Chapter 1: First Light in the Rain

Rain hammered the tin roof of the shed, the crackling noise like a thousand drums struck simultaneously, so dense it made his heart race. Amane’s back of the head slammed hard against the concrete step. A cold shock raced up his spine straight to the crown of his skull. He snapped his eyes open; muddy water instantly flooded his orbits, stinging until tears nearly spilled out. In his palm, he clutched a single mint leaf so tightly its edges were soaked with cold sweat, yet it felt terrifyingly hot. He forced himself to sit up, his head splitting as if someone were driving nails into his brain with a chisel, each strike ringing with a sharp echo. Across the street, the smoke from a corn roasting stall had been pressed down by the downpour into low, white mounds of fog, swirling in the murky puddles. He remembered just closing his stall at the market, carrying that crate of mint leaves home. How did he wake up lying in this filthy alleyway?

Amane didn’t respond. His gaze could not be pulled away from the microscopic map unfolding before him. He stared at a patch of gray-white exudate deep within the brain’s cerebral sulci, like mud settling in low-lying ground after a storm, radiating a smell of gray ash. Instinctively, he tightened his grip on the mint leaf, pressing it against the child’s temple, and whispered internally: "Disperse." The gray-white mass actually twitched, like a sand pile scattered by a flood, its edges beginning to blur. He repeated the command. On the cellular map, the splicing bodies began to shrink, peeling off layer by layer until they returned to calm. Raindrops slapped violently against the back of his neck, but he was oblivious, wrapped in a silence of total concentration.

Amane pushed through the crowded crowd, mud splashing over his pant legs. Curled up in a drainage ditch was a boy, perhaps seven or eight years old. His forehead was hot enough to cook cake on, the corners of his mouth streaked with dark red blood, his eyelids half-closed. His whole body shivered like a banana leaf in the wind, the clack of his teeth chattering clearly audible. Onlookers stood in a semi-circle; some shook their heads in sighs, others muttered, "It’s probably malaria striking again," while most just watched with cold indifference. No one was willing to crouch down and touch the mud-caked child. Amane squeezed to the front, dropped to one knee, the mud soaking through his pants as it wetted his knee. He ignored the pain, his fingers decisively landing on the child’s burning forehead.

The instant his fingertips touched the skin, a flash of blue-white light exploded before Amane’s eyes. The world froze. Raindroplets in his vision suspended as a curtain of beads, and countless tiny, disc-shaped cells unfolded like a blood smear under a microscope, clear enough to cause a shiver. He saw inside the dark red blood cells, spiral-shaped worm bodies dividing frantically, layer upon layer, like coiled hemp ropes knotted into dead loops at the market. He drew in a cold breath. The scene was bizarre and terrifying—next to the worms, the walls of the capillaries looked like cracked ceramic pots, the leaked fluid gathering toward the brain tissue, forming a fatal pressure.

Amane huddled beneath the chassis of an abandoned taxi. The cold steel undercarriage pressed against his back, the chill seeping through to his bones. He closed his eyes, forcing down the surge of fear, summoning that pitifully weak stream of heat within his body. In the darkness of his closed lids, he “looked” at the world again. This time, there was no microscopic cellular map, only a铺天盖地 (sky-covering) gray mist—the heaviest oppression and filth of the city’s underbelly. Yet in the deepest part of his heart, a faint, golden wick of a lamp stubbornly flickered in the storm, radiating a searing heat.

Amane gently pushed her hand back, his motion soft but unyielding: "Keep it for the child’s medicine. He isn’t fully better yet." He turned to glance at the boy. The little one was cradled in his mother’s arms, looking up at Amane with eyes bright as two wet black grapes. A sudden heat flared in Amane’s chest, like a fire burning in the rain, driving away all the chill. He told himself: this ability was to be used only to save lives, not for fame or fortune. If he traded it for money, what would be the difference between him and those selling fake powders at the street corner?

Amane removed the mint leaf from the child’s temple. The leaf had turned black and curled, devoid of life, as if singed by fire. He stood up, his legs trembling slightly. Rainwater dripped from his chin into his collar, bringing a spike of cold. At that moment, an old man wearing a large gray robe pushed through the crowd. It was Chief Eze, the community elder. The chief looked at the waking child, then at the sweat-soaked Amane, his gaze steady and scrutinizing, like the beam of a scale weighing goods: "Who taught you this art?"

Amane didn’t look back; he walked toward the direction of the market. He had to go back to pack up his stall. That bundle of mint grass was still in the metal box; if it got soaked in the rain, it would be unsellable tomorrow, and his livelihood would be cut off. Just as he reached the street corner, he saw three men in black from the Enforcement Squad swinging rubber batons, driving the cassava vendor to the roadside. The vendor crouched on the ground, shielding his crate. The batons landed on his shoulders and back with dull thuds. The vendor gritted his teeth, not daring to make a sound.

Amane’s breath caught in his throat, as if choked by an invisible hand. Rain strands struck his face, bone-chilling cold, but they paled in comparison to the coldness racing up from his tailbone. He tried to step back, but his feet were rooted, nailed firmly into the mud. The black shadow hadn’t approached, nor had it spoken again; it simply stood silently at the alley entrance. Those eyes glinted in the dimness, like two pieces of murky amber, radiating an eternal, cold scrutiny.

He had to vanish immediately. He couldn’t go home, couldn’t go to the market—any crowded place could expose his whereabouts. He quickly grabbed a dried palm leaf from the ground, feigning the adjustment of his collar, his movements rigid as a puppet. The leader of the Enforcement Squad’s gaze snapped, falling on his mud-caked pant legs—the trace left from his earlier fall, coincidentally the same spot where he had touched the child’s wound and contracted "dirty water."

His whole body stiffened. He whirled around. In the thinning rain mist, a black shadow stood at the alley entrance, its outline blurred, its face indistinct, only those eyes flickering in the shade. The mint leaf in his hand—he had definitely put it in his pocket—suddenly fell without wind, drifting down into the muddy water, spinning as if manipulated by an invisible hand. The shadow spoke again, its voice carrying a hair-raising, sardonic laugh: "You saw it, didn’t you?"

"They won’t come to kill you. Not yet, at least." The shadow let out a low chuckle, the sound eerie in the rainy night. "The 'Enforcement Squad' are just janitors. They sweep away 'anomalies.' And you? You have become the greatest anomaly. Amane, in your blood flows the rain of Lagos, and also a curse forgotten for a hundred years. You think you’re saving lives? No. You are waking up something that has been sleeping."

The wind at the alley entrance tightened abruptly. The sound of rubber batons striking the ground approached from afar to near; the chaotic shouts and whistles pierced through the rain curtain, feeling both distant and urgent. The shadow’s figure began to turn transparent, like ink smudges spreading and dissolving in the rain, finally merging completely into the darkness. Only its last words lingered in Amane’s ear: "Next time, don’t let them see your eyes."

Amane clutched the mint leaf in his pocket so hard his knuckles turned white. Reason told him he had to run, but his body remained frozen, paralyzed by an indescribable pressure. He remembered the jumping points of light in his microscopic vision just now, the near-instinctive surge when he forced the cell repair. That had been more than just healing; it felt like the echo of an ancient contract being torn apart.

A rough roar tore through the rain. Amane’s heart clenched. He sidestepped, using a discarded oil drum at the alley entrance as cover, and slipped into deeper shadows like a slippery loach. Footsteps behind him became a chaotic rush, but they didn’t immediately close in. He only heard the leader cursing quietly into his earpiece, relaying coordinates to the rear through the rain.

"You saw it clearly, didn’t you?" The shadow’s voice sounded again, this time closer, as if resonating directly inside his skull with a gritty, metallic screech. "The 'dead qi' inside that child was forcibly reversed by you. The resonance frequency of the Ancestral Spirits exploded down the entire street. You think you’re hiding well? To the eyes of the 'Silencers,' you are like a firelight in the darkness."

Amane lowered his head abruptly, seeing fine beads of sweat seeping through the back of his hand, vanishing almost instantly under the scouring rain. He looked around. The Enforcement Squad had already charged into the alley; three black figures were visible through the rain curtain, scanning the narrow street with sharp eyes, as if hunting a ghost that didn’t exist.

The elder stopped questioning. He turned to help the child. The boy’s mother burst from behind the crowd, falling to her knees in the muddy water, her hands trembling as she grabbed Amane’s: "Mercy! You saved my son’s life! Thank you!" She pulled out a crumpled wad of Naira from her bosom, trying to stuff it into his hand. "Take it. Use it to buy some food—"

Amane quickened his pace, trying to circle around to the other side to collect his stall. He had just taken two steps when a low, raspy voice rose from behind, seeping out as if from the depths of the rain, cold and textured: "Amane."

"What are you doing?" A man in a yellow raincoat leaned in close, his face full of disdain. "He has malaria. What good does a leaf of grass do? Don’t play the mystic right here."

The onlookers erupted in a burst of noise. The palm wine vendor peered over, his face filled with disbelief: "Did he really wake up? He was delirious from the fever just a moment ago! What kind of magic is this?"

"The rain remembers every seed." Amane looked down, watching his reflection in the muddy water. "My grandmother used to say that. Medicine is the bait, prayer is the water. The seed will grow on its own."

Amane pocketed the withered mint leaf and wiped the rain from his face: "I have no master. It’s a folk remedy passed down by my grandmother. Mint and prayer. It brings down the fever."

Chief Eze stroked his beard, his gaze lingering on Amane’s face for three seconds, seemingly weighing the truth. "Can prayer cure cerebral malaria? I’ve lived sixty years. This is the first time I’ve seen such a thing."

The rain began to ease, and the crowd dispersed, leaving a mess behind. The child’s mother was still calling out from the back: "What’s your name? I must remember your kindness!"

Just as he was about to brace himself against the wall to stand up, a child’s cry drifted from the direction of the drainage ditch, thin as a cat’s meow, mixed with suppressed coughing.

"Mama..." the child’s lips moved. The cloudy eyes cracked open a sliver, the voice faint but real.

"That child is delirious from the fever! Get him to a hospital!" A woman shrieked from the crowd.

Amane didn’t lift his head. His voice was low and firm: "Help me hold his head."

"Halt!"

He opened his eyes. Through the gap in the tire, he saw the Enforcement Squad’s lights sweeping across the ground, dust dancing in the beams. He had to leave here, to go to that place that was only terrifyingly clear during Ancestral Resonance—the deepest part of the old Lagos underground drainage system, where legends spoke of a broken ancient well, the final resting place of all "anomalies." Rainwater dripped from under the car. Plip, plop. Like the ticking of a countdown clock. He gritted his teeth, pushed out from under the car, and vanished silently into the end of the rainy night. Behind him, there was only a cold street, washed perfectly clean.