The investigation into the "terrorist attack" was a farce, orchestrated by Graham's well-placed allies in the local police force. Within forty-eight hours, the palace had been scrubbed clean. The bodies were buried with full state honors, the deaths blamed on a "separatist cell" from the creeks.
The coronation was moved up. The people of Port Harcourt, reeling from the tragedy, looked to Graham as a symbol of resilience.
Graham stood on the balcony of the palace, the heavy gold crown of the Gbaka-gbaka finally resting on his brow. Beside him stood Edna, her face a mask of cold, unyielding triumph. She had survived the war, the poverty, and the massacre. She was now the Queen Mother of a kingdom built on corpses.
"Do you hear them?" Edna whispered, gesturing to the thousands of people cheering in the square below. "They love you. They don't care about DNA. they care about the man who stands before them."
Graham looked out at the crowd. He felt nothing. No joy, no relief—only a cold, hollow vacuum where his heart should have been.
But at the back of the square, past the police barricades and the cheering crowds, a small group of journalists was gathering around a man with a birthmark on the nape of his neck and a folder of yellowed documents.
Dave stood beside the real heir, holding a megaphone. "People of Port Harcourt! Look at the balcony! You are cheering for a shadow! The blood of your King is on that man's hands!"
The police moved in, but the journalists—hungry for the truth in a city of lies—had already started their live feeds. The image of Ekenne, the fisherman who looked exactly like the King, began to flash across millions of phone screens across Nigeria.
The lie had been protected by bullets, but it was being dismantled by the one thing Edna Mark hadn't accounted for: the undeniable, stubborn persistence of the truth.
The storm that had broken over the palace on the night of the massacre did not clear. It lingered as a heavy, oppressive mist over Port Harcourt, a physical manifestation of the secrets buried beneath the limestone.
But as the digital age collided with ancient royalty, the walls Edna Mark had built began to sweat with the truth. The coronation of "King Graham" was not the end; it was the beginning of a televised autopsy of a lie.