Written by Olorunloba Adeniyi
Chapter 1 – A Star is Born
The first time Sam stepped into the gates of Olódùmarè University, Osun State, the campus breeze blew like it had been expecting him. You know that kind of gentle breeze wey go just brush your face small like say, “Welcome o, our brilliant boy.”
He wore an oversized white shirt, ironed to death by his mother in Lagos the night before he travelled, and trousers that barely held up without the help of a worn brown belt. His bag, a faded “GCE Success” backpack from secondary school, hung loosely on his shoulders. But what Sam carried most wasn’t his luggage – it was the fire in his eyes.
“Na book carry me come here,” he’d often say with a grin whenever anyone asked.
And that wasn’t a joke. The boy was hot. During the university’s matriculation ceremony, the Vice Chancellor had mentioned his name – “Samuel Olumide. Admitted with distinction. The highest JAMB and Post-UTME score in his department.” Students clapped, lecturers nodded. Some girls took mental notes.
Roommates in his hostel quickly noticed he wasn’t just book-smart – he was street-smart too. A blend of brain and humble vibes. While others were still forming “big boy” and sagging jeans around campus, Sam would be in the library, then back to his room, helping three different people solve their MTH101 assignment like it was ABC.
“Guy, abeg help me run this number,” they’d say.
He’d laugh and say, “Na so una go dey carry last if una no sit down read.”
He was from a modest home in the heart of Agege, Lagos. His father, Baba Shina, was a retired carpenter who now sold car mats at Ladipo Market. His mother sold pepper and smoked fish in front of their face-me-I-face-you compound.
The day Sam got his admission letter, his mother cried like he had just won NairaBet. She told all the neighbours, even the ones wey no ask. “My pikin don get admission o! University of Osun! My God no dey sleep!”
And truly, God hadn’t slept on Sam. In his 100 level, the boy broke records. First semester GP – 5.0. Second semester – 4.97. It was like his brain came from Silicon Valley.
Even lecturers began calling him “Prof.” One of them, Dr. Alamu, would always say in class, “If Sam doesn’t answer this question, nobody should.” The class would burst into laughter, and Sam would shake his head, smiling shyly.
But beneath all the brilliance, there was a kind of loneliness. He had friends, yes, but most people only came to him for help or notes. He had crushes, of course. But he was too focused to even notice when a girl was giving him “green light.” Until she walked in.
That was the day his story began to change.
Chapter 2 – When Sam Met Lola
It started on a Tuesday.
Sam had just left his departmental tutorial session where, as usual, he’d explained Organic Chemistry to a group of struggling classmates. His head was pounding. His shirt was soaked with sweat from the Osun sun, and his plan was simple: head to his hostel, eat the last two slices of bread he had left, and collapse on his bed.
But life, as they say, had other plans.
He first noticed the perfume. Something floral but expensive – like money had bathed inside the bottle before they sealed it. Then he saw her.
She was standing by the Faculty of Science notice board, squinting at a long list of matric numbers. Tall. Skin like melted caramel. Hair braided neatly into a crown that glistened under the sun. She wore a simple black gown that hugged her softly and didn’t scream for attention, yet somehow, it was impossible not to stare.
Sam paused, completely forgetting he was sweating like a ram after Ileya festival.
She noticed him staring and turned.
Their eyes met.
And just like that… silence.
Not the kind of awkward silence you get when NEPA takes light during a party. This one was golden. Soft. Electric.
Sam cleared his throat. “Uh… hi.”
“Hi,” she replied, smiling with small dimples that made his heart somersault.
“You, uh… you dey find your result?” he asked, then winced. You dey find your result? That was what his genius brain could produce?
But she laughed – not mockingly, but with amusement. “Yeah. It’s not even my department. Just helping a friend.”
“Oh okay, okay,” he said, nodding too much. “I’m Sam.”
“I know,” she said simply.
He blinked. “You know?”
“Yeah. You’re the genius everyone talks about. I’m in Biochemistry. Third year. Lola.”
Lola.
That was it. That name alone made something shift inside Sam’s chest.
From that day, they started talking more. He’d bump into her “by accident” near the lecture theatres. She’d send him notes “for her friend.” Slowly, they began to sit together under the big almond tree behind the Faculty Library. It became their place.
They’d talk about life. Dreams. Music. She loved Asa. He preferred Brymo.
One evening, as the sun dipped low and the sky wore a robe of gold and purple, Lola turned to him and said, “You remind me of light, Sam.”
He chuckled. “Light as in NEPA light? Or God’s light?”
She laughed. “The one that makes things grow. You make people around you better.”
That night, Sam couldn’t sleep. How could he? A girl like Lola – fine, smart, cultured – and the daughter of Chief Alakija, one of the wealthiest businessmen in Nigeria, was calling him, the son of a pepper seller, light.
His roommates started to notice. Sam, who once talked only about GP and lab reports, was now whistling in the morning and smiling into his phone like a madman.
“Guy, this one wey you dey glow anyhow, you don finally catch babe?” Tunde, his roommate, teased.
Sam grinned. “My guy, no be like that-“
“Abeg shift!” Tunde laughed. “Na so love dey start!”
But everything wasn’t rosy. Lola’s friends warned her. “You dey fall for a poor boy? Lola, open your eyes o. No be film we dey watch.”
Her parents? Even worse. When they found out, they summoned her during mid-semester break and warned her strictly: “This Sam boy is beneath you. You are Alakija’s daughter, not some market woman’s child.”
Still, she didn’t stop.
Until they did the unthinkable.
During second semester, she didn’t return.
Sam waited. Called. Texted. No reply.
Then he heard it – Lola had been transferred to a private university abroad. Just like that.
Gone.
He sat under the almond tree for days, hoping to see her again. Even when the leaves dried up and the harmattan breeze slapped his cheeks, he still came.
“She say I be light… but why she off me like generator?” he whispered one evening, chuckling bitterly.
He stopped attending tutorials. His GP dropped slightly. His laughter disappeared.
And for the first time since he got into Olódùmarè University…
Sam felt lost.
Chapter 3 – Torn Apart
They say some heartbreaks don’t break the heart – they break the soul.
That was Sam.
After Lola vanished, the campus felt colder. Not because of the weather – but because he no longer had her laughter echoing beside him or her almond-scented perfume dancing behind every smile. The almond tree? Still there. But it felt like just another tree now. Nothing magical. Nothing warm.
He’d walk past it sometimes and freeze.
One day, Tunde found him just standing there, eyes lost in the branches.
“Guy,” Tunde said gently, “na tree o. E no go talk back.”
Sam forced a laugh. “Wetin I go do, Tunde? She just… disappear. Like she no even exist.”
“You go move on.”
“Move go where?” Sam muttered.
Classes began to suffer. He stopped showing up to departmental tutorials. Assignments that used to take him two hours now sat untouched for days. His lecturer, Dr. Alamu, noticed.
“Sam,” he called after class one day, “you used to be a rising star. Don’t let love – or whatever it is – dim your shine.”
Sam smiled weakly. “Sir, even the sun dey hide sometimes.”
Weeks passed, then months. And as if grief wasn’t heavy enough, the whispers started.
“She don dump am, na why e dey dull.”
“Even book no fit console person wey belle no sweet again.”
“Na why I dey avoid love – see as e turn our Prof to learner.”
At first, he ignored them. But something inside him was shifting.
One day, he sat at the back of the amphitheatre during a lecture. That was when Femi, a final-year guy with dark shades and a silver necklace, slid beside him.
“You dey alright?” Femi asked, voice low.
Sam shrugged. “I dey.”
Femi nodded. “I see how you dey carry your matter dey waka. If you ever want to feel in control again… I fit introduce you to some people. People wey go remind you say you be man.”
Sam gave him a look. “Wetin you mean?”
Femi smiled slightly. “When the world break you, you either stay broken… or you become the hammer.”
Sam didn’t respond.
But something in him listened.
It started small. He followed Femi one night to an abandoned faculty building. A small group of young men in black gathered in a circle. They called themselves The Wolves. No names. Just signs. Loyalty. Brotherhood.
At first, Sam didn’t take it seriously. He just wanted to feel something again. Belonging. Power. Distraction. But The Wolves? They didn’t play games.
Initiation came quickly.
One night, with blood on his knuckles and pain in his chest, Sam stood in the middle of that building, shirtless and shivering.
“Who are you?” they growled.
“I am the darkness the world gave birth to,” he replied, voice trembling.
“Who do you answer to?”
“The Wolves.”
“What do you fear?”
“Nothing.”
When it was over, he walked out into the night air, chest burning, heart numb.
By 300 level, Sam was no longer the brilliant nerd with the perfect GP. He had become Alpha – the secret head of The Wolves.
No one suspected. That was his genius.
He still wore that same quiet smile. Still answered questions in class. Still helped classmates when they begged.
But at night?
He was a shadow. A whisper. A name that rival groups feared in silence.
And even when he stood in front of a mirror, he barely recognized the boy who once fell in love under a tree.
The worst part?
He didn’t care.
Chapter 4 – Enter Sade
It started with an insult.
Sam was walking out of the library one late Thursday evening, minding his business – as always – when he bumped into someone, almost knocking their books to the ground.
“Sorry,” he muttered quickly, bending to help.
The girl looked down at him with arched eyebrows and said, “You dey waka like say na only you get the floor.”
Sam froze. Not because of the words, but because of the voice.
It was sharp. Not rude, but sharp – like it came with factory settings for sarcasm.
He looked up and saw her properly for the first time. She was petite, brown-skinned, eyes fierce like she’d argue with a lion and win. Her afro puff bounced slightly as she collected her books from his hand.
“Are you always this aggressive, or I just catch your bad day?” Sam asked, dusting his jeans.
She smirked. “Depends. Are you always this careless or na your own bad day?”
He stared at her. Then he chuckled.
She didn’t smile. She simply turned and walked away.
But something about her lingered in his mind like leftover jollof rice – spicy, surprising, and strangely unforgettable.
Two days later, he saw her again in the cafeteria, arguing passionately with a food vendor over the amount of beef in her soup.
“You say na meat be this? This thing wey resemble burnt paper?”
The vendor laughed. “Ah ah, madam! Na correct meat!”
Sam couldn’t help it. He laughed out loud from his corner.
She spotted him.
“Oh, so you’re stalking me now?” she asked, walking over to his table.
“You wish,” Sam replied, smiling.
She pulled a chair and sat without asking. “So what’s your name, trouble?”
“Sam.”
“Sade.”
And just like that… a new chapter began.
Sade wasn’t like Lola. Where Lola was soft-spoken and careful, Sade was loud, blunt, and beautifully unpredictable. She didn’t care that Sam was a known nerd. In fact, she teased him for it.
“You probably dream in equations,” she once said. “If I cut you now, na statistics go pour out.”
She was a third-year student too – in the Faculty of Arts. Theatre Arts to be precise. And it showed. Everything about her was dramatic, from her hand gestures to the way she quoted Shakespeare and Yoruba proverbs in one sentence.
At first, Sam kept his distance. He couldn’t afford another emotional hurricane.
But Sade? Sade had made up her mind. She wasn’t just going to be his friend. She was going to break his wall.
Day by day, she chipped at him. Laughed at his dry jokes. Challenged his opinions. Showed up with food when he least expected. Called him out when he tried to disappear.
One night, while they sat by the amphitheatre stairs, eating gala and La Casera, she turned to him suddenly and said, “You’re hiding something.”
Sam paused. “Me?”
“Yes, you,” she said, poking his shoulder. “You’re too careful. Like you dey carry bomb wey fit explode any time.”
He sighed.
“You don’t have to tell me now,” she added, softer. “But just know say whatever it is… I no dey fear wahala.”
That line hit something in him.
No girl had ever said that to him. Not even Lola.
He studied her in the orange glow of the nightlight. The way her eyes didn’t flinch. The way she didn’t try to “fix” him. Just… be there.
For the first time in a long time, he wanted to tell someone the truth.
But he didn’t.
Not yet.
Still, their bond grew deeper. People noticed.
One day, Tunde asked, “Guy, this Sade girl na your babe?”
Sam smiled. “I no even know.”
“Because e be like say na she dey date you.”
They laughed.
But beneath the laughter, a war was building. One Sade didn’t even know she’d soon be dragged into.
Because the Wolves? They were watching.
And love… wasn’t part of their plan.
Chapter 5 – Truth & Tears
There’s a saying on campus: “Secrets no dey stay buried for Olódùmarè University -e go dig itself come outside.”
And when Sade stumbled into Sam’s secret, it didn’t come quietly -it came like thunder during dry season.
It happened one Saturday evening.
Sade was heading to the Arts Auditorium to rehearse for her department’s upcoming play, “Ìrònú: The Grief That Walks”, when she saw Sam across the road – but he wasn’t alone.
He was standing near the old water tank building – the unofficial meeting place for people you didn’t want to be seen with.
He wasn’t smiling. Neither were the four guys with him. They were speaking in low tones. But the body language? Too serious. Too coded. One of them did a quick handshake – a sign she had seen somewhere before.
Then it hit her. Last year, during orientation week, a student had warned them: “If you see boys dey do hand like snake wey get arthritis, avoid them. Na cult sign.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
She waited for Sam to walk off, then followed him from a distance, heart racing.
He went straight into the Faculty of Agriculture building – which was under renovation and completely deserted.
She waited fifteen minutes, then tiptoed to the window.
What she saw inside shook her to her marrow.
Sam, standing in a circle. Others chanting. A guy with a bandana handing over something shiny. It looked like…
A dagger?
She didn’t wait to find out.
She ran.
For two days, she said nothing. Just silence. Cold eyes. Short replies.
Sam noticed.
“You dey vex with me?” he asked on Monday after class.
She didn’t answer.
“Talk to me, Sade.”
She stared at him. “How long, Sam?”
He frowned. “How long what?”
“Don’t play dumb. How long have you been their leader?”
Silence.
Sam looked down.
Then whispered, “Since 300 level began.”
Sade inhaled sharply, then nodded. “So all this while… na lie wey you dey wrap with smile?”
“I never wanted you to find out like that,” he said quietly.
“Oh! But you wanted me to be the next person crying when they find your body in bush, abi?”
“Sade – ”
“You think this is a joke? You dey do Romeo by day, but you dey move like Scarface at night!”
He winced.
Her voice broke. “I trusted you, Sam. I – I loved you.”
Those last words tore something in him.
“I never stopped being me,” he said. “I just… lost myself. After Lola left, I -”
“Don’t. Don’t blame your darkness on another woman’s absence.”
That hit hard.
He looked away, ashamed.
But then, she stepped closer. Her voice softer now. Still angry. But trembling with something else.
“I should walk away,” she said. “I know I should. But…”
She swallowed.
“I see you, Sam. Under all this mess. I see the boy who once wanted to change his world.”
He met her eyes.
“I won’t give up on you,” she whispered.
His lips parted. “You should. For your own safety.”
“No. I don’t run when things get hard. I fight.”
He laughed bitterly. “Na so dem dey enter obituary page.”
She grabbed his hand. “Then don’t let this kill you. Come out.”
He froze.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “They don’t let people leave.”
“Well,” she said, stepping back. “Then you’ll have to make a choice. Them… or me.”
And with that, she walked away.
Tears burned in his eyes.
Because for the first time since Lola left…
He actually wanted to choose love again.
But with the Wolves?
Leaving wasn’t just betrayal.
It was a death sentence.
Chapter 6 – The Setup
Sam stood in front of the mirror in his hostel room that night, staring at the face he barely recognized anymore.
His eyes looked older. His shoulders heavier. His smile – the one that used to light up lecture halls – was gone.
Sade’s words echoed in his head like a stubborn ringtone.
“Then you’ll have to make a choice. Them… or me.”
He whispered to himself, “I choose you.”
And that was how the war began.
Breaking up with a cult was nothing like breaking up with a girlfriend. With girls, at least, you could send a long text, apologize, or lie and blame it on “I need to focus on my studies.”
With the Wolves? You didn’t break up.
You either stayed in or left in a body bag.
But Sam was tired. Tired of the blood. The fear. The dual life.
He called a secret meeting with two of the lieutenants he trusted.
“I dey comot,” he said flatly.
They laughed. Thought it was a joke. Until they saw the look in his eyes.
“Alpha,” one of them said slowly, “na you talk this thing?”
“I no fit do again.”
The second guy leaned in, whispering like death was in the room. “You know say that means you no go last for this campus again?”
Sam nodded. “If I die for doing the right thing, so be it.”
He walked away from the meeting thinking he had done the bravest thing.
He didn’t know he had just signed his arrest warrant.
Two weeks later, everything crashed.
It was a Thursday. Cloudy. A student from a rival group was found dead in the bush behind the school’s mechanics workshop. Brutally murdered.
The Wolves were responsible. But they needed a scapegoat.
And who better than the guy who just walked away?
By Friday morning, police vans stormed the campus.
Sam was arrested in the middle of his class.
His classmates gasped. Phones came out. Whispers flew.
“Na lie!”
“Prof ke?”
“Wait, Sam? Cult?”
“Omo! I talk am say that guy dey too quiet!”
He was handcuffed. Dragged out. His books still open on his desk.
Sade screamed when she heard. She ran to the faculty office, then to the police station.
“Why?” she cried. “Why him?”
The answer came quickly: evidence.
- Blood-stained knife found near his hostel.
- A phone recording of someone sounding like Sam threatening the victim.
- Anonymous witnesses claiming they saw him near the scene.
It was airtight.
Too airtight.
Sade sat beside Sam in the police station, tears running down her face.
“This was them,” Sam said, voice low. “This is the Wolves.”
“But how?” she asked. “You’re innocent!”
“They needed me gone.”
Sade wiped her face and stood. “I won’t let them take you.”
“Sade – ”
“No!” she snapped. “This one, I go fight. Even if I crawl to Abuja.”
He stared at her, overwhelmed.
“I have an uncle,” she said. “Detective. He works in FCID. I’ll get him.”
Sam laughed weakly. “You no go rest?”
She smiled through tears. “You no sabi me be that.”
Three days later, a no-nonsense man in his fifties – Inspector James Adekunle – walked into the station. Wore glasses that made him look like a retired soldier, but his mouth worked like machine gun.
“Who arrested this boy?” he barked.
The officers straightened like broomsticks.
He reviewed the evidence.
“Hmm. Too clean. Like person wey wash am with hypo,” he muttered.
Then he got to work.
Two weeks passed. And then, the breakthrough.
One of the Wolves’ lower members had been picked up in a random drug sweep. During interrogation, he spilled – out of fear, out of guilt, or maybe both.
He confessed everything. The setup. The fake recording. The planted knife. Even the blood was from a sacrificed goat.
Within 24 hours, the truth was clear.
Sam was innocent.
The case was dropped.
Charges withdrawn.
When Sam stepped out of the police station, he didn’t feel free.
He felt empty.
Sade ran into his arms. “You’re out!” she cried.
He hugged her, long and tight. “Thank you. If no be you…”
She pulled back and smiled, eyes glistening. “See your face. You don turn prisoner wey fine.”
He laughed. First real laugh in months.
But just as life was starting to return to normal, something darker was coming.
A blow no one – not even Sam – was ready for.
Chapter 7 – The Last Goodbye
The sun was too bright that day.
Too happy, too golden – as if the world didn’t know that something terrible was about to happen.
Sam and Sade walked across campus, hand in hand. For the first time in forever, peace hovered around Sam like morning dew. Students still stared when they passed, some with curiosity, others with caution, but Sam didn’t care anymore.
He was free. He had Sade.
“I fit even go back to class now,” he joked.
Sade rolled her eyes. “You better go back. Before your GP start resembling jamb cut-off mark.”
They laughed.
She pinched his arm. “You still owe me meat pie from that cafeteria date we never had.”
“Na lie. I go buy ten meat pies for you now now!”
“You better.”
They crossed the zebra crossing near the school’s Admin Block. Sade, as usual, was saying something dramatic about her theatre rehearsal – “Imagine dem say make I faint on stage like Juliet. Me wey never faint before for my life!” – when it happened.
A loud screech.
A black car – tinted, without a plate number – came out of nowhere.
It didn’t slow down.
It didn’t hesitate.
And it didn’t miss.
BOOM.
The impact threw Sade several feet into the air. Her body landed hard – like a ragdoll – across the pavement.
Sam froze.
For one terrifying second, his brain didn’t register what had just happened.
Then, he screamed.
“SAAADE!!!”
Students ran toward the scene. Someone yelled, “Hit and run!” Another shouted, “No plate number!” Others brought out their phones.
But Sam ran to her side, dropping to his knees, cradling her head.
Blood trickled from her nose. Her eyes flickered, unfocused.
“Stay with me… stay with me please,” Sam cried, shaking, voice breaking.
She blinked slowly. “Sam…”
“I dey here. I dey here, okay?”
“I told you…” she whispered. “I no dey run…”
Her eyes closed.
“No… no, no, no-Sade! Wake up! Wake up!” He shook her. “Abeg… I beg you…”
But the sun kept shining.
And Sade…
Was gone.
The news broke the school by evening.
“Professor’s daughter killed in hit and run.”
“Possible cult retaliation.”
“Wolves suspected – no evidence.”
No one could prove it. There were no fingerprints. No witnesses who could describe the driver. No plate number.
But Sam knew.
He knew.
That wasn’t just an accident.
It was a message.
He didn’t speak to anyone for days.
Didn’t eat.
Didn’t sleep.
He sat under the almond tree – their tree – where Lola once smiled, and where Sade once teased him about being too serious.
Now, both were gone.
Tunde came once, tried to pull him back.
“Sam… you fit still survive this.”
He didn’t respond.
Because something in Sam had died that day.
And what was left…
Was no longer interested in surviving.
Chapter 8 – Wolves Bleed Too
They said Sam went silent after Sade’s death.
That he stopped attending lectures.
That he stopped going to church.
That even the wind avoided him.
But they didn’t know what he was doing in the silence.
He wasn’t grieving anymore.
He was preparing.
The first one was Blade – real name Seyi – the enforcer of the Wolves. Known for carrying a pocket knife with initials carved in red ink. He loved to hang out at a club just outside campus.
Sam waited outside the building for three hours. Midnight came. Rain started.
When Blade staggered out, half-drunk and laughing, Sam emerged from the shadows.
No words.
Just one punch to the throat, and another to the ribs.
He dragged him into the bushes behind the fence.
“Remember Sade?” Sam whispered into his ear.
Blade gasped. “Sam… wait…”
But Sam didn’t wait.
He left him unconscious, bleeding.
Blade survived – but just barely.
The second was Sniper – a lean, fast-talking final-year student who once bragged that nobody could ever catch him.
Sam did.
Inside the uncompleted engineering block where Wolves used to hold their meetings, Sniper walked in one night expecting a text from someone else.
What he got was a blow to the head from behind.
He woke up tied to a chair, mouth gagged, facing a mirror with red spray paint on the wall behind him:
“FOR SADE.”
When they found him the next morning, both his kneecaps were shattered.
Nobody knew how.
But they all suspected who.
By the time the third Wolf, Dollarz, was found in a bush with both eyebrows shaved and his phone filled with auto-play messages saying “I am a coward,” the entire cult was on edge.
The Wolves began to hunt their former Alpha.
But Sam?
He had become a ghost.
He moved at night, ate from vending machines, and slept in abandoned classrooms.
He didn’t want redemption anymore.
He wanted them to feel it.
The way he felt it.
Tunde tried to stop him once.
He found Sam near the back of the Science Complex with bruised knuckles.
“Guy, you go kill yourself like this,” Tunde pleaded.
Sam just looked at him. “If I die, I die. But I no go let Sade die for nothing.”
“This na suicide!”
“No,” Sam said coldly. “This na justice. Just the one wey the school and the police no fit provide.”
Tunde shook his head, tears in his eyes. “This thing no go bring her back, Sam.”
“I know.”
Silence.
Then Sam added, almost like a whisper, “But at least, they go feel the pain.”
By the time he reached the last name on his list – Femi, the one who recruited him — Sam was already bleeding inside.
Not physically, but emotionally.
The Wolves had once been his family.
Now, he had burned every bridge.
Femi didn’t go down quietly.
Their final confrontation happened near the campus water reservoir – quiet, secluded, with only the crickets as audience.
Femi came with two others.
Sam came alone.
“Sam,” Femi said, shaking his head, “you used to be one of us.”
“You made me a monster,” Sam replied, eyes hollow. “I just decided to stop pretending.”
One of the boys lunged. Sam took a blow to the ribs, but he fought back with a rage that didn’t feel human.
By the time the dust settled, one of them was unconscious. The other had run.
Only Femi was left, crawling, bruised.
Sam stood over him, panting.
“Say her name,” he said.
Femi coughed. “Sade.”
“Louder.”
“Sade!”
Sam raised his fist one more time.
But he froze.
His hand shook.
He dropped it slowly.
“No,” he muttered. “I’m done.”
And for the first time in months…
He walked away.
But not far.
Because by sunrise…
Sam Olumide was found dead.
A single bullet. Point-blank. No suspects. No witnesses. No CCTV.
Some say The Wolves caught up with him.
Others say he chose his own ending.
No one really knows.
But on the wall near where he died, in faint charcoal scribble, someone wrote:
“He fought for love…
But this world no dey fair.”
Chapter 9 – Echoes After Sam
Sam’s death shook Olódùmarè University to its bones.
When the news broke, students gathered in silence around the notice board, around the hostels, in lecture halls — no music, no laughter. Just stunned silence.
Some cried.
Some whispered.
Some denied it completely.
“Na lie. Sam no fit die like that.”
“Maybe na another Sam.”
But the hostel porter confirmed it. The police confirmed it.
His body was found at the back of the Faculty of Agriculture. Cold. Still. Eyes shut like he was just resting.
A single bullet wound to the chest.
No signs of struggle. No clue who fired the shot.
Just one last breath… and then nothing.
A week later, a candlelight procession was held in front of the Senate Building. Students from all departments came. Lecturers too. Even the Vice Chancellor showed up.
Sade’s father – the same strict, stone-faced Professor that once disapproved of her dating anyone – stood by the gate, dressed in white, holding back tears.
“I didn’t understand him when he was alive,” he said. “But I do now.”
They played soft music. Students gave speeches. Some wept openly.
And then someone – nobody knows who – placed a small, folded note at the foot of the burning candles.
It read:
“You were the light in our dark school.
You were more than your scars.
You were Sam -the one who loved, and fought, and lost.
But you didn’t die for nothing.”
They framed the note the next day and hung it on the wall in the Department of Biological Sciences.
Even the Wolves… disappeared.
Some say the cult disbanded quietly after Femi dropped out and left the country.
Others say the leadership passed to someone else, and they simply changed names.
But one thing was clear:
Nobody filled Sam’s shoes.
Because his story wasn’t just a cult tale.
It was a love story.
A tragedy.
A warning.
Years later, alumni still told freshmen the legend of Sam Olumide.
- The boy genius from Lagos.
- The one who loved two women: one who was taken, and one who stayed.
- The one who rose, fell, rose again… and paid the ultimate price for walking away from darkness.
People say if you stand under the almond tree by the Faculty Library at night, you’ll hear the wind whisper her name…
“Sade…”
And sometimes, if you’re quiet enough, the leaves rustle back…
“Sam.”
Chapter 10 – Beneath the Almond Tree (Epilogue)
Ten years later…
The campus had changed. New paint on old walls. A bigger auditorium. Free Wi-Fi in common areas. Even a new Vice Chancellor whose face smiled down from giant banners.
But some things hadn’t changed.
The almond tree still stood behind the Faculty Library.
A little older. A little wider. But still there.
Still watching.
Still waiting.
A woman in her early thirties stepped onto the grass beneath its shade. She wore a flowing blue dress and a wide-brimmed hat. In her hand, she carried a small notepad and a pen.
She sat on the bench quietly, looking around.
No one recognized her.
But if Sam were alive, he would’ve smiled immediately.
It was Lola.
Her eyes were calm, but her expression was heavy with memory.
She hadn’t been back to Nigeria since her parents moved her out of the country. They thought they were saving her from a poor boy.
They didn’t know they were saving her from a broken heart that was never truly hers to begin with.
She heard the story years later.
How Sam had changed.
How he’d found someone else.
How he fought his demons and lost.
And how he died under the stars, alone.
Tears welled in her eyes as she touched the bark of the tree gently.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should’ve fought harder. Maybe things would’ve been different.”
The wind rustled the leaves.
She smiled faintly, opened her notepad, and began to write.
“To the boy who became a myth.
To the girl who stayed even when he pushed her away.
To the love that lived, even when life didn’t.”
She signed it at the bottom:
– Lola Alakija, July 2035.
Then she tore out the page, folded it, and placed it gently in the hollow of the tree where old notes and poems once lived.
Before she left, she looked up one last time and said:
“Rest well, Sam. You were more than the pain they gave you.”
Then she walked away – back into the world, back into life – leaving behind a little more peace than the campus had known that morning.
Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, organizations, and settings are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real-life events is purely coincidental.
The story explores sensitive themes including cultism, violence, and loss, which are portrayed for narrative and educational purposes only. The author does not condone or promote any form of criminal behavior, violence, or discrimination. Reader discretion is advised.
