The air in Zone 7 always smelled faintly of rust, engine grease, and nyama choma smoke. Neon lights blinked lazily over the tight alleys of Nairobi Prime's lower districts, where old brick met chrome steel and children played beside rusting hoverbikes. Kayen Telani walked with his hands in his jacket pockets, his hood up—not to hide, but to disappear.
Nobody really noticed him. He was the type that teachers forgot to call on, that girls barely glanced at, that even the neighborhood bullies skipped over unless they were bored. To them, Kayen was background noise. Just another face in a crowd of brighter stars.
But tonight, the sky was wrong.
He glanced upward. Beyond the flickering billboards and skyrail tracks, thunder clouds coiled like snakes, glowing unnaturally from within.
"Storm in the dry season?" he muttered.
A crack of thunder responded—too loud, too close.
The wind howled suddenly. Market tents flapped violently. Vendors shouted, trying to tie things down. Kayen stumbled into the junkyard alley he often visited, ducking behind a metal stall just as a blast of air swept past him. Then, silence.
The sky split.
A jagged bolt of light cracked down—and for a moment, it didn't vanish. It hung there, frozen in place like a glowing wound across the heavens. Kayen stared, wide-eyed.
From the light… something descended.
It wasn't falling. It was choosing.
A glowing shape with no true form—a swirling core of black and gold fire, etched with ancient symbols—hovered before him. His legs gave way.
And then the voice came.
"So… this is the vessel?"
It wasn't heard—it was felt, deep in his skull, like a pressure against bone. Kayen screamed, but no sound came out. His body convulsed, eyes rolling back.
The sigil—red, ancient, alive—seared itself into the sky and then into his mind.
"We are bound. Your flesh, my prison. Your spirit, my key."
Everything went black.
He awoke to his sister's worried face. "Kayen! What happened? You were passed out outside the gate. You scared me, idiot!"
He sat up slowly. His head pounded like a war drum. "I... I don't know. Must've hit my head."
She frowned. "And your eyes... they were glowing. Just for a second. Weird."
He rubbed his temples. Glowing? A fragment of the voice echoed in his head. He quickly shook it away.
At school the next day, things felt stranger still. Sounds seemed sharper. Movements slower. He noticed the fly buzzing behind the class before anyone else. When a football came flying toward him during P.E., he turned and caught it without thinking.
"Yo! Kayen's got reflexes now?" someone laughed. Kayen just shrugged.
Inside, he was screaming.
That night, he dreamed. No—he saw.
A city burning. A mountain of ash. Wings, black and white, tearing the heavens apart. And in the center... him.
And then came the warning:
"They are coming. For you. For me."
He bolted upright in bed, sweat slicking his back. The voice whispered again:
"The hunt has begun."
Outside his window, something moved across the rooftop. Watching. Waiting.