The Hollow Basin had not known silence like this in generations.
Even in the times before rhythm was understood, when song and breath still danced blindly through the world, the Basin had trembled—whispered its warnings to those who wandered too close. The obsidian cliffs that ringed its edge, jagged like broken fangs, had been carved over centuries not by wind or water, but by sound stripped from the air. Now they stood mute, solemn, as though bracing for something long buried to rise again.
And beneath them, something ancient moved.
Not with sound. Not with motion. But with remembrance.
Deep within the earth, sealed away in a hollow of forgetting, the Codex of Undoing stirred. Its bindings, never of rope or chain, trembled with the weight of thought and the stirrings of forgotten belief. The air itself shuddered—not with wind, for none blew—but with a pressure that settled in the bones of those who dared draw near.
It was not alive.
It was not dead.
It was remembering.
Ayanwale stood at the threshold of the woven stone bridge that arched like a ribbon into the Hollow Basin, arms at his sides, breath held like a promise. Behind him, the world he had known—the forests of Orisha, the temples of the Rhythmic Orders, the scattered bastions of the Eighth Line—faded into shadow and stillness. Even the sky here was subdued, trapped in a perpetual dusk that neither turned nor faded.
The bridge beneath his feet pulsed faintly. Once, it had been a song-path—a conduit of rhythm, humming with the encoded chants of the Patternmakers. Now, its threads had dimmed, its weave strained, as though the very memory of its purpose was being devoured.
He turned slightly as Rotimi stepped beside him, his moss-thread robe clinging damply to his skin. The garment reacted to the charged air, curling tendrils of green flickering with unease.
"We shouldn't be here," Rotimi whispered. His voice was small, almost childlike, as if afraid of being heard by the stone itself.
"We have no choice," came Zuberi's reply, calm and certain. Their staff pulsed in their hand, the carved bone and crystal humming with a faint inner light—the color of ancient things. "The Codex is waking. If we don't reach it first…"
"Someone else will," Ayanwale finished. He looked into the shadow beyond the bridge, where the path dipped into a cleft in the earth that should not have existed.
And there, standing at the far edge of silence, was Yẹ̀yẹ̀ Adùn.
She no longer shimmered like a spirit. She stood solid now, her frame wrapped in ancestral fabrics that did not rustle in the still air. Her face, etched with the beauty and burden of countless lives, was calm. But her eyes—dark pools that had seen too much—never left the horizon.
"It called during the Gathering," she said. "Not in words. In loss."
Ayanwale nodded once. He'd felt it too. A tug beneath thought. A pulse behind his eyes. The Codex did not summon with voice. It unwound. It pulled.
It was not a book. It had never been a book. It was rhythm written in erasure, a song of subtraction, a lullaby for forgetting.
And now, it wanted to be found.
The descent was worse than any of them had feared.
The path narrowed, carved between sharp walls of volcanic glass and roots that had never touched sunlight. Moss clung to the stone, but it was not green—it was pale, almost translucent, glowing faintly like dying memory.
Whispers clung to the air.
Not voices.
But remnants. Threads of thought. Echoes that pressed against the skin and eyes and skull.
As they moved deeper, Ayanwale began to see things.
Flashes.
A corridor with red velvet banners. A father's hand on his shoulder. The sound of coins clinking in a pouch. His own voice, younger, filled with entitlement.
He blinked.
The images faded.
False.
All of it.
He had never been a prince. His father had never worn a crown. Baba Oro had not been a kind uncle, but a brutal enforcer of the Old Silence.
"Don't listen," Zuberi murmured. Their voice was sharp, cutting through the illusion like the edge of memory. "The Codex feeds first on memory. Then on belief."
Rotimi stumbled behind them. "I saw my sister. Alive."
"She's not," Yẹ̀yẹ̀ Adùn said softly. "The Codex is cruel. It offers truths you wish for, not the ones you earned."
They reached a shattered archway, its keystone cracked and half-buried beneath sediment and overgrowth. Vines with blood-dark thorns curled across the stone, whispering in broken rhythm.
Beyond: the Chamber of Reversal.
It was colder inside. Not by temperature, but by intention.
The very air resisted breath.
Walls formed a vast hexagon, each side marked with deep engravings that changed as they walked. One moment, Ayanwale saw the Siege of the Ninth Temple etched in living stone. Another step, and it was gone—replaced with the founding of the Broken Choir, then erased into bare wall.
"This is where they tried to destroy it," said Yẹ̀yẹ̀ Adùn. Her voice trembled—not with fear, but with memory. "But the Codex learned. It buried itself deeper. Hid in forgetting."
And there it was.
Floating at the heart of the chamber.
A cube.
Not large. Perhaps the size of a man's chest.
But it shifted constantly—its surfaces sliding, turning, dissolving. A cube of absence, of void, of potential and negation. Symbols crawled across its sides, ink-like and alive. Each moment revealed a different history—then erased it. Rewrote it. Undid it.
Rotimi took a step forward, transfixed. His breath quickened, eyes wide. "It's… rewriting us."
"Step back," Zuberi ordered, lifting their staff. The carved end sparked with protective rhythm.
But it was too late.
The Codex pulsed.
A wave of forgetting surged outward.
Rotimi staggered, his mouth opening. His name wavered, flickering around him like smoke trying to remember fire.
Ayanwale stepped forward. Instinct took over. He struck the Royalty Drum at his side.
BOOM.
The sound echoed in defiance.
The pulse halted.
The Codex quivered.
Ayanwale stepped closer, voice steady. "I see you. I know what you are."
And it whispered back—not in voice, but in reversal.
Do you?