CHAPTER THREE: Where Shadows Sleep
"Tí ojú bá rí ohun tí ẹnu ò lè sọ, inú a yá."
When the eyes see what the mouth cannot say, the soul trembles.
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Zainab had stopped telling anyone about the dreams.
They'd grown too real.
She could still feel the dust on her palm, red and strange. And the spiral symbol—it no longer frightened her. It haunted her in a way that made her feel… known.
Campus moved on like nothing had shifted. But she noticed things now. Like how the shadows of certain buildings seemed to stretch just a second longer when she walked by. Or how her reflection sometimes took half a breath longer to mimic her movements.
She tried to focus in class, to sit with friends, to scroll her phone like it all still mattered.
But something had shifted when she read the paper.
Zola's paper.
Folded into that nameless book, still untouched by dust, was a message that made no sense—and made all the sense in the world.
> "Àwọn Bàbá ń jí lórúkọ rẹ."
The Ancestors rise at the sound of your name.
> "Ọ̀ràn-ń-yàn wá, Orí ń pé ọ̀ sẹ́yìn."
Trouble has chosen. Your soul calls you backward.
It wasn't just the meaning. It was the feeling. Zainab didn't understand the words fully, but they settled inside her. Like something in her blood already knew.
That evening, walking past the old library steps, she stopped.
There it was again.
The spiral. Drawn faintly into the dust on a concrete bench.
She reached out.
Not to touch it—just to feel the space above it. And the moment she did, the air shifted.
A voice whispered her name.
Not Zainab.
> "Azúre..."
It was like hearing your name in a dream. Distant. Yet meant only for you.
She looked up. The world had dimmed slightly—as though time had blinked.
Nobody else noticed.
That night, her dream returned.
But this time, the children with the backwards voices weren't laughing. They were pointing.
One held a mirror.
In the mirror, she was walking backward. Into a corridor of doors. Each marked with a Yoruba symbol.
She reached for one.
It opened before her hand touched it.
She woke up with a start, breath caught in her throat.
Under her pillow, the book had opened to another page.
> "To know what was lost, the present must fracture. Your name is not safe in your mouth until your soul accepts it."
Zainab closed the book.
She didn't feel afraid.
Just… seen.
The dust remembered.
And so did something inside her.
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Chapter Three Ends
If the soul calls you backward, where then is forward?