been asleep for too long."