The sun hung over Lagos like an insult. Not blazing, not hidden—just there, smeared across the horizon in an indifferent haze, casting everything in the sickly gold of a day that had lasted too long.
Tochi Izu stood at the edge of a cracked sidewalk, his feet blistered from walking in worn-out shoes that had seen too many months and too little mercy. The humidity clung to his skin like wet wool, and the noise—oh God, the noise—was its own kind of madness: shouting vendors, honking horns, the occasional screech of tires, the chaos of a city too large to love its own people.
He exhaled. The kind of exhale that feels like it's trying to escape everything.
"What a tiresome day," he muttered to himself, the words nearly lost in the mess of the street. No one heard. No one cared.
On one side of the express road, traffic stretched like an endless metallic serpent—bumper to bumper, unmoving, a metallic purgatory. People were already outside their cars, bartering roasted plantains, arguing politics, and trying not to notice the hours slipping by.
On the other side, the vehicles moved so fast they blurred—ghosts of freedom. Windows up. Air-conditioned. Clean. Detached.
And here Tochi stood—on the median. Stuck between everything that never moves and everything that never waits.
His fingers clenched into a fist, then relaxed again.
He hadn't eaten since morning. His boss had screamed at him in front of everyone today. Again. Something about an error in a document he hadn't even touched. Then a deduction from his salary. For what? For "audacity." For existing, probably.
Tochi let the thought drift into his chest, where it turned into something heavier than breath.
He looked at the speeding cars.
For a moment—a flicker, a second that felt like eternity—he imagined stepping into that lane. Just two steps. That was all. No suffering. No pity. No "sorry, things will get better."
Just… silence.
His lips twitched, not quite into a smile. More like a grim acknowledgment.
"Maybe that's the only way to stop fighting," he whispered.
Then he laughed. A short, humorless sound that scratched his throat.
"No," he said, out loud this time. "That's not it."
He took a step back from the road and turned around.
Because in his mind, he saw them: the people online, flaunting cars and holidays and happiness he'd never tasted. Influencers claiming "hard work pays," politicians toasting with stolen champagne, friends from school posting pictures of weddings and promotions.
He had none of it.
But he had his skin. His body. His time. And even if the world had spent twenty-five years squeezing the hope out of him like blood from a rag, it hadn't taken everything. Not yet.
"I won't die for this place," he said to no one. "Not for a job. Not for a city that doesn't care. I'll live. I'll survive. I'll suffer. But I'll find my life."
A rickety Keke Napep rattled to a stop beside him. The driver barely looked up from his phone.
"Where?" the man grunted.
"To musa Street. Self-contain. You sabi?"
The driver gave a half-shrug and jerked his head. Tochi climbed in. The seat was sticky. The ride was short.
Fifteen minutes later, he was home.
Or something that passed for it.
The building was painted the kind of yellow that looked like it had been embarrassed into fading. Three stories of cramped existence, shared by dozens of lives each trying not to intrude too much on the others. Children screamed in the corridor. Someone was cooking something burnt. A woman on the second floor shouted curses at someone whose only sin was living too loudly.
Tochi's room was a self-contained cell, more or less. A bed, pushed to one corner. A single bulb that flickered like it didn't quite want to live. A curtain instead of a door for the cramped bathroom that connected to four other rooms. A hotplate, balanced on a plastic stool in the corner, next to a bucket that served as his sink.
The air inside was hotter than the street.
He threw his backpack onto the bed and collapsed beside it.
No fan. No fridge. No dream.
He stared at the ceiling, breathing slow. The flickering light above buzzed like a dying bee. He blinked at it, too tired to hate it.
"Why am I still here?" he asked the silence. "Why am I still doing this?"
The question had no answer.
Not yet.
But somewhere in the static of his heart, beneath the layers of exhaustion, shame, and bitterness — there was a whisper. A whisper that didn't say give up. A whisper that said:
You haven't started yet.
Lagos heat cooked the bones rather than only warmed the skin. Dust and the weight of too many souls striving to survive at once permeated the noisy streets. The fading key to his one-room self-contain clasped between his fingers like it may unlock something more than a door, Tochi Izu pushed through the mob of shouting street vendors and motorbike horns.
His stomach growled. It was the kind of hunger that didn't come gently—it punched, sharp and visceral. He paused in front of the compound gate, already half rusted into silence. The metal was hot under his touch. He didn't bother locking the door behind him. What was there to steal?
The heat of his room hit him like a slap. He reached into his pocket, pulling out the crumpled notes he'd hidden deep inside—the last ₦3,000 he had until payday, which was more a suggestion than a promise. He stared at it. Then his stomach growled again.
He sighed.
"I need to eat," he muttered.
The local supermarket was only a few streets down, tucked between a mechanic shop and a broken-down cyber café that hadn't seen internet in years. It was the kind of shop where everything smelled vaguely like bleach and dried fish, and the floor tiles told stories of decades gone.
Tochi entered, the plastic bag crumpled under his arm. He glanced down at the shopping list he didn't write. It lived only in his head: noodles, eggs, maybe bread, maybe garri if there's change.
He walked through the aisles, selecting items with care. Two packs of noodles. One tin of sardine. A crate of eggs—half, not full. The bread was soft, too soft, like it would vanish after one bite. He left it behind.
At the counter, the total blinked back at him like an accusation: ₦10,600.
"Madam, wait," he said, forcing calm. "Remove the sardine."
The woman blinked, then adjusted the bill. ₦9,300.
He frowned. "Eggs. Let me take fewer. Just two."
Another click of the calculator. ₦3,000.
His jaw tightened. He handed over the money anyway and accepted the crumpled change with an exhausted nod.
As he stepped outside, the air felt heavier than before—like the atmosphere was suddenly thick with something unnatural. He squinted at the sun. It hadn't moved. The same distant heat. The same roar of engines.
Across the street, a line of blue buses idled, their engines humming like beasts. Something about them caught his eye. They weren't unusual—Lagos was full of Danfo and BRT—but these ones weren't moving. Just parked. Perfectly aligned. Not even a puff of smoke.
Tochi blinked.
His head pulsed. A sharp pain stabbed behind his left eye. He staggered a bit, nearly dropping the plastic bag. The street blurred—colors bleeding, sounds warping. The yelling became muffled, like underwater murmurs.
"Ah ah, wetin dey do am?" a voice muttered beside him.
He stumbled toward a wall, bracing himself with one hand. His breath came in sharp gasps. The world tilted. People around him began to stare.
"Is he drunk?" someone asked.
"No, maybe tramadol overdose—see as him dey shake."
Tochi clutched his temple. The pain wasn't normal. It was too sharp, too sudden, like something in his brain had cracked open and was letting in things that weren't supposed to be there.
He heard a whisper—no, a vibration. Not in his ears. In his bones.
The buses.
They were still there. Still unmoving. Still… wrong.
He turned from them, stumbling away from the crowd, pushing through confused pedestrians and uncaring passersby. His legs were trembling. The plastic bag swung at his side, the eggs rattling like glass hearts.
Someone reached for him.
"Hey bro—are you okay?"
Tochi didn't answer. He ran.
Back at his compound, he fumbled with the lock, nearly dropping the keys. He could barely see straight. The sun glared through his skull. The world tilted again. He kicked the door open and slammed it behind him, collapsing into the corner of the bed, the bag of food forgotten beside him.
He clutched his head. The pain wasn't going away.
He had no history of migraines. No underlying conditions. No curses. No spells. But this—this felt like his skull was splitting.
He curled up, hands trembling.
Then—silence.
The pain stopped. Gone. Just like that.
He blinked at the ceiling, drenched in sweat, heart racing like he'd just outrun God.
And outside, somewhere in the heat and haze of Lagos, the blue buses were still parked. Still silent.
Still waiting.
The tap creaked violently before the stream came—cold, clear, and stuttering. Tochi cupped his hands beneath it in the public bathroom. The dim light above him flickered, buzzing with moths circling like vultures. He splashed water on his face, not to cool down, not to wake up—just to feel something.
His reflection stared back from the cracked mirror, fragmented and incomplete. His cheekbones were too sharp now, the shadows beneath his eyes too deep. This wasn't just exhaustion. It was something else. He was fading, not in body, but in will.
"What am I even doing?" he muttered.
The time on his cheap phone read 8:43 PM. Another shift, another insult. His boss had made a joke in front of everyone again. His coworkers had laughed like hyenas. And when he got home, the gate had been locked. No light in the compound. No greetings from the neighbors. Just silence. The kind that eats you.
In the darkness of his self-contained room, Tochi dropped the small black nylon bag of food on the desk beside his bed. Noodles. Two eggs. Pure water sachets. He sat, stared at the ceiling. His room was barely wider than his outstretched arms. One rusted ceiling fan spun slow, like it too had lost motivation.
"Life just so messed up, ain't it?" he whispered to himself. He remembered her. Fatima. The girl who once cried in his arms now called him "too broke for her dreams." Her dreams were abroad. His reality was here. Tricycles, secondhand shoes, and dreams that hung like cobwebs above his head.
He slumped onto the bed, plugged in his cheap phone, and opened a movie app he'd downloaded off some cracked site "I'll eat later" he said. The screen flared to life. Gunshots. Screams. Explosions. Escapes. It was the only noise he welcomed.
But then it came again.
The headache.
A sharp, crawling pain just behind his eyes. Not like a normal headache—this one whispered. He paused the movie. Held his forehead. The screen dimmed into sleep mode, as if giving up. In the silence, the pulse in his skull began to sync with something... external. It throbbed like a distant drumbeat.
He reached for the drawer, fumbling in the dark for the painkillers. He swallowed two tablets dry, forced his back onto the mat, and closed his eyes. Still, the drumming grew louder.
That was when he heard it.
"Come to me. Beyond."
The voice was not male. Not female. Not human. It didn't echo in the room—it rang in the very core of his mind, like someone whispering inside his thoughts.
"Come to me… at the top. It's lonely. Lonely at the top."
His eyes snapped open. He was still in the room—but something was wrong. The walls had faded into mist. The ceiling fan slowed. The darkness folded into itself, stretching out like a tunnel made of fog and light.
Tochi blinked, sat up—and the bed beneath him dissolved.
He stood, barefoot now, on damp stone.
The air was cold. Heavy. Too heavy.
The first thing he saw was the mountain. Or rather, the foot of a mountain, rising endlessly into thick, gray fog. The sky was starless. The silence was dense, like sound had been banished.
"Where the hell am I?" he asked, heart hammering in his chest.
Behind him was nothing. Literally—nothing. Just black mist swallowing the horizon. Only the path forward remained: twisted stone stairs carved into the side of the cliff, lit faintly by glowing moss that lined the edges.
His pulse raced.
He touched his chest. Still beating. His skin. Still warm. But this wasn't Earth.
The voice returned, softer now. Warm. Almost… loving.
"You were searching. Even when you didn't know what you sought."
He stumbled forward, hands brushing against the stone wall to steady himself. The moss glowed brighter where he touched it.
"Am I… dreaming?"
"No."
The answer came with certainty.
Tochi turned around in every direction. There was no door, no house, no gate. Only fog. And the infinite stairs above.
His memories began to race—Fatima's voice, his boss's laugh, the buses clogging Lagos roads, the tap water, the church bells from across the street. All of it clashed in his mind like glass.
"This can't be real."
"But it is. Welcome to the Grey. Welcome to yourself."
He staggered, heart pounding. The cold air burned in his lungs. His mind reeled. Was this a psychotic break? A stroke? Was he dying?
But no—he felt more alive than he ever had.
And somehow, he knew. This place was waiting for him. Not by chance. Not by accident. It had always been calling him.
All his life, Tochi had felt out of place. Misaligned with the world. Like he had been born at the wrong time, into the wrong reality. He had blamed the system. The economy. The people. Himself.
But what if it wasn't his fault?
What if he never belonged there in the first place?
He took a step forward.
The moss pulsed brighter.
And far, far above—buried in fog and silence—a shape moved.
The mountain was calling.
And Tochi Izu had arrived.