The celebration was short-lived.
By dusk, strange birds flew overhead—black-feathered things with crimson eyes, circling like vultures sensing a shift in the air. The villagers watched them in uneasy silence, their hope bruised by uncertainty.
Chizzy stood at the edge of the forest, heart thrumming.
The Hollow's eye had vanished, but its message lingered like ash in her mouth: "Balance must be kept."
"What does it mean?" Talia asked, wrapping her arms around herself.
"It means we're not done," Chizzy replied, her voice low. "We've shifted something. And now the world is answering."
Kiran approached, holding a tattered scroll. "This just arrived. No messenger. It was left at the shrine stone, sealed in wax that smelled like... blood and roses."
Chizzy took the scroll and broke the seal. The parchment unfurled in her hands, revealing a map inked in bone-white lines and ancient glyphs. At its center: a pathway through the Dead Hollow Marshes, leading to a place labeled only as The Bone Path.
At the bottom of the map, in a delicate, spidery script, were six chilling words:
"Come walk where the dead remember."
Talia stepped closer, her breath catching. "I've heard that phrase before. In Nana Ozioma's stories. The Bone Path was where ancestors spoke to the living… but only through pain. A rite of blood and memory."
Chizzy clenched the scroll. "It's a trap."
"Or a test," Liora said, appearing from the trees. "Whoever sent this knows what you did. They want to see if you're truly worthy of the balance you've disturbed."
Chizzy met her gaze. "Then we answer."
---
At dawn, they entered the Dead Hollow Marshes.
The air grew thick with fog that clung like cobwebs. The trees here were gaunt, their branches bare despite the season, as if something had drained the life from the roots. Bones hung from vines—animal and human—etched with runes, swaying in silence.
Each step forward felt heavier.
The Bone Path emerged after an hour: a narrow trail paved in shattered skulls and cracked femurs, gleaming pale against the black swamp.
"This is sacred ground," Talia whispered. "We should be careful what we awaken."
Chizzy's mark flared as they walked.
The silence was pierced suddenly by a voice—not ahead or behind, but within.
"Daughter of grief… bearer of twin flame… why do you tread the path of the dead?"
Chizzy froze. The voice felt like breath on her soul.
"I come to restore what was broken," she replied aloud, though her mouth did not move. "To understand what I've become."
A light formed ahead—soft and pulsing.
They stepped toward it and found a woman waiting.
She was draped in shadows, but her face shimmered like a reflection in water—shifting between generations. At once old and young. Familiar.
"Mother?" Talia whispered, tears pricking her eyes.
"No," the woman said gently. "But I held her pain. As I hold yours."
She raised her hand.
Chizzy and Talia fell to their knees as a wave of memories crashed into them.
Not just their own—but those of every ancestor who had suffered under silence. Whipped backs. Burned homes. Lost children. All buried. All denied.
The pain was unbearable.
Yet it was also clarifying.
From that pain came understanding: they were the culmination of centuries of strength and survival. The Hollow hadn't just been a prison—it had been a burial ground for truth.
"You've cracked the silence," the woman said. "Now you must speak it."
The vision faded.
Chizzy stood, breathless, changed.
Talia clutched her hand. "We have to return. And we have to tell them. All of it."
Chizzy nodded. "We'll build a fire no shadow can swallow."
They turned back, no longer just sisters.
Now, they were torchbearers—and the truth would burn.