PROLOGUE: BEFORE DESTINY
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." — Genesis 1:1
The universe is not silent.
However most people believe it is. They walk through their days with headphones in their ears and worries in their minds, convinced that the great emptiness above them holds nothing but cold rocks and distant fire. They are absolutely wrong.
The universe hums.
It hums with voices too old for language. With songs that predate the first star. With the breath of something that existed before existence itself had a name — the voice of God moving across the face of the waters, speaking light into being, calling forth order from the chaos.
And sometimes — very rarely — that hum becomes a whisper.
And that whisper becomes a choice.
Deep beneath the surface of normal things — beneath the concrete and the soil and the ancient bedrock of a continent called Africa — something slept. Not a creature. Not a god. Something older than both, yet younger than the One who spoke the first word.
It had no shape because shapes hadn't been invented yet.
It had had a name but no one spoke it, because naming is an act of dominion, and only God had the right to name anything in those days.
But it had purpose.
Purpose older than time.
And that purpose was waiting.
Waiting for five hearts to beat in a rhythm it had not heard since the world was young. Waiting for five souls to crack open just enough for light to enter — the light that was the life of men, the light that shines in the darkness, the light that the darkness has never overcome.
Waiting for a town called Adebayo Hills to become something more than a dot on a map.
Waiting for the enemy to make the first move.
Because the enemy always makes the first move.
Pride demands it.
"How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!" — Isaiah 14:12