It began again—not with a beat, but with a breath.
The world had tilted into a new rhythm, and Ayanwale no longer felt like its conductor. Instead, he moved within the music of it. The Listening Grove echoed not with drums, but with voices—young and old, blending memory with hope. The Great Silence had passed. In its place was a world learning how to speak again.
But deep beneath the harmony, a tremor stirred.
The Weaver stood atop the Plateau of Threads, her eyes scanning the northern winds. For days, the breeze had carried strange pulses—shadows that moved through light, names not written in story anymore. The spirit-touched leaves of her robe trembled.
"Something stirs," she whispered.
Zuberi stood beside her, now clad in living bark and trailing vines of rhythm-bloom. "Not the Eleventh?"
"No," the Weaver replied. "Not the Ninth either. Something older. A silence that predates story."
Zuberi's fingers twitched. "Then we must find the Thirteenth."
The Weaver nodded. "Before it finds us."
Ayanwale, now living quietly near the re-grown banks of the River of Echoes, had spent his days guiding those who came seeking not power, but purpose. He had not struck the Royalty Drum in moons. It rested on a raised platform, encased in woven grasses and lit by sun threads—a relic now.
Until the day the wind changed.
He heard it first while tending to a child's broken flute—a soft, dissonant note carried in the breeze, like a rhythm fighting to be forgotten. It sent a shiver across his skin.
Rotimi arrived an hour later, breathless.
"There's talk in the north. Villages disappearing. Not burned. Not attacked. Just… unremembered."
Ayanwale looked toward the horizon. The air felt thinner. Lighter. Like something had eaten part of it.
"It's starting again," he murmured.
Rotimi placed a hand on the old drum. "What do we do this time?"
Ayanwale looked to the children nearby, laughing, drumming on the earth, feet dancing in rhythms not yet named.
"We protect the future," he said. "Even if it costs us the past."
The pilgrimage began three days later.
Ayanwale, Rotimi, Zuberi, and a group of new rhythm-bearers—some no older than ten—began the journey northward. Each bore a rhythm in their bones. None carried weapons. Only stories.
The road led them through the Plains of Forgotten Praise, where statues once stood of warrior-drummers long erased. They stopped at the Singing Caverns where the walls still echoed the Ninth's fury and the Eleventh's rebirth.
And then, they came to the Shattered Hollow.
It was here the silence waited.
Not the kind known before.
This was deeper.
This was silence that watched.
They entered the Hollow at dusk. The ground was too soft. The trees too still. Even the birds seemed muted.
In the center of the glade stood a boy. No older than twelve. Pale eyes. Bare feet. No drum. No name.
Ayanwale approached slowly.
"You heard it," he said.
The boy tilted his head. "It heard me."
Zuberi's hand flexed. "The Thirteenth."
"No," the boy whispered. "Not yet."
From behind him, the ground cracked. A shadow rose—not beast, not man, not rhythm. An absence made flesh. A silence hungry for memory.
Rotimi's breath caught. "It's not a rhythm… it's a wound."
Ayanwale stepped between the shadow and the boy. "Then we bind it."
He reached for the Royalty Drum—still tied to his back. The moment his palm met its surface, the air twisted.
The Ninth surged.
The Eleventh sang.
The Twelfth stirred.
But none answered.
The shadow lunged.
And the boy struck the earth with his palm.
A single sound—a beat not known, not taught.
Not passed down.
Created.
The Thirteenth Rhythm.
Light tore through the Hollow.
And everything… stopped.
When Ayanwale opened his eyes, the glade was empty.
No boy.
No shadow.
Only a faint hum.
The hum of something new being born.
Zuberi placed a hand on the earth. "He gave himself. Became the sound."
Rotimi exhaled. "What happens now?"
Ayanwale looked to the sky, where the stars pulsed in new patterns.
"We listen."
And for the first time in generations, the world was ready to hear.
But it did not end there.
As Ayanwale turned back toward the group, the children began to hum. Not the Thirteenth—not yet—but echoes of it, small ripples forming a larger wave.
One of the girls, Adeola, placed her ear to the earth. "It's singing back."
Rotimi looked toward Ayanwale. "Then it didn't take him. It became him."
Ayanwale closed his eyes. The air now vibrated with promise, not fear. The glade, once hollow, was alive again—with memory, with meaning.
He looked down at the Royalty Drum. Its surface no longer shifted. It waited.
And so, with a breath, Ayanwale lifted his hands.
He struck.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Not to summon. Not to control.
But to welcome.
And the Thirteenth answered.
Not as sound.
But as unity.
Rhythms—first, second, ninth, eleventh—began to resonate, not in chaos, but in harmony. A grand weaving.
And at its center was the story of the boy.
The nameless.
The one who became a beat so pure it did not demand worship, only remembrance.
As the stars aligned above, Ayanwale felt something shift in the marrow of the world.
Not a new age.
A remembering.
The Hollow, once feared, had become a cradle.
And from it, the next story would rise.
Together, they would listen.
Together, they would shape what came next.