_POV: Juma
The Hall of Threads used to be quiet.
That was the point of it.
When Kunle and I rebuilt the Tome, we didn't build walls first. We built this A round room with no windows, a ceiling made of glass, and twelve pedestals in a circle. On each pedestal sat a shard of the broken Spear. Not as weapons. As anchors. Old Taju called them "memory stones" before he left. He said if the world ever started lying to itself again, the shards would hum.
For one year they didn't make a sound.
One year of peace will make you soft. It made me soft. I started cataloging things that didn't matter. How many times the market sold out of mangoes. Which kids in the school could recite the 12 names without crying. I told myself I was "watching the threads." Truth was, I was afraid to look too close. Because if you stare at the threads long enough, you start seeing the places where they're frayed. And I didn't want to see that. Not after everything.
Kunle was different. He threw himself into the Forge until his hands were nothing but calluses and burn scars. He built houses. He built a new water system. He built a bridge over the ravine that used to be the Court's landing zone. Every night he came to the Hall and checked the shards. Every night he left without saying anything. I think he was waiting for them to go dark. I think part of him wanted them to.
It was on a Tuesday that the first one cracked.
I was asleep on the floor, like I always do. The shards give off heat when the sky is clear. It's comforting. At 3:17 AM, I woke up because the sound wasn't a sound. It was the absence of one. Like someone had cut the string on a drum mid-note. I sat up and Sango Jr's shard was split right down the middle. Not broken. Cracked. A thin line of black running through the gold, and from it came a smell. Not smoke. Not blood. Sand. Hot, dry, wrong sand.
"Kunle," I said, but my voice didn't work.
I ran. Bare feet on cold stone. The Forge was still burning. Kunle was there, hammer in hand, making a hinge for the school doors. He looked up when he saw me and he already knew. "Which one?" he asked. "Sango," I said. "The lightning one."
He dropped the hammer. We didn't speak on the way back. What was there to say? The Court was dead. The Gate was closed. Old Taju was walking the desert. There was nothing left to fight. Except this.
When we got to the Hall, the crack had spread. Not on the shard. In the air above it. A line, maybe as long as my finger, cutting through nothing. Through space. And through it I could see... not stars. Not sky. Just more sand. Endless dunes under a white sun. And something moving far away. Something big.
Kunle put his hand near it but didn't touch it. "Roads don't break," he whispered. "Old Taju said roads don't break. They just go to new places." "Then why is there sand coming out of Sango's memory?" I asked.
Because that's what it was. Sand was leaking from the crack. A few grains at first, then a trickle. It pooled on the floor and when I touched it, it was cold. Desert cold. The kind that burns.
We sealed the Hall. Told no one. For three days we watched it. The crack didn't grow, but it didn't close either. And every night at 3:17 AM, it hummed. One note. Low. Like a voice trying to remember a name.
On the fourth day, the second shard cracked.
Tsehay's.
This time we were ready. We had glass boxes, wards, salt lines. Nothing worked. The crack appeared in the air above her pedestal and this time the sand that came out was warm. And it had footprints in it. Small ones. Child-sized. Going away from us, into the white desert.
That's when I understood.
The roads weren't breaking. Something was cutting them.
Kunle and I did what we always do when we don't understand something. We called the others. Not all of them. You don't call ten demigods back for "maybe." We called three. The ones closest. The ones who would come fastest and ask the fewest questions.
Sango Jr came from Lagos in 20 minutes. He arrived in a storm that wasn't weather. He looked older. Tired in a different way than war-tired. "Kids," he said by way of greeting. "I'm teaching kids. They're good. They're safe. Tell me this isn't about them."
Dele came next, riding the train lines. He walked in with grease on his hands and a scowl. "If this is about the power grid again, I swear—" He stopped when he saw the cracks. "That's not possible."
Tsehay came last. She didn't fly or run. She walked in from the desert side of the city, and her feet were bare and covered in sand that wasn't ours. She looked at the two cracked shards and her face did something I'd never seen before. It went blank. "They're cutting the roads between us," she said. "Not the big roads. The small ones. The ones that connect people."
"How do you know that?" Kunle asked.
"Because I've been building schools," she said. "And for the last month, kids have been forgetting each other. Not names. Connections. Best friends wake up and don't remember why they were best friends. Brothers forget they grew up in the same house. It's not amnesia. It's erasure. Like someone is taking scissors to the thread."
Sango Jr went to his shard. He didn't touch it. "Can you fix it?" he asked me. I'm the librarian. I'm supposed to know.
I lied. "I don't know yet."
Truth was, I did know. Old Taju told me once, on the roof, the night before he left. He said, "Juma, if the roads ever start breaking on their own, it means something is trying to make the world smaller. And when the world gets small enough, gods go back to being masks."
I didn't tell them that.
Instead we made a plan. Bad plan, but it was a plan. Sango would go back to Lagos and watch. If more kids started forgetting, we'd know the crack was spreading. Dele would check the power grid, the trains, the physical connections. If those started failing too, it wasn't just people. Tsehay would go to the desert. "If there are footprints," she said, "there's a person. And if there's a person, I'm going to ask them why they're cutting my students."
Kunle stopped her at the door. "What if it's not a person?"
Tsehay smiled, but it wasn't her nice smile. "Then I'll teach it how to fight fair."
After they left, the Hall was quiet again. But it wasn't the good quiet. It was the quiet before a storm. Kunle sat on the floor between the pedestals. "Do you think he knows?" he asked. "Old Taju?"
"If he does, he'd be here," I said.
"Or he'd be the one doing it," Kunle said.
I didn't have an answer for that.
That night at 3:17 AM, I didn't sleep. I sat and watched the cracks. The sand kept coming. And in it, the footprints. More now. Not just children. Adults too. All walking in the same direction. Away from us. Toward that white sun.
And then, on the edge of the crack above Sango's shard, I saw something else. A hand.
Not reaching out. Reaching in.
Pale. Burned. With a mark on the palm. Three lines. Like a mask.
The Court was supposed to be dead.
The hand closed into a fist, and the crack widened by an inch.
I didn't scream. Librarians don't scream. I just stood up, went to the Forge, and woke Kunle.
"We have a problem," I said. "The Court left someone behind."
Kunle looked at the hammer in his hand. Then at me. "Then we go find them."
"Where?"
He pointed at the sand on the floor. At the footprints. "Wherever the roads are going."
Outside, the sky was clear. No Gate. No ships.
But for the first time in a year, I wished there was something to fight. Because whatever was cutting the roads, it wasn't making noise about it. It was being quiet.
And quiet things are always worse.