Adaeze Nneka knelt in the center of the python pit, the cool, scaly bodies of the sacred beasts moving over her legs like living water.

  The shrine was located deep in the sacred grove of Igwe?cha, a place where the canopy was so thick that noon looked like twilight. The air was thick with the smell of musk and damp earth.

  She was in a trance. Or she was trying to be.

  Usually, the communion with the Python spirit was a slow, rhythmic descent into a cold, intellectual peace. The Python knew the shape of the river; it knew the patience of the hunt.

  But today, the spirit realm was screaming.

  Adaeze opened her eyes. They were the color of river moss, shifting between brown and green. She gasped, her hands gripping the edge of the divination bowl. The water inside, usually still as glass, was vibrating. Ripples started from the center and crashed against the ceramic rim.

  "Quiet," she whispered. "Peace."

  The pythons around her hissed. They uncoiled, their heads rising, tongues tasting the air. They sensed it too.

  Something had entered the city.

  It was not a spirit. It was an absence. A hollow space where the spiritual ether had been scooped out, leaving a wound that bled cold nothingness into the world.

  The Void.

  Adaeze stood up, brushing the dirt from her white wrapper. She was a Priestess of the Third Coil, high enough to know the secrets of Eze Nri, but low enough to still fear them.

  She hurried out of the pit and up the wooden stairs to the high altar. From here, she could see the city spreading out below, a tapestry of thatch and lantern light.

  She closed her eyes and engaged her Spirit Sight.

  The world turned grey. The souls of the living appeared as candle flames—some bright, some dim. The bonded walkers were bonfires, their spirit beasts overlaid on their human forms in shimmering light.

  And then she saw them.

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  Three shadows moving through the northern districts. They had no light. They were black holes in the grey landscape, absorbing the ambient spirit energy around them. Where they walked, the spirit-lights of the common folk flickered and dimmed, as if a cold wind were passing.

  Void Assassins.

  Adaeze’s breath hitched. These were legends. Nightmares told to initiate priests to warn them of the cost of breaking the Binding. Creatures summoned from the spaces Between, bound not to a soul, but to a purpose.

  They were moving fast. They were hunting.

  She tracked their trajectory. They were not heading for the High Priest's temple. They were not heading for the merchant quarter.

  They were heading for the Low Market. To the slums.

  And ahead of them, she saw a light.

  It was not a candle. It was a star. A single, radiant point of golden energy moving through the muck of the lower districts. It was faint, suppressed, but its quality was undeniable. It was the color of the sun at zenith.

  The Lion.

  The prophecy whispered in the back of her mind. When the eighth lion wakes... The marked shall fade and the unmarked rise.

  High Priest ìgbín had spoken of this. He believed the Lion was the key to the Unbinding. He believed the Lion had to be... dismantled.

  Did he send them?

  The thought turned her stomach. ìgbín was a radical, yes. He severed bonds. He preached heresy. But he loved life. He wept for every soul he altered. He would not summon creatures of the Void. These things were anathema to everything the Ancestral Path stood for.

  If ìgbín didn't send them... then who did?

  The Emperor.

  The realization chilled her more than the damp air. If the Throne was trafficking with the Void, then the rot had reached the heart of the world.

  Adaeze looked at the golden light. It was moving away from the docks, deeper into the residential maze. It was alone. It did not know what was coming for it.

  She had a choice. She could stay here, in the safety of the shrine. She could report this to ìgbín, let the elders debate the implications while the Lion was devoured.

  Or she could act.

  The Python was a patient spirit, but it was also a guardian. It protected the waterways. It protected the balance. And Void Assassins were an abomination against the balance.

  Adaeze ran to the armory. It was a small room behind the altar, filled with ceremonial staffs and ritual blades. She bypassed the heavy iron spears. She reached for a pair of Skei pins—bone needles, long as a forearm, carved from the ribs of a river drake.

  They were tools of surgery, used to pierce the veil and stitch spirit wounds. In the hands of a master, they could sew a soul to a body... or rip it out.

  She tucked the pins into her sash. She grabbed a vial of holy water from the basin.

  She ran to the edge of the platform and leaped.

  Her bond flared—Stage Four. Her skin rippled, taking on the sheen of scales. Her bones became flexible, rubbery. She hit the ground twenty feet below not with a crunch, but with a silent, fluid roll.

  She moved into the city. She did not run like a human; she flowed. She poured herself over obstacles, sliding through gaps in the fences, moving with a terrifying, serpentine speed.

  She had to reach the Lion before the shadows did. Not for him. Not for the prophecy. But because if the Void was allowed to feed in her city, it would never stop eating.