Yoruba Ifá divination doesn't work by predicting a fixed future — it works by identifying which of several competing destinies a person is currently enacting, often without knowing it. The diviner's job isn't prophecy; it's disambiguation. Your protagonist almost certainly has the same problem. The most unsettling science fiction thrillers aren't built around hidden information — they're built around a character who is living inside the wrong story about themselves, executing a coherent plan that makes perfect sense within a frame that is simply not the frame they're actually in. Wande Abimbola's extensive documentation of Ifá literary corpus reveals that in this tradition, error isn't ignorance of facts — it's enacting the wrong ori, the wrong inner head or governing narrative of a life. Transpose that to plot architecture: your protagonist doesn't need to lack evidence. They need to be solving for the wrong variable, confidently, competently, all the way to the moment the actual story makes itself visible. The reader watches a person succeed at the wrong thing. That's a specific kind of dread that no third-act reveal can replicate — because it starts on page one.

What would remain of your current main character's motivation if you removed the story they're telling themselves about why they're doing it?

Drawing from Yoruba Ifá Philosophy — Wande Abimbola (Ifá: An Exposition of Ifá Literary Corpus, 1976)