The new dreaming had no sky.
Only a tapestry of woven memory stretched wide above the people of Obade, as if the heavens themselves had bent down to listen.
Night lingered long after it should have given way to dawn. But no one moved to light fires. The village square—now ringed by salt, threadlight, and shadow—had become a holy place. Every sound was sacred. Every breath was part of the ritual now unfolding between the living, the remembered, and the forgotten.
Echo's body lay still, draped in cloth sewn by the ribbon's last unraveling. She was not dead. Not broken. But in between. Suspended in a dreaming that no longer belonged to one soul alone.
"She listens," Iyagbẹ́kọ́ said softly, her fingers laid across Echo's brow. "But not to us. Not yet."
Ola stood beside her, no longer weeping, but transformed. There was a new weight in his spine, in the way he held his chest as if protecting something precious—something dangerous. The seed Echo had named lived in him now, and it pulsed with ancestral cadence. He didn't yet understand it, but he could feel it stretching his bones, whispering in his blood.
The Witherbound still knelt, unmoving. Their childlike emissary—its hollow eyes catching starlight—watched him with an unreadable expression.
"You have confessed," it said at last. "But will you make covenant?"
Ola looked down at Echo. He remembered her voice just before she collapsed: You must finish this.
He turned to the Witherbound.
"What do you demand?"
The wind stirred, carrying the voices of the kneeling villagers who still wept. From within their grief rose a kind of resolve, wordless but strong. The child-figure tilted its head.
"We do not demand. We ask for what was taken. For memory. For blood to be named and not hidden."
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ rose beside Ola. "Then we will open the earth."
A murmur moved through the villagers. One of the elders, Pa Kuwo, stepped forward with trembling limbs. "Open the earth? But… the old burial grounds—those were sealed before the war…"
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ looked toward the east. "Exactly. They were sealed with silence. But silence is no longer sanctuary. Not here. Not now."
From her belt she drew a thin blade, not made of steel, but of fossilized salt—an ancient dream-knife, carved long before the first flood.
She handed it to Ola.
"You must be the one."
He hesitated. "Me?"
"You carry the wound. And the hope."
Behind them, the river began to stir. Its currents whispered in forgotten tongues.
A path opened eastward, marked not by stones, but by glowing names—those same spectral threads that had once wrapped around the village during Echo's declaration. Now they shimmered across the ground, forming a route only the remembered could walk.
Ola took a step.
Then another.
The villagers followed, some still weeping, others with torches in hand. The Witherbound moved silently behind them, no longer spectral terrors, but solemn witnesses.
The procession moved beyond the village boundary, into the untended groves where vines covered forgotten tombs and trees grew thick with sorrow. Birds did not sing here. Even the insects held their noise.
They stopped before a mound.
Not large. Not marked.
But it was not a tomb. It was a seal.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ stepped beside Ola and placed her palm upon it. Her breath caught.
"This is where the first dreamers were buried," she whispered. "Those who walked between worlds. The women who healed by listening. The men who taught thunder to remember its echo. Buried not with honor, but fear."
Ola crouched and pressed the blade into the ground.
The soil sighed.
Light erupted—not bright, but warm, golden like old honey. It spilled outward in concentric circles. From beneath the mound came voices. Not frightening, not ghostly. Just voices.
"I told her I loved her… before they took me."
"My song was never finished."
"They used our names to scare children. We were more than myths…"
And then, a louder voice. Familiar.
"Do not bury me again."
Ola froze.
He knew that voice.
"Mother?"
The light expanded, and from within it came the shape of a woman. Tall. Proud. Dressed not in cloth, but in the robes of an ancestor. She carried a staff of woven wind and her eyes—her eyes were Ola's.
He fell to his knees.
"Mother… I thought you—"
"I died," she said simply. "But not as they told you. Not as you remember."
Behind him, the villagers gasped. More shapes began to rise from the ground—spirits, ancestors, dreamers too long buried beneath shame. They did not accuse. They bore witness.
Ola's mother approached.
"They said I drowned saving a child," she said. "But the child was me. I walked into the river because my dreams showed me the wound coming. I thought… I could stop it."
Tears welled in Ola's eyes. "And did you?"
"No," she said. "But I sang."
Then she turned.
"Will you sing now, child of my blood?"
Ola swallowed. The seed in his chest burned.
"I… I don't know the song."
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ placed a hand on his back. "You do. You just don't know it in words."
So he opened his mouth.
What came out wasn't melody.
It was memory.
It was the story of a boy who had drowned in shame but been raised by love. Of a girl made of starlight who carried a thousand unborn names. Of a village that had forgotten too much and a people who had learned to fear grief more than truth.
He told it all.
The spirits rose.
The Witherbound glowed.
And then the ground itself began to shift.
The seal broke completely.
From beneath the earth came a chamber—round, ancient, and pulsing with energy. At its center sat a stone basin filled with still water.
The child-figure of the Witherbound moved to it and dipped their fingers inside.
"A wound must be washed before it heals."
They turned to Ola.
"Drink."
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ looked alarmed. "We don't know what—"
But Ola stepped forward and drank.
The water was cold. Sweet. Bitter. It tasted like stories never told and lullabies never sung. It burned down his throat and flooded his chest.
He collapsed.
The world twisted.
And then—
He was not in the chamber anymore.
He was in a void.
A place of pure memory.
Figures danced around him—some known, some unknown. A voice spoke, not male, not female, but ancient.
"You have entered the Root."
The Root?
"Yes," the voice answered his unspoken thought. "The first dreaming. The original covenant between water and word."
He looked down. The ground beneath him was made of symbols.
"What is this place?"
"This is the Voice Beneath the Earth," the voice replied. "It is where all buried things go."
"And why am I here?"
"Because you are ready to remember what even the river forgot."
Then came a roar.
A dragon, made of braided hair and stormwater, circled overhead.
"You must bind it," the voice said.
Ola stared. "Bind it? With what?"
"With yourself."
The dragon roared again and dove.
He raised his arms—
And the seed in his chest burst into light.
Threads of memory lashed outward, catching the dragon's limbs, its eyes, its mouth.
It screamed.
And then—
It changed.
Its body shrank, shifted. The water hardened into scales of obsidian. The hair wove into wings. It landed before him, no longer a beast, but a companion.
It bowed.
"You carry the Wound," it said.
"And the Song," Ola whispered.
Behind him, the symbols on the ground flared.
"You may return," the ancient voice said.
"Wait," Ola asked. "Who are you?"
The void rippled.
"I am the One Who Was Forgotten. The first river. The first name."
And then everything went white.
—
He awoke in the basin chamber, gasping.
The villagers stood above him. Iyagbẹ́kọ́ wept.
"You were gone for hours."
He sat up.
"No. I was only just beginning."
He turned to the Witherbound. They knelt.
"You have done what we could not," the child-figure said. "You remembered us without fear."
Ola looked at the people. At the earth. At the stars blinking far above.
"This was never about salvation," he said. "It was about truth. About not hiding what we call unbearable."
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ stepped forward. "And now?"
He looked toward the horizon.
"Now we prepare. The First Memory will speak again. And we must be ready to listen."
The Witherbound faded into mist.
The ancestors returned to light.
And somewhere far away, Echo stirred.
Her eyes opened.
And the dreaming resumed.
To be continued.