Season 2, Episode 2 – Tayo The Ritualist - “The Warden’s Eye”

The eye was everywhere now. Chalked on alleyways. Stamped on missing person posters. Hidden inside shop logos. Tayo felt it tracking him, like the city itself had grown new pupils. One night, even the moon looked like it was watching him.

Kemi called it “psychological conditioning.” The Red Watch wanted fear. Wanted the marked to come out of hiding. But Dayo had a simpler explanation. “The Warden sees through her symbols,” he whispered. “She’s not just watching. She’s waiting.”

The warning on the VHS tapes had been real. Three marked individuals had already disappeared—two young women and a street preacher known for speaking in tongues. Their names now lived only in The Archive. Kemi’s voice was hoarse from crying when she added the files.

Tayo had dreams again. Not memories—visions. In one, he stood in a vast, ash-covered field. Statues of headless children surrounded him. A voice in the wind whispered, “If one does not return, all will.”

The next morning, they tracked the encoded location from the tapes to an old colonial mansion in the hills. Long abandoned, supposedly cursed. People called it “Ile Oku”—House of the Dead.

It was locked behind gates and time, but Kemi’s fingers made quick work of the keypad. Inside, the air was heavy, thick with rot and silence. They found ritual markings scorched into the wood floor, and fresh footprints in the dust.

Not all the Red Watch wore robes. Some wore uniforms now—embedded in law enforcement, politics, even media. That night, an anonymous tip revealed that a government health official was scheduled to visit the mansion. He never left.

Dayo watched the shadows. He drew sketches of what he saw: a woman with no face, eyes on her palms, ash dripping from her fingertips. “That’s her,” he said one evening. “That’s the Warden.”

Then, it happened. A broadcast hijack. Every screen in the city—from street ads to phones—cut to static, then to her.

The Warden’s voice came slow, smooth, like someone whispering to you in a dream you can’t wake from. “The Circle was chaos. I am the cure. The rot ends with you. Come willingly, and you may be spared.”

Her face was obscured by flickering ash, but the voice was unforgettable. Tayo and Kemi stood frozen as her final words echoed: “The blood of the marked is the key to the city\'s rebirth.”

They knew then—there was no hiding anymore. War had begun. And like all wars, it would cost something sacred.

Kemi began building devices—ash scanners, symbol blockers, even wearable memory seals. “If she attacks through memory, we’ll carry armor made of our own stories,” she explained, handing Tayo a charm that pulsed with soft light.

The Archive grew into more than a database. It became a resistance. Survivors, hackers, ex-cultists, and street prophets came to them. They called it The Pulse—a heartbeat under the city, made of those who refused to vanish.

Dayo, despite his age, became their oracle. “She’s coming through dreams now,” he said, eyes wide and distant. “She speaks to the lonely ones, the hurting. Tells them they’re chosen. And they believe her.”

That week, six new disappearances. One survivor left behind a message scratched into a train wall: “She showed me peace, then took my soul.”

Tayo began writing again. Not in the Black Book—it was gone—but in a new journal. He recorded names, faces, stories. His hand trembled when he wrote, but the ink always dried clean. He called it The Fire Ledger.

They were building something—bit by bit, story by story. And deep down, Tayo believed that memory, not magic, would be their weapon. Because the Warden wanted to erase. But they? They would remember.

At the close of the episode, they stood once more on the rooftop where it all began. The city below burned in neon and noise, unaware of the battle beneath its skin.

Tayo looked at Kemi and said, “She’s not the Circle. She’s worse. But we’ve faced worse before.” Kemi smiled, weary but alive. “Then let’s remind her who we are.”

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To Be Continued .......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!