Eka Oloni: Keeper of the Algorithm of Fate

Chapter Seven: Shattered Codes

It began with silence.

Not peace.

Not stillness.

A silence that screamed.

The Network’s signal had spread through Neo-Lagos like wildfire—glyphs etched into streetlight shadows, encrypted songs passed through coded music streams, entire sectors blinking awake from compliance.

But it wasn’t enough.

Because the Architects were listening too.

At 03:19, the first node went dark.

A quiet school-turned-hackhaven in Zone 5P—where six resistance coders, ages 9 to 15, had been mapping Guardian patrol routes. Their signals went offline mid-sentence.

At 03:24, the music broadcast in Old Ebute began playing backwards. Reversed signals. Hidden drones. Screams woven into song.

At 03:30, the sky cracked open.

Eka stood at the rooftop base near the Central Spire when it began.

Anti-entropy bombs. Pulse-neutralizers. Something new. Not weapons of death—of forgetting. Whatever the Architects had built in secret, it didn’t just erase rebels.

It erased code.

Consciousness. Memory.

Identity.

She watched the shimmer erupt over Sector 9, a glitched aurora swallowing everything beneath it. A moment later, her pad buzzed violently—hundreds of Network calls. Cries for help. Cut-off words. Then blank static.

She clenched her jaw.

Khora’s voice came through on the encrypted line. “They shattered four servers. We’ve lost a third of the movement. They're calling it the Correction.”

Eka whispered, “It’s genocide.”

And then: “Where’s the Mapmaker?”

—

She found him in the Vault of Hands—an encrypted records sanctuary embedded in the skull of a fallen titan-bot. He stood over a glowing glyph that shimmered with rotating futures.

She stormed in. “You knew this would happen.”

“I suspected.”

“You said the Algorithm could awaken people. You didn’t say it would make them targets.”

His expression didn’t change. “Rebellion isn’t clean. It’s never been clean.”

She wanted to scream. Wanted to fight.

But she paused.

Because behind his voice, something cracked.

The Mapmaker was grieving too.

He turned. “You still have a choice, Eka.”

She whispered, “No. Not anymore.”

The Algorithm surged.

It showed her a path.

Only one.

She didn’t want it. But she needed it.

“To break the Shroud,” she said slowly, “we have to go to the source.”

He nodded. “The Phantom Spire.”

A ghost-network. Buried under frozen code. Controlled by something worse than Guardians.

And Eka—wounded, furious, and suddenly utterly alone—walked out into the neon night with lightning in her chest.

The revolution had begun.

Now comes the cost.

But cost is just a number until you stand at the edge of it.  

And the next step—the one into the Arctic Cloud—would show Eka not what she could change…  

But what she might not survive becoming.