Then, nothing.
Consciousness returned not with a jolt, but with a slow, disorienting drift.
Ayọ̀míkẹ́ – or what remained of him – floated in an endless, soundless expanse. Òfà Àìmọ̀, the Place of Unknowing. No ground, no sky, no stars. Only an infinite, oppressive blackness that pressed in from all sides. He had no body. No lungs to breathe. Only a core of awareness, a fragile spark of self adrift in the cosmic void. Panic, cold and sharp, threatened to extinguish him entirely. Was this death? Oblivion?
No.
A presence. Ancient. Immeasurable. It didn't approach; it simply was, filling the void around him with a soft, star-like luminescence. Slowly, a figure coalesced from the light – an androgynous being draped in robes woven from constellations, its face half-hidden behind a shifting veil of nebulae. In one hand, it held a scroll that pulsed with countless names written in light. Òrúnmìlà, the Keeper of Memory, the Witness of Destiny.
The voice that resonated within Ayọ̀míkẹ́'s awareness wasn't heard with ears. It was felt in the very fabric of his fading spark.
"You remembered them, child of the forgotten world. In the moment of ending, you chose the path of the protector, the rememberer." The words vibrated with the weight of eons. "That choice echoes in the hollow places. The threads of your mortal life are severed, but the essence… the ashé… endures."
The cosmic entity extended a hand, not of flesh, but of pure, condensed starlight, towards the flickering spark that was Ayọ̀. "You will not walk again as a man of earth. You will become possibility. You will become potential." The starlight hand touched the spark. "You will become… Ashé."
Agony and ecstasy tore through Ayọ̀'s core. It was a forging, a dissolution, a rebirth all at once. His awareness expanded and contracted violently. The fragile spark flared, burning away the last vestiges of his human form, leaving only a core of raw, sentient divinity – a sphere of swirling gold, deep blue, and vibrant crimson light, pulsing like a newborn star. Memories of Lagos, of his grandmother, of little Adé, became distant echoes, precious but locked away.
Then, the void dissolved. He wasn't floating anymore; he was falling. Falling through layers of reality, through kaleidoscopic streams of fractured light and echoing whispers. The sensation was terrifying, exhilarating. He was pure energy, pure consciousness, hurtling towards..