Zainab didn't sleep that night.
She lay in bed, staring at the parchment spread across her desk, the glowing map pulsing like a heartbeat. Every so often, she'd trace the obsidian mark with her finger, half expecting it to burn. It never did — but it tingled. Like it knew her. Like it had been waiting.
By morning, she had a plan.
First: find out what "the city that never forgets" meant.Second: figure out what "the first key" was.Third: don't tell Mum. Not yet, anyway.
She tucked the map into a folder and slipped it into her backpack. By 8 a.m., she was out the door, skipping breakfast, her hijab flapping in the breeze, and her sneakers slapping the dusty streets of Ibadan.
🌆 At the Library of Shadows
If there was any place in the city that "never forgets," it had to be the Ibadan National Archives — a massive, aging colonial building with peeling paint and rooms full of dusty records no one ever bothered to touch.
The old librarian, Mr. Adeoye, raised his thick eyebrows when Zainab walked in."You again?" he said, barely looking up from his crossword."Need history. Old records. Cities that 'never forget,'" she replied.
He blinked."You're speaking in riddles this early in the day?"
Zainab smiled. "It's for a school project."
He waved her in with a grunt. "Left wing. Basement. Ask for the Obscure Maps Shelf."
Zainab knew the way. She had been here before. But today, something felt different. The air was colder. The shadows deeper. The hallways creaked under her feet like they didn't want to be walked on.
She found the basement door half open. Inside: rows of shelves and a faint glow — not electric light, but something… warmer.
And then she saw it.
A mirror at the end of the room, framed in cracked brass, standing taller than her. The glass was smudged and silvered. And in its center, reflected in swirling mist, were the exact same markings from her map.
She reached out.
The moment her finger touched the mirror's surface, it shivered — and then pulled her in.
🌍 Elsewhere
Zainab tumbled forward, landing hard on warm stone. She gasped. Looked around.
Gone were the shelves. Gone was the library.
She stood in the middle of a vast open plaza, lined with crumbling statues and old buildings shaped like memory palaces — carvings of stories, names, and faces covered every wall. The sky was violet. The air buzzed faintly with power.
A voice behind her made her spin.
"Welcome to Ndu-Memori," it said.Zainab turned to face a woman with glowing blue eyes and clothes stitched from pieces of old books. "The city that remembers all who've been forgotten."
Zainab opened her mouth, but the woman raised a hand.
"You carry the obsidian map," she said. "Then the first trial begins now."