The dawn did not rise like a hero. It crept, as if reluctant to spill light on the weight of what had been chosen.
Ayanwale walked without speaking.
The broken rim of the Twelfth drum was strapped across his chest, humming against his heartbeat. It pulsed like an old injury that would not close—and somehow, he didn't want it to. The weight reminded him he had crossed something sacred, something that would no longer allow retreat.
Behind him, Rotimi trudged silently, hands tucked into his long cloak, head lowered as though the trees themselves deserved mourning. Zuberi lingered at the rear, always turning back toward the Listening Grove until its presence faded from view, swallowed by thick, sap-colored mist.
They were out of the sacred now.
And into something else.
Something watching.
"You feel that?" Rotimi finally broke the silence, his voice hoarse from disuse. "The ground's different here."
Ayanwale nodded. "It's unsettled."
The earth wasn't trembling—not quite. It breathed. Shifting underfoot like a giant buried beneath its surface, exhaling old dust and buried stories. The foliage thinned into bramble, then barren plain. Dry shrubs. Cracks across the earth. Here, nothing grew tall.
Zuberi caught up to them, brow creased. "This land was once under covenant."
Rotimi spat to the side. "Which one?"
Zuberi looked to Ayanwale. "The Forgotten One. The Rhythm that vanished before language could name it."
Ayanwale's pulse faltered.
They had been speaking in layers ever since the Twelfth revealed itself. The bridge between knowing and remembering. He wasn't just walking with friends anymore. He was walking with echoes.
They came to a rock formation mid-afternoon: jagged and wide, shaped like a cleft mouth trying to scream. It split the path and wound into a narrow passage barely large enough to squeeze through.
Without hesitation, Ayanwale walked forward.
Inside, the temperature dropped. Wind didn't touch this place. Only breath.
He paused when the passage opened into a natural amphitheater—ancient stones in concentric rings, blackened with soot. Some bore faded symbols: eyes, spirals, marks of drums. But others… had been scrubbed clean.
Rotimi knelt by one. Ran a hand across the hollow surface.
"Who silenced them?"
Zuberi answered with a whisper. "Those afraid of what memory could awaken."
Ayanwale walked to the center and stood there, letting the silence wash over him. Something pulsed beneath the ground. He knelt.
Not to pray.
To listen.
He pressed his palm to the earth.
A rhythm rose from deep below—sluggish, wounded, incomplete.
"Something is trying to awaken," he murmured.
Then, the stones responded.
A low murmur. A chant without voice. Rhythms that had not been played for centuries stirred in the soil.
And then—
A figure stepped from behind the far column.
She was old. Not in flesh—but in time. She wore a veil of red-inked leaves and her arms were marked in faded tribal sigils. Her eyes glowed like river-wet stones.
"I wondered when the Bridge would come."
Ayanwale rose, cautious. "Who are you?"
She smiled. "I was once a player of rhythms. Now, I am the Keeper of Dissonance."
Zuberi inhaled sharply. "That Rhythm is cursed."
She chuckled. "Everything cursed was once holy. We just forget the story that birthed it."
She stepped closer, bare feet making no sound.
"You've awakened the Twelfth. But the world is not ready."
Ayanwale stiffened. "Then they must be taught."
"Some things cannot be taught," she said gently. "Only remembered."
She reached into her cloak and pulled out a tiny drum no larger than a fist.
"This was once the drum of the Weaver of Shadows."
Ayanwale blinked. "But that Rhythm—"
"—was buried," she finished. "Not by time, but by those who feared what it could reveal. It does not just echo the spirit—it reveals what the spirit hides."
Zuberi stepped forward. "Why show us this now?"
The woman stepped closer to Ayanwale, drum extended.
"Because to become the Bridge fully, you must cross into pain."
He did not take the drum.
Instead, he knelt again.
And played the rhythm of memory on the broken Twelfth rim.
Thump.
Thump.
Silence.
Thump.
A flicker. A pulse. The amphitheater responded.
Stones began to glow.
A single whisper circled the wind: "He carries them all."
Then the ground shook.
From the crevice beyond the amphitheater, a windstorm burst forth—carrying ash, bone fragments, and thousands of forgotten whispers. Ayanwale stood tall, arms raised, as the cyclone of sound roared around him.
He spoke—not loudly, but with gravity.
"I do not fear your secrets."
The Keeper of Dissonance smiled sadly. "Then enter the Hollow and see who you truly are."
The rocks parted behind her.
A tunnel.
Spiraling downward.
Zuberi placed a hand on his shoulder. "You don't have to do this."
Ayanwale shook his head. "I do. If I don't… the rhythms won't trust me. They won't unify."
He took the drum fragment in one hand, the broken Twelfth rim in the other.
And walked into the dark.
Inside the Hollow was not shadow.
It was memory.
He walked through visions.
The day his mother first warned him never to touch his father's drum.
The night he watched Baba Ọ̀rọ̀ steal the Ninth Rhythm.
The moment Ìrètí first called him Rhythmless.
Each vision wove around him like smoke.
But then—a new one.
A future.
A battlefield.
Zuberi lay still, blood on her temple. Rotimi screamed in agony. Spirits clashed in a cyclone of fire and sound, and above it all—a figure cloaked in braided silence raised a drum and began to play a rhythm that unmade entire timelines.
Ayanwale gasped.
The figure turned.
It was him.
But older. Cold. Empty.
Twelfth fully awakened.
He whispered one phrase: "To protect the world, you must end it."
Ayanwale screamed.
He collapsed in the Hollow.
Sweat drenched his skin.
The vision faded.
Only stone surrounded him now.
But he knew.
The Twelfth Rhythm wasn't just a power.
It was a choice.
To carry it was to risk becoming something unrecognizable.
He stood slowly.
And whispered to the dark:
"I will carry the rhythm."
"But I will not let it carry me."
The tunnel shook.
A line of light cracked down the wall.
And when Ayanwale stepped through it—
He was back in the amphitheater.
Rotimi and Zuberi rushed to him.
The Keeper was gone.
Only the Weaver's drum remained.
And carved in stone:
"Only those who've seen endings can guard beginnings."