Burning Season — Chapter One: Blackout

The lights went out at 19:42. Not the polite flicker of a NEPA blink, but the deep sigh of the whole city exhaling at once.

Detective Bayo Fashola was at the service station on Ozumba Mbadiwe, arguing about a fuel queue that hadn't moved in two hours, when his phone rang. The screen said "Idowu — Eko Star." Idowu never called.

"She didn't show," Idowu said. No hello. "Ariella. Sound check at 8, show at 9, house full, band tuning — and the stage is empty. Her flat is locked from inside. Her car is there. Bayo, the generator man says he heard her singing at 6 and then... not."

Ariella Cole: twenty-four, Eko Star winner, voice like smoked honey, last seen by the gateman at 5:30 buying suya. Outside, generators began to cough awake, one by one, a ragged choir. The queue surged.

Bayo found the flat in Lekki Phase 1 by the smell of a generator choking on bad diesel and a door that was indeed locked from inside — with a key still in it. Inside: a mic on the floor, a loop pedal still blinking red, a window open to a fire escape that shouldn't exist on the floor plan.

And on the wall, written in lipstick the colour of arterial blood: NOT FOR SALE.

Burning Season is a propulsive Lagos thriller about power — electrical, musical, political — and the price of refusing to be bought.