The dawn was still fresh and cool when Echo stood at the river's edge.
Barefoot, the hem of her cloth damp with the clinging mist of early morning.
The village behind her had already begun to stir.
But the others who had gathered there—Ola, Iyagbẹ́kọ, Ọmọlẹ́yìn—stood rooted in place, watching.
None stepped forward.
"It was your dream," Ọmọlẹ́yìn said softly, voice threaded with both reverence and warning. "Which means it's your path."
Echo nodded, silent.
Words would not follow her here.
Only memory.
Only silence.
Only descent.
The River Peels Back
She took a hesitant step forward.
The water was cold but not biting.
It lapped gently against her ankles, welcoming.
Then, slowly, the surface began to part—not violently, not with a splash or roar.
But like a living thing, bending aside in quiet reverence.
As if the river itself was making room for a truth long buried beneath its currents.
Beneath the water, steps appeared.
Not carved from stone or coral.
But from bone.
Long, curved, dark as the midnight sky.
Each step pulsed faintly—as if it still carried breath.
Echo inhaled deeply.
And stepped down.
One by one, the river closed behind her.
The Descent Through Unnamed Memory
The air shifted.
It was thick—not with heat or pressure.
But with story.
A story never told.
Symbols glowed faintly on the walls—spirals curling inward like the coils of time itself.
Glyphs stitched from ash and liquid light.
They shifted as Echo passed, reacting.
Reading.
Knowing.
Inside the Archive beneath the river, the past was not still.
It was alive.
Waiting.
The Archive Beneath the River
At the stair's end, the chamber opened wide.
Vast and circular.
But the echoes here were not of sound.
They were of intention.
The chamber had waited for centuries.
In its center stood a monolith.
Tall.
Cracked.
Humming with suppressed rhythm.
Echo approached it slowly.
Her fingers brushed the surface.
Names flickered like fireflies on the stone—names too old for any language.
Names buried in silence.
Names the Archive had refused to remember.
She placed her palm on the monolith.
It shivered beneath her touch.
Then spoke—not aloud, but inside her mind.
"You are not the first to find us.
But you may be the first to listen."
The Dreaming Remnants
Around the chamber, suspended in amber-like resin, half-formed figures stirred.
Dreamers.
Frozen mid-breath.
Their eyes flickered.
Their lips trembled.
One reached out a palm to the glass that trapped her.
Echo stepped closer.
A voice spilled through the silence.
"I was the story before the first queen sang."
"I was buried for dreaming too loudly."
"They called it madness."
"But it was only memory."
Echo's breath caught.
These were the Unarchived.
Those lost to the silence before the Archive's birth.
The Bone Choir
Behind her, a low hum began.
She turned.
The stair had sealed tight.
In the center of the chamber, a choir had gathered.
Not of people.
But of bone.
Ribs.
Femurs.
Skulls.
Vertebrae.
They floated in a slow circle.
Their song was no melody.
No harmony.
But a reckoning.
A lamentation carved from time itself.
"The Hollow One still sits.
He did not die.
He was forgotten.
And forgotten things… wait."
The Stone Opens
The monolith cracked down its center.
From the fissure emerged a scroll.
Not of paper.
But of smoke.
It coiled like mist.
Echo reached out.
The scroll wrapped around her fingers like steam.
Slid into her lungs.
Suffused her blood.
Her memory.
Then she saw.
The Vision of the Forgotten
A woman walking across a bloodless battlefield.
Her hands clutched a broken drum.
A king without a face sat upon a throne of shattered names.
A child whispered to a river that no longer flowed.
The scroll burned.
And the voice spoke again.
"You must carry this now.
What was sealed must now be remembered.
Even if it burns."
Return to the Surface
Echo emerged from the river, but her skin was dry.
She was glowing.
Symbols crawled like living vines up her arms.
One pulse burned just beneath her left eye.
Ola gasped aloud.
Iyagbẹ́kọ bowed her head in solemn respect.
Ọmọlẹ́yìn stepped forward, hands trembling.
"What did you find?" she whispered.
Echo met their eyes.
Her own shining like mirrored water.
"The first forgetting."
"And the name of the one who silenced it all."
The Weight of the Name
The name settled in her bones.
Heavy.
Dark.
Impossible to ignore.
It was the key to unraveling centuries of silence.
But also a thread that could unravel the Archive itself.
Echo felt the burden.
But also the power.
The River Whispers
That night, the river whispered her name.
Not in words.
But in rhythm.
A pulse that echoed in her chest.
A call to remember.
And to prepare.
The Gathering Storm
Beyond the river's edge, shadows stirred.
The Hollow One was waking.
The silence was breaking.
The Archive's deepest secret was no longer safe.
Final Lines
The river has opened.
The bone stair has spoken.
And the Hollow One is no longer content to wait.
But now, Echo carries the name.
The one that can unbind silence—
Or unmake rhythm forever.