Funke's words were the tether that stopped Adekunle's soul from floating away into the terrifying, luminous expanse of his new reality. He gripped her arm, his bare left hand holding onto her strength while his gauntleted right hand pulsed with a power that felt as ancient as the stars. He took a breath, then another, the air of the Sanctum cool and clean, tasting of power and possibility. He was just a man. He had to remember that. Just a man from Lagos who had lost everything. This place didn't change that; it only changed what he could do about it.
"You're right," he said, his voice steadier now. He finally released her arm and looked around the vast chamber, not with the stunned awe of a tourist, but with the calculating eye of a worker sizing up a job. "One stone at a time. So where do we start?"
Funke's gaze was already sweeping the cavern, her practical mind cutting through the divine majesty like a diamond drill. "We start with what we need most. Information. Forget the weapons, forget the armour for a minute. That stuff is useless if we don't know what we're fighting or where we're going. You said this is a library? Find me the index. Find me the table of contents. No sane person builds a library without a way to find the books."
Her logic was flawless, a welcome anchor in a sea of miracles. Adekunle nodded, turning his attention to the countless scrolls. Now that he could read the glowing script, he could see they were organized with a breathtaking, meticulous logic. The sections flowed into one another—Cosmology, Metaphysics, Armaments, Logistics, Terrestrial Histories. He ran his gauntleted hand along the smooth, cool stone of a nearby pillar, the script flowing into his mind. It was an overview of the chamber itself.
"It calls this place 'Sanctum-7,'" he murmured, translating as he read. "'A repository of essential knowledge and tools for the Reclamation Protocol… in the event of a compromised Mandate.' Compromised Mandate… that must mean God abandoning Earth."
"Reclamation Protocol," Funke repeated, the words tasting strange in her mouth. "They had a plan for this. A contingency. These angels… they disagreed with their boss." The thought was staggering, a schism in the very fabric of heaven.
"It seems so," Adekunle said. He pushed past the introductory texts, his eyes scanning for what Funke had asked for. He found it farther in, in a section labeled 'System Archives & Cartography.' "Here. This is it. A catalog of the entire Sanctum."
He led them to an alcove that didn't contain scrolls, but a smooth, dark wall. A single handprint, identical to his gauntlet, glowed softly in its center. Taking a steadying breath, he placed his hand over it. The wall chimed softly and the dark surface dissolved into a flowing, three-dimensional index of light, a celestial card catalog. Categories and sub-categories branched out before them, all perfectly, intuitively understandable to him.
"Okay," Funke said, her voice sharp with focus. "First things first. The others. Tunde, Chiamaka, the family from Ibadan… all of them. Are they alive? Where are they? This place must have a way of seeing the world outside."
Adekunle navigated the glowing index, his mind now working in sync with the gauntlet. He found the primary category: 'Real-Time Terrestrial Analysis.' Under it, a sub-category: 'Biosignature Surveillance.' His heart began to pound.
"There's a map," he said, his voice tight with anticipation. "A global observation deck."
He followed the index's glowing pathway, which led them to the very back of the chamber, to a circular platform surrounded by a low, carved wall. In the center of the platform was a disc of polished black stone, about two meters wide. It was inert, lifeless.
"What does it do?" Funke asked, wheeling herself up beside it.
"It's a projection plate," Adekunle explained, the knowledge flowing from the gauntlet. "It requires a… a conscious interface." He stepped onto the platform and placed his gauntleted hand on the cool, dark surface.
The effect was instantaneous and breathtaking. The disc hummed, and a globe of light erupted from it, hanging in the air above them. It was a perfect, miniature Earth, rotating slowly, its clouds swirling in silent, mesmerizing patterns. But this was more than a simple image. It was a living map, teeming with points of light.
Most of them were red.
Thousands upon thousands of angry, crimson pinpricks swarmed across the continents, thickest in the old population centers. Some were large and fiercely bright, others small and dim, but all of them pulsed with a malevolent energy that made Adekunle feel sick to his stomach.
"Kael's forces," Funke breathed, her face pale in the red glow. "All the demons left behind."
"Not just his," Adekunle said, his eyes tracing the paths of light. "They're fractured. Warlords, scavengers, packs… they're fighting each other as much as they're hunting us."
But then he saw them. Faint, flickering, and few, but they were there. Tiny specks of brilliant, defiant blue. Human survivors. The map was so sensitive it could differentiate between the demonic life-force and their own. He felt a surge of hope so fierce it almost brought him to his knees. They weren't alone.
"Zoom in," Funke commanded, her voice urgent. "Focus on Nigeria."
Adekunle concentrated, and the holographic globe responded to his will, spinning and magnifying until the familiar shape of West Africa filled the space before them. The concentration of red light here was terrifying. A huge, angry smear of it was centered over what used to be Abuja, a pulsing blotch of crimson that had to be Kael's main force. But scattered around it, like frightened fireflies in a field of embers, were the blue dots.
"There," Funke pointed with a trembling finger. "That one, west of the Niger river. See how it's moving? Erratic. That could be Tunde's group. They were always on the move."
Adekunle focused on the cluster of a dozen or so blue lights. He could almost feel their panic, their desperation. They were being herded, pushed north by a creeping line of red dots.
"And there," he said, his voice thick with emotion, pointing to another cluster of blue, this one stationary, hidden in the dense forests south of Benin City. "That must be Chiamaka's camp. They were trying to build a permanent settlement. But look…" He zoomed closer, and they could see the blue lights were flickering, some fading out entirely. "They're dying. Sickness, starvation… or maybe they're being picked off one by one."
The weight of it all pressed down on him again. Seeing them as dots on a map made their plight feel both immediate and impossibly distant. He could see them, but he couldn't reach them.
"We have to get to them," he said, a grim resolve settling over him. "We have to bring them here."
"To do that, we need to be able to survive the journey out and back," Funke countered, her mind already on the next stone. "We need weapons. We need supplies. We need a way to carry enough of that clean water. We need to be stronger than what's out there."
She was right. He let the holographic map fade, the chamber returning to its soft, neutral light. The immediate objective was clear. This Sanctum wasn't just a library; it was their new base of operations. They needed to gear up.
They spent the next several hours in a state of focused, purposeful discovery. Funke, with her engineer's mind, had Adekunle pull up schematics. She found designs for portable atmospheric condensers that could pull clean water from even the toxic air, powered by small, long-lasting energy cells. She found blueprints for lightweight, collapsible shelters woven from a material that could mask their biosignatures from demonic senses. She was in her element, her initial shock replaced by a fierce, intellectual excitement. It was the ultimate workshop, and she was its new foreman.
Adekunle, meanwhile, was drawn back to the armoury. The knowledge from the gauntlet now informed his choices. He walked past the towering suits of angelic plate—they were designed for non-human bodies and required a specific energy signature he didn't possess. He ignored the massive, devastating weapons of war; they were impractical, designed for battles, not rescue missions.
His steps led him back to the single, crystalline sword.
He lifted it from its alcove. This time, he didn't pull back. The chime was softer, a note of acceptance. The warmth from the hilt flowed into his gauntlet, and the two artifacts seemed to recognize each other, humming in a shared, harmonious frequency. The script in his mind identified it. A 'Conduit Blade.' It had no edge of its own, but when wielded by someone interfaced with a power source—like his gauntlet—it could form an edge of pure, coherent energy, its length and intensity determined by the wielder's focus and will. It was a weapon of precision, of skill, not brute force. It felt like an extension of his own arm.
He took it.
He found a belt and scabbard made of a strange, dark material that clung to his waist as if tailored for him. He sheathed the sword, the sense of completeness it gave him was both reassuring and terrifying.
"Find anything useful?" Funke asked, looking up from a schematic for a multi-spectrum scanner she was studying with rapt attention.
Adekunle simply rested his hand on the hilt of the sword. "I think so."
Her eyes lingered on the weapon for a moment, a flicker of worry in their depths, but she nodded. "Good. I've prioritized a list. Portable water and power for ten people, the signature-dampening shelters, and a medical synthesizer. The schematics say it can fabricate basic healing compounds from raw biomass. We'll need that."
He looked at his aunt, her face illuminated by the glow of the holographic schematics, her mind already solving problems he hadn't even thought of yet. They were a team. The Key and The Architect.
A new thought occurred to him, and he turned to look for their silent guide. The angel was gone. It hadn't made a sound, but the space where it had been standing was empty. It had done its job. It had delivered the tools. The rest, it seemed, was up to them.
"Funke," he said, his voice low. "We go for Tunde's group first. They're the ones in the most immediate danger."
She looked up, her expression serious. "That's a three-day journey on foot through scavenger territory, even if we're not slowed down."
"We won't be," he said, his hand tightening on the sword's hilt. He looked back towards the dark, narrow tunnel that led to the surface, to the world of death and ruin. For the first time since the Fall, the darkness didn't feel like an ending. It felt like a doorway.
"This time," he said, a fire kindling in his eyes. "We'll be the ones doing the hunting."