The Lost king

SCENE: MORNIKE'S POV

The battlefield burns with flickers of otherworldly light.

Around me, the screams of the dying mix with the chants of the living. But all I see is him — Bankode — cloaked in shadows, standing at the center of the ruin like a god of death reborn.

He smiles. That same smile from my childhood. The one he wore when he spoke about sacrifice, and destiny, and how pain was a gift.

He who raised me.

He who twisted me.

He who told me my power would always belong to him.

He raises his staff, dark relics glowing across his arms — but I feel it. The pulse of his weakening, the relics across the lands shattered by the hands of those I love. Yemi. Bayo. Adeola. Damilola. Femi. Ayomide.

We broke the roots. Now I must burn the tree.

---

FLASHBACK – YOUNGER MORENIKE 

I kneel in the shrine as a girl, shaking. Blood on my hands. His voice behind me, calm, coaxing.

BANKODE (V.O.)

You did what you had to. This is power. Pain is power.

I wanted to scream then. But I believed him. I didn't know better.

Now I do.

---

PRESENT – MORENIKE STANDS TALL

I lift my staff — no longer his relic — but my own. The air crackles as I summon the magic of my foremothers, the ancestral bloodline of priestesses long silenced by his cult of fear.

Morenike (chanting softly, voice rising)

("Blood of our fathers, spirit of our mothers, enter me… Let truth reign, let darkness fall.")

A storm of light erupts from within me. It tears across the battleground like a living river of vengeance and hope.

Bankode falters. I see it—he's afraid.

BANKODE

(snarling)

You are my creation!

Morenike

No.

(beat, eyes glowing)

I am my own reckoning.

I hurl the spell — a spiral of energy wrapped in memories and purpose. It pierces his chest.

He screams — not just from pain, but from truth finally unshackled.

His body begins to unravel, turning to ash in the winds of the ancestors. His staff cracks. His power disintegrates.

---

SILENCE.

The sky begins to clear. The war drums slow. My arms lower. My knees tremble — but I don't fall.

I feel them—the voices of those long gone. My mother. The nameless women. The priestesses. All of them.

We broke the curse.

---

Morenike (thoughts)

I was born under his shadow.

Raised in his madness.

But I chose the light.

And now... I will protect it.

EXT. TEMPLE RUINS – LATER

The battlefield is quiet. The air clear. The rebels regroup, exhausted but victorious.

YEMI, BAYO, and MORENIKE stand together, bloodied, breathing heavy, but strong.

YEMI

(softly, to them both)

We broke the chains.

BAYO

And now… we build.

Morenike watches the sky. The storm has cleared.

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MORENIKE POV

I stand with Yemi and Bayo. Bloodied, exhausted... but free.

The chains are broken.

And for the first time in my life… I am too.