Chapter One
The sun bled orange into the sea as if the sky itself had been wounded.
It was that strange hour when silence felt heavy and the world seemed to hold its breath — just before night took full hold. The villagers of Orun-Oke called it the Hour of Crossing — when spirits whispered louder than men and the tide carried more than just salt and sand.
Asha stood at the edge of the tidepool, her bare feet half-submerged in warm, pulsing water. The sea was still — too still. And the sky above, once brilliant with birdcalls, had quieted into a hush so deep, it throbbed in her ears.
Behind her, the land hummed with ordinary life: clanging pots, laughter from the palm grove, the rhythmic call of fishermen mending nets. But here, just a few paces from her village, time bent.
She had felt it before.
This was the third time the tide had come in glowing gold.
And the third time her shadow had moved before her body did.
They had warned her.
The old priestess, Mama Tani, with her beaded wrists and honey eyes, had looked at Asha and said, "Some girls are born between veils. You, child, are one of them."
Asha hadn't believed her then.
She believed her now.
Because when she turned to leave the tidepool, the reflection in the water didn't move with her.
It stayed.
Watched.
Smiled.
And then it spoke.
"Come closer, Asha," the water hissed, though no wind blew. "You've already crossed once. Do you not remember?"
Her chest locked.
Memory flickered like a faulty lantern — the fever she'd survived at five, the night she wandered out and was found at the water's edge, eyes open, murmuring in a language no one knew.
She had never remembered what happened that night.
Until now.
That evening, she returned to the compound in silence.
Her mother noticed her stillness.
"Are you ill?" she asked, wiping her hands on a cloth, the scent of smoked tilapia clinging to her skin.
Asha shook her head.
"Then eat. You look as though the moon has passed through you."
She didn't eat.
Instead, she sat beneath the giant tamarind tree at the edge of their farm, tracing the lines in her palm with a stick, as though trying to find a map no one had drawn.
She wasn't afraid.
Not yet.
But something inside her had shifted — like a door she didn't know existed had creaked open, just wide enough to let the cold in.
That night, the dreams came again.
But they weren't dreams, not really.
She stood on a golden shore beneath a tangerine sky, and the tide came not with waves, but with voices. Some whispered warnings. Others sang lullabies with broken teeth. And one — the clearest — said her name like a prayer soaked in blood.
Asha…
When she awoke, the palms outside were rustling though there was no wind. And at the foot of her bed sat a black crow with glowing amber eyes.
It didn't blink.
It didn't caw.
It simply stared.
And then it vanished.
The next morning, she went to Mama Tani.
The old priestess was already waiting, seated before her shrine of bones and coral.
"I told you," she murmured before Asha even spoke. "They've come again."
"Who are they?"
"The ones you outran in childhood. The ones who dwell beneath the golden tide."
"But why now?"
Mama Tani's eyes glistened. "Because the veil is thinning. The world you know is leaking into the one you've forgotten. And they remember your name."
Asha shivered. "What do they want from me?"
"To come back through you," Mama Tani whispered. "To wear your skin. To speak with your mouth. To walk among the living once more."
And so it began — the unraveling.
Beneath a tangerine sky and over golden waters,
Asha would no longer run from the shadow.
She would face it.
And discover that some spirits do not haunt — they wait.