Love in the time of chaos

Chapter One: The Siren's Call

In the last days before the sky cracked open, Lagos still pulsed with its usual dissonant rhythm-horns blaring, hawkers shouting, Afrobeats thundering from overworked speakers. But something was off. People walked faster. Eyes darted more. Rumors clung to the air like humidity: whispers of disappearances, of strange lights over the Third Mainland Bridge, of shadows that moved against the grain of the sun.

Tari noticed it first in the silence between his mother's words.

"You're not eating," she said over the pepper soup she'd made for his visit. Her voice was soft, too soft. The generator buzzed faintly outside, filling the silence where the television used to be. NEPA hadn't returned power in days.

"I'm just tired," Tari replied, forcing a smile. His eyes drifted to the window, where the evening light painted the buildings gold and red. A dog barked in the distance, but even that sounded unsure, as if it too sensed what no one dared say aloud.

Truth was, Tari hadn't slept well in weeks. Ever since the sky over Makoko lit up with a column of blue fire. Since the first tremor rolled through Lekki and turned a gas station into glass and flame. The news stations had gone quiet after that-hacked, maybe, or censored. Only Twitter remained, chaotic and unreliable, filled with half-truths and conspiracy theories. But he'd seen the footage. A woman hovering above the National Theatre, arms outstretched, her hair swirling around her like smoke.

They called her Ewa, the siren.

No one knew where she came from. Some said she was a government weapon. Others called her a god. But Tari had seen her with his own eyes, one night while he walked home from a friend's place in Yaba. She floated down from the sky like a whisper, barefoot and glowing, her eyes lit with an unnatural blue. She looked right at him.

And smiled.

That smile haunted him.

He hadn't told anyone-not his mother, not Dele, his best friend, not even Amaka.

Especially not Amaka.

It had been six weeks since their last conversation, the argument that shattered everything. She had wanted to leave, to apply for a visa to Canada and run from the chaos brewing beneath the city's skin. Tari had refused. "This is our home," he'd said. "We fight for it."

"Fight for what, exactly?" Amaka had asked, tears streaking her cheeks. "Pride? Or the illusion of safety?"

He hadn't had an answer then. He still didn't.

But he knew he missed her. Her laugh, deep and sudden. The way her fingers curled around his wrist when she was anxious. The way she always stood too close, like she was trying to memorize his presence.

He hadn't seen her since the night the sky turned red.

Now, as he washed his hands and kissed his mother goodbye, he felt the weight of the city pressing in on him like the beginnings of a fever. The sky above shimmered faintly, as if the fabric of the world was beginning to thin.

He walked the long route back to his flat in Surulere, avoiding the areas marked "unstable" by the neighborhood forums. A few blocks from the market, he saw a man standing on a crate, preaching to an invisible crowd.

"She is the reckoning," the man cried, his eyes wide with fervor. "The Siren has come to cleanse! Repent! The soil is no longer ours!"