The shed reeked of rot and grain dust, a suffocating perfume that clung to every breath. Its timbers sagged with age and neglect, joints swollen from long seasons of rain and silence. Slivers of afternoon sunlight sliced through the warped boards, casting trembling lines of gold that danced with every gust of wind. Shadows curled in the corners, thick as smoke. The place felt like it was waiting for something to break.
Ola leaned against the wall, her back pressed to the damp wood. Every muscle in her body still vibrated, still singing with the fading echo of the Binding's hum. It was in her teeth. In her skin. Somewhere behind her eyes.
But the hum hadn't followed them into the shed. It had stayed outside. That was worse.
Èkóyé crouched beside the doorway, motionless. Her body was still, but not calm—coiled instead, like a bow held taut. Through a gap no wider than a finger's breadth, she watched the fence line. The sliver of visible land beyond it lay unnaturally still. Not a single stalk of dry grass stirred. Not a single insect dared to hum.
"They don't need to move," Èkóyé said at last, her voice barely louder than breath. "Not if the sound's still in you."
Ola turned her head slowly. "It is. I feel it… here." She pressed her palm to the center of her chest. Where her heartbeat should have been steady, confident—there was something else now. Something slower. Heavier. A second rhythm had nested in her body, foreign and yet disturbingly synchronized, like a drum buried deep beneath the earth had found her blood and decided to play along.
"Then it's worse than I thought," Èkóyé said. She didn't look away from the gap in the wall. Her words came carefully, shaped with the same caution one used when handling an open flame in dry season. "They've put you in their circle without you even standing in it."
Ola's mouth went dry. "That's not possible."
"It wasn't." Èkóyé finally turned to face her, eyes sharp and steady, the kind of stare that left no room for illusions. "But the Hollowed have been learning."
Ola's breath quickened, her body moving on instinct before her mind could catch up. Her back straightened. Her jaw tightened. "Can it be undone?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On whether you let them call your name again."
The silence that followed cracked like ice across a still lake.
Ola blinked. "I didn't… I never answered."
"No," Èkóyé said, voice low. "But you heard it."
And that was the problem. She had. The Binding hadn't just said her name—it had built it. Syllable by syllable, it had pulled her identity into the air like a thread, weaving it into something larger, older, darker. Ola hadn't realized until now that what she'd heard hadn't been just recognition.
It had been possession.
Outside, the old wooden fence creaked. Not like something heavy leaned on it—but like something touched it. A brush of fingers through iron. Wind that carried intention. A whisper without breath.
And with it, the hum rose again. Faint. Low. As though the air itself remembered the Binding's shape and was trying to re-form it, bit by bit.
"They're testing you," Èkóyé said, voice flat. "They want to know how far you'll go without them chasing."
Ola clenched her fists. Her nails dug into her palms, grounding her.
"Then we don't move," she said through gritted teeth.
Èkóyé almost smiled—not from reassurance, but something fiercer. Satisfaction. She nodded once. "Good. Let them wait this time."
And so they did.
Hours passed. Or maybe minutes stretched until they frayed at the ends. The light changed—gold slanting to copper, then rust. All the while, the hum never left. It didn't rise, didn't fade. It simply was—like breath, like hunger, like something that had been buried in the bones of the world long before either of them had walked it.
They spoke little. The shed had become sacred in its silence. A temple built of rot and memory.
At one point, Ola shifted, just enough for her shoulder to catch a beam of the dying light. Her skin glowed faintly, and Èkóyé's eyes flicked to it. Not with curiosity, but calculation.
"They've marked you," she said softly.
Ola looked down at her arm. Faint lines traced her skin—nothing visible a moment ago. But now, in the angled light, they shimmered. Glyphs, almost. Not written language, but sensation. Her skin didn't burn, but it tingled, like it remembered the hum and wanted it back.
"I didn't let them in," she whispered.
"You don't have to. The Binding isn't always about permission. Sometimes it's about recognition. And sometimes, that's enough."
Ola closed her eyes. Tried to recall what had happened in those last moments before they'd fled into the shed. She'd heard the name—not just hers, but a version of it. Older. Sharper. Like her name had been a river, and the Binding had dredged it down to its stone bed.
"Do they want me," she asked finally, "or something through me?"
Èkóyé didn't answer for a long time. Then: "Both."
The word landed like a stone in her chest.
When the sun finally dipped low enough that the golden lines turned a dull, blood-tinted bronze, Èkóyé rose.
"It's time."
Ola stood too, though her legs protested. The humming hadn't weakened—it had simply gone deeper. As though it now knew it had no need to speak aloud. It was inside her now. And the quiet was just another form of control.
They stepped outside.
The heat of the day had thickened into something heavier, more oppressive. The air smelled of dust and metal, and the cattle pen lay quiet. The fence still stood. No breaches. No broken posts.
But the ground inside was no longer dark brown. It had turned the color of ash—dull and gray where the coil had passed.
The Hollowed were gone.
No footprints. No remnants. Not even a smear of shadow left behind.
Only the hum remained—no longer a sound carried on the wind, but something embedded in the marrow of Ola's bones.
She stood still, forcing herself not to run. Not to flee. That was what the Binding wanted—reaction. The first crack in the shell.
"What now?" she asked.
Èkóyé didn't answer immediately. She knelt at the edge of the pen, running her fingers through the ashen earth. When she rose, the tips of her fingers were stained pale gray.
"We go back to the River's edge," she said. "The real one."
Ola frowned. "I thought we were never supposed to—"
"We're out of choices." Èkóyé's voice was grim. "The Hollowed called your name in the language of the Before. That means they have a piece of it now. If we don't take it back—"
"They finish the Binding," Ola said.
"And then you're not you anymore."
Ola swallowed. The air tasted like old metal and memory.
"Then we go," she said. "Now."
As they walked away from the pen, the hum pulsed once, low and long. It wasn't a threat.
It was a promise.
And Ola knew, with a certainty that chilled her, that the next time she heard her name spoken in the hum's voice, she might not remember how to refuse it.