When dawn broke, it did not bring light.
It brought footsteps.
Hundreds.
Moving with rhythm, not rage.
The people of Obade had decided.
They would not send envoys.
They would not beg.
They would go.
Iyagbẹ́kọ Leads
She stood at the edge of the village, staff in one hand, a calabash of ancestral ash in the other.
Her hair, once braided in mourning coils, now flowed loose.
Her voice rang out:
"Let the Archive hear the tread of memory."
"Let the roads tremble beneath what they tried to bury."
The Drums Begin
The first to strike were the elder drummers—those who had been warned not to touch skin again.
But today, they did.
And when they did, the forest answered.
Leaves shook.
Birds circled.
And the ground beneath the path to Ìtẹ́wọ́gba pulsed with rhythm.
Young men and women lifted the sacred drums of Ẹ̀nítàn.
Others carried the newly-sprouted ash-drums—small, glowing instruments that chose who could touch them.
Rerẹ́'s name was chanted in every breath.
Not in grief.
In honor.
Èkóyé Carries the Names
He had written each of the names spilled from Ẹgbẹ́rẹ́'s sack on a banner longer than a canoe.
The banner took four children to carry.
Names stretched into the hundreds.
Some were last heard before the Archive existed.
And some…
…had never been spoken aloud.
He hoisted the banner across his shoulders like a cloak.
"If they have forgotten our names," he said, "we will plant them in their streets."
Ola and the Scroll
Ola held the red scroll against his chest, wrapped in a cloth that bore Rerẹ́'s handprint.
It pulsed now—not visibly, but through the bones.
Each step he took vibrated with resistance.
"They have our sister," he said.
"But they don't yet understand—they've handed her the center."
"And we are the echo coming to join her."
The Children of Obade
They came too.
Each carrying offerings of memory: stones carved with forbidden glyphs, song verses never recorded, broken jewelry once worn by the silenced.
One girl carried a gourd with a fish still alive inside.
Another boy held a whistle made from the rib of a drowned goat.
These were not symbols of war.
They were symbols of witness.
They Walk
The people of Obade did not run.
They marched.
Through villages that paused to stare.
Through roads where government vehicles slowed, then turned away.
No one tried to stop them.
Not because of fear.
But because something older than law walked with them.
Meanwhile, in Ìtẹ́wọ́gba
The Archive had noticed.
Not only the march—but what it triggered.
In city neighborhoods long silent, people lit fires in pots and sang lullabies once banned.
Elders drew ancestral symbols on rooftops.
Children painted rivers on walls.
Even the pigeons flew in spirals.
Inside the Archive
Rerẹ́ sat in a containment chamber carved from silence.
But silence was breaking.
The guards outside her cell fell asleep—one by one.
Not from exhaustion.
But from the weight of stories they had never been allowed to hear.
She heard the drums.
Faint.
But getting closer.
And in her lap, the ash-seeds hummed louder.
Final Lines
Obade was not coming to fight.
It was coming to remind.
And in every footstep, every drumbeat, every name—
The Archive heard not rebellion.
But the river saying:
"You buried truth.
Now watch it walk back to your gates."