The night his house died, he was eight years old.

  He woke to the smell of smoke that should not exist. The air in his chamber, usually scented with camwood and cool stone, tasted of burning hair. Ojie sat up, the silk sheets pooling at his waist. He was small for his age, unbonded, his skin unmarred by the ink that defined his people.

  The door burst open.

  It was not a servant. It was his father.

  Oba ìgbàrádì Osawe filled the doorway. The Golden Lion tattoos that wrapped his torso and arms were not dormant tonight. They pulsed with a rhythmic, sickly light, illuminating the terror carved into a face that had never shown fear. There was blood on his hands. It was not his own.

  "Get up," ìgbàrádì said. His voice was a grind of stones.

  Ojie scrambled from the bed. "Father? The guards—"

  "Gone." ìgbàrádì crossed the room in two strides, grabbing Ojie’s arm. His grip was bruising. "The gates have fallen. We leave now."

  He dragged Ojie into the corridor. The main hallway, usually lined with the silent, bronze-cast heads of ancestors, was a tunnel of noise. Screams cut short. The wet, heavy sound of bronze meeting flesh. The roar of fire consuming tapestries that had hung since the Age of Binding.

  They did not run toward the main gates. ìgbàrádì pulled him toward the Gallery of Masks, where the faces of the dead stared down with hollow eyes. He pressed his bloody palm against the forehead of the Third Oba’s bust. The wall groaned and shifted, revealing a passage blacker than the smoke.

  "Inside," ìgbàrádì commanded.

  As they stepped into the dark, a voice echoed from the burning hall behind them. It was a voice Ojie knew as well as his own. A voice that had told him stories, taught him to play Ayo, promised him a first blade.

  "Brother," Ehi called out. The voice was calm, reasonable, terrifying. "It doesn't have to end this way. Come out. We can preserve the bloodline. Ewuare is merciful."

  ìgbàrádì froze. His jaw tightened until the muscles corded like rope. For a second, the golden light of his tattoos flared so bright it hurt Ojie’s eyes.

  "Mercy is weakness," ìgbàrádì whispered. It sounded like a curse.

  He pushed Ojie deeper into the tunnel and sealed the wall behind them. The sounds of slaughter muted instantly, replaced by the damp silence of the earth.

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  They ran. ìgbàrádì moved with the speed of the bonded, his night vision guiding them. Ojie stumbled, his breath coming in jagged gasps, but his father did not slow. He hauled Ojie over roots and slick stones, deeper into the foundations of Edo.

  "Listen to me," ìgbàrádì said, his breath hitching. "You go to the river. You find the boat. You do not stop."

  "Where are we going?" Ojie cried.

  "Not we."

  The tunnel opened abruptly. They stood on a ledge of rock overlooking a subterranean cavern. Below them, black water rushed with silent, deadly force—an underground tributary feeding the great rivers of the delta. There was no boat.

  ìgbàrádì looked at the water, then at the tunnel behind them. He looked at Ojie.

  In the faint luminescence of his tattoos, Ojie saw his father’s face clearly. There was grief there, vast and drowning. But beneath the grief, Ojie saw something else. Something that would haunt him for twelve years.

  Relief.

  As if the end of the world was also the lifting of a weight.

  "The research," ìgbàrádì muttered, more to himself than his son. "It ends here. It stays buried."

  He knelt, bringing his face level with Ojie’s. He placed his hands on Ojie’s shoulders. The heat of the lion spirit burned through his palms.

  "Survive," ìgbàrádì commanded. "Remember. Return."

  "Father—"

  ìgbàrádì stood. He lifted Ojie effortlessly, holding him over the void of the black water.

  "Forgive me," he said.

  He let go.

  Ojie fell. The wind was ripped from his lungs. He hit the water with a bone-jarring slap, the cold seizing his limbs instantly. The current grabbed him, dragging him down, spinning him into the dark.

  He fought to the surface, gasping for air, turning his head back toward the ledge.

  High above, golden light erupted. It was not the light of a tattoo. It was the light of a star born in the earth. A massive shape formed from pure spiritual energy; a lion, claws extended, mane wreathed in fire. It turned to face the tunnel entrance where shadows were pouring in.

  The lion roared.

  The sound was not heard; it was felt. It vibrated in Ojie’s teeth, in the marrow of his bones. The ledge shattered. Stone rained down. The light consumed everything.

  Then the current pulled Ojie under, and the world went black.

  Year 300T

  Ojie woke.

  He lay still for a long time, listening to the wind rattle the loose shutters of the fort. There was no smoke. No screaming. Only the dry, dusty smell of neglect.

  He sat up. He was not eight years old. He was thirty now.

  He swung his legs over the side of the cot. His body was lean, stripped of softness by twenty two years of rationing. Muscles coiled under his skin, tight and efficient. He walked to the cracked mirror propped against the stone wall.

  The face staring back was a ghost’s face. High cheekbones, fierce eyes that had learned to look at nothing. And on his shoulder, extending down his back, the mark.

  It was faint now. A dull, sickly yellow where it should have been gold. The lion tattoo, starved of ritual, starved of power, starved of purpose. It did not pulse. It barely moved. It was a faded painting on a crumbling wall.

  He touched the mark. The skin was cool.

  Another day. Another day of breathing when he should be dead. Another day of obeying the command that had killed his father.

  Survive.

  He had done that. He existed. He ate the meager food the old soldiers scavenged. He practiced the sword forms until his palms bled. He waited.

  For what, he did not know.

  Ojie turned away from the mirror. He pulled on his tunic, covering the faded mark. He strapped his father’s sword; the plain iron blade, not the bronze one lost in the river, to his hip.

  He stepped out into the courtyard of the last fort. The sun was rising over the red earth of the empire that had forgotten him. The air was still.

  It was a good day for a ghost to disappear.