The dawn broke slowly over Obade, like a reluctant breath exhaled from the mouth of the sky. The morning light didn't rush, didn't blaze—it crept. Pale and uncertain, it spilled across the rooftops, hesitating as it touched the wet grasses and smoke-stained eaves, as if unsure whether the village had truly earned another day of peace.
The river moved beside it, steady but changed. Where once its surface had held the sheen of mourning, it now shimmered with something else—not quite joy, but something near it. Resolve, perhaps. Or hope wrapped in humility. The water no longer screamed or echoed the drowned. Now it hummed with the memory of songs returned, secrets spoken aloud, wounds dared to be faced.
Ola stood at the place where the earth met the river—the threshold where stories entered and departed. In the stillness, he could hear the shift in the current, feel the depth of something ancient just beneath the surface. Around his neck hung the pendant the old woman had given him—wooden, fish-shaped, with a spiral curl that seemed to breathe against his chest.
It was a small thing. But it pulsed.
He curled his fingers around it, thumb brushing the grooves, and lifted his other hand to trace the ribbon of faint threadlight that glowed softly against his wrist. A tether to Echo. A link to the dreaming realm. A whisper that refused to die.
Today was not an ordinary day.
Today, the echoes would grow stronger.
Behind him, footsteps approached—deliberate, grounded. Iyagbẹ́kọ́. She no longer carried her staff, the symbol of her office, but instead bore a pouch tied to her hip, filled with dried herbs and crushed salt—elements of binding and protection, for moments when song was not enough.
She stood beside him, saying nothing at first, only watching the water with the eyes of one who had lived long enough to know that rivers never offered peace without a price.
Then, finally: "The river is changing."
She didn't look at him as she spoke. The words were a truth, not a theory.
Ola nodded. "The echoes are no longer just memories. They're beginning to call."
Iyagbẹ́kọ́'s expression hardened slightly. "The threads we've woven—they're stirring something. Something deeper than the Witherbound. Something wild. Forgotten by the villages. Remembered by the land."
He looked toward the heart of Obade, where smoke curled from new cooking fires and the morning market stirred into life. The people were moving with reverence now, their steps laced with remembrance. Every word seemed measured, every action deliberate—as if all of Obade understood that they stood in the in-between, caught between past and future, shadow and sun.
"We need to be ready," Ola murmured.
"For whatever is coming," Iyagbẹ́kọ́ finished. "Yes."
They turned together, walking back toward the center of the village. There, beneath the wide arms of the ancient baobab tree, the village elders had gathered. The elders rarely convened without summons. And yet here they were, seated in a half-circle, their robes still damp with morning dew, their faces etched with something beyond age—readiness, perhaps. Or guilt.
Their eyes followed Ola and Iyagbẹ́kọ́ as they approached. And just behind them, Echo appeared.
She wore white—simple, unadorned—threadlight woven loosely through her braids. She said nothing, but her presence stirred the wind. Children hushed as she passed. Even the chickens wandering the square shifted to avoid her path.
She was no longer just Echo.
She was the one who had remembered.
The elders began to chant.
It was a song few had heard since before the Silencing. The language was old—some said it came from the time before names. Others said it was the language the river itself once used to speak to those who would listen.
Ola closed his eyes, letting the chant settle over him. The melody was not sweet. It was low, guttural, heavy with grief. But within it were notes of restoration, of ritual, of returning.
As the sound swelled, the river stirred.
Its surface began to ripple, not from wind or stone, but from something else—presence. Light shimmered across it, pulsing in patterns. Symbols rose and dissolved: a spiral, an eye, a hand, a drum. Each image lingered just long enough to be felt. Then it vanished, as if the water itself remembered too quickly.
Then—a cry.
A girl no older than ten broke through the outer ring of villagers. Her clothes were torn, her hair wild with bramble. Her chest heaved with panic.
"They're coming," she gasped. "From the forest. I saw them—shadows in the trees. And voices. Too many voices."
A cold stillness gripped the square.
Ola stepped forward and caught the girl by the shoulders. "What did you hear?"
She shook her head violently. "They weren't speaking—they were… echoing. Like they were inside each other's mouths. And the trees were shaking. Not from wind. From something else."
The word settled among the crowd: echoes.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ straightened her shoulders. "This is the price of awakening. When truth is remembered, so are those who sought to silence it. We have stirred more than just memory."
"Then let us not retreat," Ola said firmly. "Gather the dreamwalkers. Prepare the circle. We meet the river's test with open hands—not fear."
The villagers scattered into motion. Salt was fetched. Firepits were dug. The song circle was marked again in chalk and threadlight.
That night, as dusk bled slowly into black, the baobab stood like a guardian. Around its roots, villagers lit small flames and lined the earth with threadlight chalk. The circle was cast—not to summon, but to welcome whatever needed to rise.
Echo stood at the eastern edge, her eyes fixed on the trees beyond Obade. The forest rustled. Not in wind—but in breath. Something ancient moved just beyond vision, and the threadlight at her wrist pulsed like a heartbeat in response.
From the trees, they emerged.
Shadows.
But not monsters. Not beasts.
They were forms. Human shapes—some tall, others hunched, cloaked in darkness but flickering with memory. Their bodies pulsed in and out of light, as if they did not belong to a single realm. They did not speak with mouths. They sang—a discordant melody of longing, rage, sorrow, and need.
Ola, Iyagbẹ́kọ́, and Echo stood in the center of the circle.
Ola raised his hand, voice firm. "We do not run. We remember."
Then came the counter-song.
Their voices—three becoming one—rose against the oncoming wave. Ola's tone was grounded and deep. Echo's, haunting and high. Iyagbẹ́kọ́'s, worn and cracked but full of command. The threadlight burst to life, forming a dome around the circle, a glowing field of memory and will.
But the shadows did not stop.
They entered the circle—not to attack, but to merge. Their song joined the villagers', sometimes harmonizing, sometimes clashing. Pain surged into the chant—fragments of death unacknowledged, betrayals unnamed, guilt unspoken.
A man broke from the crowd, his eyes wide.
"I carried a secret," he said aloud. "A lie that cost us a child. I said she drowned by accident. But I knew… I knew it was the curse. And I said nothing."
The song faltered. The circle trembled.
Silence.
Echo reached out, touching the man's hand. Her fingers were cold, but steady.
"Your truth is part of the river now," she said softly. "Let it flow. Let it become part of the song."
The man wept. And then… sang. A single note. Pure. Bare.
One by one, others followed.
A woman admitted to refusing shelter to a widow.
An elder confessed that she burned an ancestral scroll out of fear.
A child revealed where he had hidden the necklace of his drowned sister.
And the song grew stronger.
The threadlight shone brighter. The shadows, once distorted, began to shimmer with clarity. Some of them wept. Others knelt.
By the time the first light of dawn kissed the treetops, the circle had become a current. Every voice was part of the river now—broken, whole, wounded, and healing. And the shadows?
They dissolved—not destroyed, but returned. To the current. To the earth.
Ola stood in the silence that followed, his breath shaking, his body exhausted.
Obade had survived the night.
More than survived—it had spoken.
It had remembered.
Echo stood beside him, sweat shining on her forehead, her eyes shining like new stars.
"This is not the end," she whispered. "The echoes are just beginning. But so is our song."
And Ola, chest still trembling, nodded.
Not healed. Not finished.
But alive.
And still singing.