In Elegosi, mirrors were common. Every hallway of the rising towers bore their gleam. But the mirror Odogwu returned with was not like those. This one had no edge, no frame, and no glass—just a shimmering pool of shifting light, which reflected not the body but the truth buried beneath it.
He placed it in the heart of the Oru innovation hub, inside a circle of silence. No one could stare at it too long. It showed not what the eye could see but what the spirit had forgotten.
Zuru called it Ihu Mgbagwoju Anya—the Face of the Forgotten.
"Some will avoid it," Zuru said. "Because it demands that they remember what they buried."
And he was right.
The first to run from the mirror was a wealthy donor who had insisted Oru was his idea all along. He took one look and fled, muttering, "That is not mine. That is not mine."
But others stayed. And wept. And whispered thanks.
A woman from the Delta saw the child she had abandoned during the flood of '99. A man from the Sahel saw the village he betrayed for foreign contracts. One young woman saw herself as a little girl, dancing in the moonlight before the soldiers came.
Each story that emerged became part of the Oru Archive—a living tapestry of testimony. The mirror had not come to decorate. It had come to collect.
Odogwu, meanwhile, was changing.
At night, he no longer dreamed of hotels. He dreamed of shadows running backwards, of birds speaking languages only trees understood. He'd wake up mid-proverb, his father's voice echoing: "When a man's shadow begins to whisper, it is time to listen to the land again."
One night, Kamsi found him barefoot in the garden, his hands buried deep in the soil.
"Sir?" she asked.
"I'm listening," he replied. "To what the land has been trying to say since before I was born."
And what it said was clear: Oru must evolve.
He gathered the team.
"We've built homes. Now we must build healing," he said.
Ngozi raised a brow. "A hospital?"
"No," he said. "A mirror school."
Ebube frowned. "Mirror school?"
"Yes. A place where stories teach science. Where memory births medicine. Where a child doesn't just learn arithmetic but also how to count the tears of their ancestors."
Zuru lit up. "You mean a school that remembers while it teaches?"
"Exactly. A mirror doesn't teach—it reveals. That is what the world needs now."
They called it Oru Uche—The Mind's Forge.
It started with twenty children, each from a different ethnic group. Their first lesson? Sit before the mirror and tell the story of their name.
One boy wept because his name had been shortened by teachers until it had no meaning left.
One girl beamed because her name was a proverb in motion: Nwakaego—"A child is worth more than money."
Each name was woven into a song, and each song became a subject.
Math lessons began with measuring the rhythm of drum beats.
Geography was taught through the migration of folktales.
History began not with colonial dates, but with grandma's whispered warnings.
Children flourished. But not everyone approved.
Chief Oguanya struck again.
This time, not with regulators—but with ridicule.
"Schools should not sing," he said during a televised panel. "They should produce. This mirror madness is backward."
A rival media house ran a headline: "From Hotels to Hoodoo: Has Odogwu Lost the Plot?"
But Odogwu did not reply.
He simply sent a parcel to the studio.
Inside it: a small mirror. And a note.
"If what we do is backward, look inside—and tell me why you're crying."
Then came the invitation.
An ancient society based in Uloka, known only as Ndị Ncheta, or the Keepers of Memory, requested audience with Odogwu.
It was said they existed before maps. That they remembered things even gods forgot. That their libraries were trees and their scrolls were rivers.
Odogwu traveled alone.
Uloka was not on any GPS.
He walked for three days, fed by birds, guided by a tortoise, and tested by riddles from children who grew younger the longer they spoke.
At the gate, a woman with silver eyes asked him, "Why do you seek the face behind the mirror?"
He answered, "Because the face I see today may be the mask someone else wore yesterday."
The gates opened.
Inside, time did not flow. It curled.
They showed him visions—of Amaedukwu before war, of Elegosi as forest, of Omeuzu as a wandering spirit that had once sought healing but instead chose greed.
The Keepers warned him:
"The mirror you carry awakens not just memory but echoes. Echoes that, if not healed, become curses."
"To teach a generation to remember, you must also teach them how to forgive."
They handed him a flute carved from moonstone.
"When the mirror reveals too much, let the flute speak. Music can soften what truth might shatter."
He returned to Elegosi changed. Not just older—but deeper.
He began integrating music into Oru Uche. Each week ended not with exams, but with Evening Circles, where children sang what they learned, danced what they feared, and mirrored what they became.
One day, a blind boy who had never spoken uttered his first words during a flute session.
"I saw my mother's laughter. I want to see it again."
Healing was happening. Not in hospitals—but in heartbeats.
Even the city began to notice.
Doctors came to study the curriculum.
Tech companies asked to integrate Oru's memory framework into AI development.
And somewhere, in a private chamber, Chief Oguanya sighed.
"The boy we abandoned has become the story we cannot ignore."
One night, during a thunderstorm, the mirror cracked.
Not from malice. But because it had given all it could.
Odogwu stared at the broken pieces. Instead of grief, he smiled.
He whispered, "The mirror was never meant to last. Only the truth it reflected."
The next morning, he called the children.
Each was given a shard of the mirror.
"Take this," he said, "and plant it where you dream the loudest. One day, it will grow into a truth tree. And the world will rest beneath its shade."
And they did.
In Banjul. In Kafanchan. In Addis Ababa. Even in Elegosi.
Little glints of shimmering truth began to dot the continent.
And Odogwu? He stood under the iroko in Amaedukwu one final time.
He touched the soil, felt the pulse.
And he whispered:
"May we always remember that forgetting is the first death. And remembering is the first resurrection."