ORISHAS

When sixteen year old Ayomide Adebayo watches his father die in a wildly disproportionate Imperial containment action that levels his working class district of Akowonjo, he sets out to become powerful enough that no one will ever again get to decide his life is an acceptable loss, clawing his way from rail yard labor toward a regional aptitude assessment almost nobody like him is ever told exists, and finally toward the Academy that trains the Empire's elite, all without knowing that the very disaster which orphaned him was quietly engineered by the trickster god Esu to force him onto this path, or that he is the last living descendant of Obatala, the disgraced Irunmole whose long-dark Staff once anchored the seal that still, secretly, holds the true gods' ancient enemies at bay.