The night was a living thing. It moved like smoke, curling through the ancient trees that guarded Obade, the scent of ash thick in the air from the distant fires, and the weight of wild rain lingering on the horizon. Somewhere beyond the hills, thunder muttered in the distance, but here, beneath the ancient sky, there was only the silent call of the river and the restless murmurs that had begun to stir beneath the earth.
Obade had not known true sleep for many nights. Not since the dreaming war began to seep into the waking world, twisting the boundaries between what was and what should not be. Not since Echo's voice — once a fragile whisper carried only on the river's current — had become something louder, more urgent. A summons not to be ignored.
Echo stood at the edge of the newly formed sinkhole, her bare feet brushing against the broken soil where the old shrine had once stood proud. The shrine, like so much else, was now swallowed by roots and silence, lost to time and neglect. But the earth had cracked open beneath it — as if the land itself was breathing out its secret, finally. She could feel it beneath her skin: the river's pulse beating stronger inside her chest, the ancient spirit that had woken the bones of Ẹ̀nítàn and called dreamwalkers from distant lands.
Around her, the village elders gathered, their faces etched with worry, eyes sharp with a knowledge too deep to voice. Hollowed masks — faces of stone and bone — hung on every outer wall, silent witnesses to the dark days that had come. The children huddled in the shadows, wide-eyed and still, as if afraid to breathe for fear of waking something worse.
"Are you sure?" Ola's voice was low, a rasp caught between exhaustion and fear. He stood beside her, the lines of sleepless nights carved into his face. His dreams had been restless, haunted by names he'd never known, visions bleeding into his waking mind like ink spilled on wet cloth. "This isn't just a hole in the earth anymore."
Echo did not answer. Words were unnecessary. The river within her, the spirit that sang through her veins, beat steadily, as if reminding her of what had been lost — and what must be reclaimed.
She took the first step forward, crossing the threshold from the known world into shadow.
The descent was slow and deliberate. A spiral staircase of stone and twisted roots curled downward into darkness, older than any living memory in Obade. Pale green lights flickered softly along the walls, the faint glow of bioluminescent fungi casting eerie shadows on the ancient carvings. Symbols and language too old to remember were etched into the rock, worn but persistent, like scars on the flesh of the world.
With every step downward, the air grew heavier, thick with a presence that felt almost sentient. Memories hung in the atmosphere like fog, whispers brushing against their skin. Names — old, forgotten names — drifted through the silence like lost souls desperate to be heard.
Oṣuntémí. Ajani. Morẹ̀nikẹ́. Tọ́pẹ́.
The names rolled off Echo's tongue in a soft chant, a prayer to the past. These were the Hollowed, those marked by silence, those taken from the light and buried beneath the cruelty of forgetting. Names erased by the Empire's fire, voices stifled by conquest.
Ola faltered, his foot catching on a root. He pressed a hand against the cold wall to steady himself, eyes wide and unblinking. "They're… singing, Echo. Can you hear them?"
Echo nodded, her breath shallow. "They remember."
And still, they went deeper.
At the heart of the ancient city, buried beneath the bones of Obade, they found it: not a throne, not a weapon — but a pulse. The beating heart of a myth long thought dead.
The Chamber of Names stretched before them, a cavern so vast its roof vanished into darkness. The floor was etched with spirals of language too old for any living tongue, flowing like the river itself in endless loops. In the center rose a monolith — a black obelisk carved from stone so dark it seemed to drink the light around it. It hummed softly, alive with a light that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Voices echoed around them, but no mouths moved. It was as if the city itself was alive, breathing the names of the dead in a song without sound.
Echo knelt before the monolith, not in worship, but in listening. She pressed her palm against the cold stone.
In an instant, her body jerked. The world shifted beneath her feet, the darkness folding like paper until she was no longer standing in the Chamber, but beneath the river.
Not drowned. Not suffocated. Dreaming.
She saw Obade as it had been — before the fires, before the forgetting. Before the Empire's flames consumed history and turned memory to ash. A woman with moon-marked eyes sang lullabies into clay pots and buried them deep in the earth, hoping to preserve the voices of the ancestors. Men carved prayers into smooth river stones and placed them in the mouths of the dead, ensuring their stories would flow on with the water.
The names were alive then.
She saw the first Hollowing — a boy taken from the dreaming circle, his name stolen in the night by cold hands. She saw a woman weeping as her tongue crumbled to dust, silenced forever. And the arrival of the strangers — their silver armor gleaming like thunderclouds, their voices booming as they tore myths from mouths and left only silence behind.
And then she saw herself.
Not as Echo, the girl of the river's whisper, but as the Song Returned. A vessel for all that had been silenced, a living memory for a forgotten people.
She woke with a cry, stumbling backward. Ola caught her before she fell, his face pale, eyes wide with the weight of what she had seen.
"They're not gone," she whispered, voice trembling like the last breath of a dying flame. "They're waiting. All of them. Under the river. Inside the stones. In the bones we left unburied."
Ola's hand tightened on her shoulder. "Then we give them voice again."
Outside, the winds shifted. The scent of rain deepened, and distant drums began to echo through the hills, slow and steady as a heartbeat. Obade was waking — not from sleep, but from silence. The ancient city stirred beneath their feet, and with it, the old magic — raw and wild, hungry for release.
At the edge of the village, Iyagbẹ́kọ stood alone. Her eyes were closed, the tremor of power rippling through her veins. Her staff pulsed with energy, humming in time with the drums that called out across the hills.
Dreamwalkers from distant lands had heard the call — old blood returning home, drawn by the river's song. They gathered beneath the shifting clouds, ready for the reckoning that would come not with swords or fire, but with memory.
The final war would be a war of names.
A war of echoes.
And Echo — breathing beneath the stone — had just found the first key.
The silence was broken.