Rain bled into the Niger Delta as Obinna pressed against the refinery's corroded pipes. Thunder still hummed beneath his skin—a living memory of the grove's gift. Blue sparks danced over his knuckles, casting jagged shadows on Adaeze's storm-etched face beside him. Above, Azụmiri sliced through the smog, lightning-edged feathers carving the gloom.
>*He bleeds.*
The spirit-eagle's voice hissed in Obinna's mind.
His gaze snapped upward. There, on the highest gantry, **The Reaper** stood—skull-mask split from their last battle, scythe swallowing the storm's dying light. *Exactly where Chapter 15's lightning left him.*
Adaeze gripped her staff, knuckles white.
> **"He wants us to chase him."**
Obinna's hand tightened around the clay pot in his pack. Inside, the **spirit-father's ebony face** whispered, its gold eyes dimming:
>*"Nwa m… the poison spreads…"*
Black veins pulsed across the salt-carved brow.
> **"Chijioke's in there,"** Obinna said, voice raw. **"Trap or not—we go."**
---
The Reaper moved like a curse given form.
One moment: twenty paces away.
Next: scythe shrieking at Obinna's throat.
Obinna rolled through oil-slicked mud. Adaeze's staff *cracked* against the scythe's haft—Igbo wards flaring crimson.
> **"NOW!"** she screamed.
Obinna slammed charged palms into the earth.
>*KA-THOOM!*
**Reverse-lightning** erupted *skyward*—scorching the Reaper's cloak. The monster staggered, shadow-blood smoking from the wound.
> **"FINISH IT!"**
The Reaper laughed—a sound like tombstones grinding.
> **"Fool. You hunt ghosts while Lagos feasts."**
He hurled a glass vial. It shattered, releasing **soul-smoke** that coiled into visions:
- French drills gutting the Delta, pipes sucking liquid moonlight—*Soul-Salt*.
- Children in steel cages, mercury veins glowing as wires burrowed into spines.
- **Chijioke**—*alive*—screaming as a machine devoured his back.
> **"Port Harcourt's belly,"** the Reaper hissed. **"Save him… or claim his corpse for their war."**
He dissolved into the downpour.
---
The refinery swallowed them whole—a beast of colonial iron and stolen breath. Towers groaned. Pipes throbbed, pumping poisoned Soul-Salt into vats stamped with French eagles. Adaeze pulled Obinna behind a scalding tank, her storm-glyphs casting frantic light.
> **"They're turning pain into power,"** she breathed.
Obinna clutched the spirit-pot. *His real father's laugh echoed—teaching him to spearfish in the Udi hills, sunlight on water.*
> **"Find Chijioke. Shatter the rest."**
>*SCRAPE.*
A steel door hissed open.
Dr. Laurent stood over a glass tube, goggles reflecting Chijioke's suspended body. Mercury veins pulsed beneath the boy's skin like poisoned rivers.
> **"Subject Seven's rage output peaks,"** Laurent murmured to technicians. **"Prime him for Lagos deployment."**
Obinna's spear scraped concrete.
Laurent spun. **"Uduka?! How—"**
>*CRACK!*
Adaeze's staff shattered the tube. Chijioke collapsed into her arms, coughing silver blood.
> **"Obi…nna?"** His human eye swam with tears. **"They said… you forgot me."**
Obinna hauled him up. **"Family doesn't break."**
Alarms howled. Steel doors slammed.
>*"Ẹ gbà mi lẹ̀kún!"* (Clear my path!)
**Tunde** erupted from a ventilation shaft, **Egúngún masqueraders** swirling behind him—indigo cloth swallowing bullets, hooks gleaming. Yoruba war chants shook the walls:
> *"Ọta ò lè pa ẹni tí Ọlọ́run fẹ́ láyè!"*
> *(No enemy kills whom God spares!)*
Laurent scrambled backward. **"Omega purge! Drown them!"**
Overhead pipes exploded. Torrents of Soul-Salt flooded the chamber—scorching skin, blinding eyes. Adaeze choked as her glyphs flickered.
>*"AZỤMIRI—THE VATS!"*
The spirit-eagle dove. Too slow.
>*"ENOUGH!"*
Chijioke tore free. Mercury veins blazed as he plunged hands into the toxic flood.
> **"THIS PAIN IS MINE!"**
Soul-Salt *reversed*—swirling into his body. His silver eye became a supernova.
>*KA-BOOM!*
The purge system imploded. Laurent vanished in a vortex of screaming light.
---
Silence fell heavy as a shroud.
Chijioke collapsed, human eye brown again, mercury scars weeping silver. Adaeze cradled him, humming *"Nnenna."*
Tunde offered his rusted hook.
> **"Yoruba and Igbo—one blood. One fight."**
Obinna clasped it. *The spirit-father's fevered whisper echoed: "Nwa m… hurry…"*
He scooped purified Soul-Salt—glowing like captured dawn—into the clay pot. The ebony face sighed, cracks sealing slightly.
Outside, the storm broke. First light bled over the delta.
>*"Lagos next,"* Azụmiri rasped, lightning dancing in his feathers.
>*"We bring the storm to heal him."*
MINI-DICTIONARY
- **Reverse-Lightning**: Obinna's Thunder Grove power (earth-to-sky bolts).
- **Soul-Salt**: Crystallized life-force of Niger Delta spirits. Poisoned by French drills.
- **Ndị ọchị**: Eternal guardians bound to sacred objects. Spirit-father = Obinna's ancestral protector.
- **Egúngún Masqueraders**: Yoruba ancestral avengers. Cloth absorbs bullets; chants disrupt machines.
- **Omega Purge**: French toxin-flood protocol. Weaponized Soul-Salt.