Chapter 2: Six Months

The six months after the ceremony passed slowly.

Painfully slowly.

She returned to the University of Lagos for the second semester of her second year. She studied Literature, dedicated, Answered questions. Submitted assignments before the deadlines. Her grades remained excellent. Her lecturers praised her essays. Her classmates still laughed with her between classes.

Yet every achievement felt strangely... hollow.

She would sit in a lecture hall, listening to someone explain Shakespeare or Achebe, only to catch herself wondering,

What am I? That question had an answer. She was Zara Osei. Daughter, Student, Friend,……. But what was she? Everyone else in the Covenant knew. Elemental. Seer. Healer. Bridge. Scholar. Wielder. Everyone had a place, everyone had a name. Except her.

Six weeks after the ceremony, the Covenant Council finally responded. The letter arrived on a Thursday afternoon. Her father opened it in the study. By evening, the whole family sat around the dining table reading the same few paragraphs over and over again, almost as if the words might change. They didn't. The Register malfunction was still under investigation. The incident had been labeled a Category One Anomaly. Another ceremony would be arranged when the Council decided it was appropriate. Until then... The candidate would remain...Unranked. The word landed harder than Zara expected. Unranked, Not low-ranked. Not delayed, Not unknown. Simply... Unranked. It was the same word the Covenant used for children who hadn't reached the age of ranking. Children. She was twenty years old, She folded the letter carefully, then unfolded it again. She read that single word three more times before quietly handing it back to her father. No one spoke during dinner that evening.

The weeks that followed taught Zara something unexpected, People didn't need to insult you to make you feel different, Kindness could do it too. Her Covenant friends still invited her to birthdays, still saved her a seat during gatherings, still asked how university was going. But something had changed, they spoke more gently. They chose their words more carefully.

Whenever conversations drifted toward rankings or apprenticeships, an awkward silence always followed before someone hurriedly changed the subject.

"I heard the new café in Lekki is amazing, did anyone watch the football yesterday?" "So... how's school?" Every time, every single time.

Nobody wanted to remind Zara of what had happened.

Unfortunately...Trying not to remind her only reminded her more. Sometimes she wished someone would simply ask, "Are you okay?"…. Instead of pretending nothing had changed.

Being unranked came with rules…rules she had never imagined would apply to her. She couldn't join a Covenant working group, She couldn't apprentice under a senior practitioner, She couldn't vote on youth matters, She couldn't even apply for the London Exchange Programme. That one hurt the most. She had dreamed about London since she was seventeen. Every notebook she'd owned for the past three years contained little plans. Things to see, Libraries to visit, Research she wanted to do.

She had imagined receiving her rank...

Working hard...Making her parents proud...Then earning her place on the Exchange. That future disappeared with one word.

Unranked.

She cried for exactly fifteen minutes that night. Locked safely inside her bedroom. Then she washed her face, looked into the mirror, and decided that if one door refused to open...She would find another.

The official application rejected her before she even reached the second page. Covenant Rank Required. She stared at the screen for several minutes, Then she closed it. Opened a blank email instead, If the system wouldn't let her apply...Perhaps a person would. She introduced herself to Dr. Yewande Obi, the London Chapter Coordinator. She explained what had happened during the ceremony. She asked whether there was any research work—any work at all—that didn't require a Covenant rank. She reread the email five times before sending it. Then she waited. Four days later...Her phone buzzed. Dr. Obi had replied. The message was short….Professional.

But it carried more hope than Zara had felt in months.

There was a research assistant position available. She would have limited access to Covenant materials. She would work under supervision. If she accepted those conditions...London would welcome her. For the first time since the ceremony... Zara smiled. A real smile. Not the polite one she'd been wearing for months.

She waited until dinner that Tuesday to tell her parents. The dining room smelled of jollof rice, grilled chicken, and fried plantain. Outside, rain tapped softly against the windows.

"I've been accepted into a research position in London."

Her mother paused halfway through cutting her chicken. "London?" "Yes", Zara replied. Her father looked up immediately. "The Exchange Programme doesn't accept unranked candidates." "It isn't the Exchange Programme," Zara said quietly. "I contacted the London Chapter myself."

Silence.

Her mother's eyes widened…."You contacted them... without informing the Lagos Council?"

"Yes", Zara said. "You knew they would say no if I asked first."

Another silence…..Longer this time.

Her father leaned back in his chair…"Adaeze..." He called.

Her mother didn't answer him immediately…She simply looked at her daughter.

Really looked at her…. At the young woman sitting across the table.

The same daughter she had raised.. And yet...Not quite the same anymore. The ceremony had changed something. It had taken away certainty.

But in its place...It had quietly built determination.

Her mother's shoulders relaxed…Slowly…Almost reluctantly. Then she smiled..A tired smile. But a genuine one. "Okay." Zara`s mum said

Her father turned to her.

"Adaeze—"… ‘’ NO!’’ She reached across the table and gently placed her hand over Zara's. "If this is the path God has opened for her..."

She squeezed her daughter's fingers. "...then we won't be the ones to close it." For the first time in months...The silence around the dinner table didn't feel heavy. It felt... Hopeful. The night before Zara left for London, sleep refused to come.

Half-packed suitcases lay open across her bedroom floor. One held neatly folded clothes. Another was filled with books she insisted she couldn't leave behind. A third sat empty by the wardrobe, waiting for the last-minute things everyone always forgot until the morning of a flight. Her bedroom had always been her favorite place in the house. Cream walls,dark wooden furniture polished until it reflected the warm glow of the bedside lamp.

A bookshelf overflowing with novels, notebooks, and Covenant history she had secretly borrowed over the years.

Photographs of family vacations. A tiny potted plant on the windowsill that somehow survived despite her forgetting to water it more often than she cared to admit.

The window was open just enough to let in the cool evening breeze. Outside, Lagos was still awake. Car horns echoed faintly in the distance. Music drifted from a neighbor's compound before fading into the night. It was familiar, Comforting.

Tomorrow...

She would leave it all behind…..She paused. Looked around the room. She had imagined leaving this room dozens of times. Just...Not like this. Not as the girl the Covenant couldn't name. A soft knock came at the door. Before Zara could answer, it opened. Her grandmother stepped inside.

She was wearing one of her flowing cream kaftans, and as always, the gentle scent of Amouage Guidance entered the room before she did.

For reasons Zara had never understood, that fragrance had always made her feel safe. Tonight was no different. "You're still awake," her grandmother said with a small smile. "I could say the same thing." Zara answered with a soft smile.

Her grandmother chuckled quietly. "I suppose you could." She walked over to the chair beside the window and lowered herself into it with the slow ease of someone whose body had grown older but whose spirit hadn't.

For a while...

Neither of them spoke. Only the sound of clothes being folded filled the room. Then her grandmother broke the silence. "Do you remember what I told you after the ceremony?"

Zara stopped folding. She looked up.

"You said... you'd tell me something." "I did." "And you said 'soon.'" Her grandmother smiled. "I've kept you waiting long enough." Zara quietly sat on the edge of the bed. Her heart began beating faster. Somehow... She already knew this conversation would change something. Her grandmother rested both hands on her walking stick.

"When I was twenty-two," she began softly, "I traveled to Accra with your grandfather." A gentle smile crossed her face. "We were so young." "We thought we understood the world."

She laughed under her breath.

"We understood almost nothing”. Zara smiled despite herself.

"I met a woman there." Her grandmother's smile slowly disappeared. "I don't know where she came from." "I don't know where she went afterward." "I only know... that meeting her changed my life."

The room seemed quieter now.

Even the sounds from outside felt farther away. "She knew things she shouldn't have known." "About me..about our family..about the Osei bloodline."

Zara frowned. "What kind of things?"

Her grandmother looked toward the window before answering. "She told me that one day...a child would be born into our family."

"A child the Register would not recognize."

Zara felt her stomach tighten.

"You?"

Grandmother nodded. "I laughed..I honestly thought she was mad."

She smiled sadly.

"Imagine telling a twenty-two-year-old that something impossible would happen fifty years in the future…I thanked her politely."

"And then I spent years trying to forget the conversation."

"What changed.? , I couldn't wrap my hands around it. The answer came almost as a whisper.”

"No matter how hard I tried...I couldn't forget her face…I couldn't forget her words." "So I started reading, Every Covenant record. Every forgotten archive. "Every story anyone had ever written about unusual rankings." Her eyes met Zara's.

"I spent fifty years looking for you..." The words stole the air from the room.

"...before you were even born."

Zara stared at her grandmother.

"You knew?" Zara asked [surprised]

"I hoped….I prayed." "But knowing and hoping aren't the same thing."

She reached into the small handbag resting beside her chair, From inside, she removed an old leather notebook, its edges were worn. The corners had softened with age. She held it carefully, almost lovingly.

"This belonged to me…I filled it over forty-eight years." She placed it gently in Zara's hands. Inside were names. Dates, Places, Drawings, Newspaper clippings, Old Covenant symbols. Entire pages filled with careful handwriting.

"It has happened before."

Zara looked up sharply.

"What?" [Zara in shock]

"The blank result." [Zara asked]

She nodded slowly.

"Not often…But it has happened, twice in the Covenant's official history."

She hesitated. "Three times......if you count the one they erased."

"They erased it?" [Zara still in shock]

Her grandmother nodded. "The Council didn't know what to do, so they pretended it had never happened."

Zara felt something loosen inside her chest.

A feeling she hadn't expected.

Relief.

She wasn't alone, she wasn't the first. She wasn't some impossible mistake.

But almost immediately...The relief gave way to something else.

Sadness. If others had existed...Then what had happened to them?, were they afraid too?, did they spend months wondering what was wrong with them? Did they also stand in front of people they loved...Unable to explain what they themselves didn't understand?

Her grandmother seemed to read the question in her eyes.

"I searched for what became of them."

"And?"[Zara]

"I found almost nothing." [Grandma]

"Almost?" [Zara]

"They disappeared." [Grandma]

The room became very still.

"Not all at once."

"One left for Brazil, another vanished somewhere in North Africa."

"The third...She shook her head slowly……The records end."

Zara swallowed…. “So...What am I?"

Her grandmother smiled.

Not because the question was amusing. Because she'd been waiting years to hear it.

"The woman in Accra told me something."

She leaned forward.

"She said the blank result wasn't a failure. It wasn't a broken Register. It wasn't bad luck." "It was a sign."…… "A sign of an Ori." Zara frowned. ….. "Ori?" "Not the way people usually use the word."

Her grandmother gently touched the notebook.

"She spoke of Ori as a classification… A person whose destiny is written directly by God."

"A life no human system can measure. A soul too large to fit inside the names we've created."

The words settled over the room like falling rain. Neither of them spoke for a long time.

Finally...Her grandmother stood.

She walked slowly to the door before stopping. Without turning around, she said quietly,

"Go to London, my love."

"There are answers waiting for you there. There are people who have been waiting much longer than you know."

She rested one hand on the door.

"And one more thing."

Zara looked up.

"When you discover your scent..."

She smiled softly.

"You'll know. It will find you before you find it."

Then she left.

The door closed gently behind her. Silence filled the room again.

Zara looked down at the old notebook resting in her lap. Her fingers traced the faded leather cover.

She wasn't the first. The thought comforted her. Until another one arrived.

If she wasn't the first...

Then why had no one ever heard of the others?. What had happened to them?

She sat there for a long time.

“I guess I will find out when I get to London”.