Ọmọjolá had always known the earth could speak.
Even as a child, when the other children played games and chased fireflies under a sky thick with stories, she listened. Not with her ears, but with her bones. When others heard silence beneath the loam, she heard breath. Movement. Murmurs like lullabies half-swallowed by clay. A secret rhythm woven into the heartbeat of the land. Her mother had called it madness, whispered in shame behind closed doors. But her grandmother, old as rust and twice as stubborn, had taken Ọmọjolá's small, shaking hands and said, "This is a gift, child—not all blessings come wrapped in joy."
She learned early to distinguish the difference between burial and planting. One grieved. The other hoped.
And now, as she knelt beside the widening sinkhole at the base of the ruined shrine, that same earth did not whisper—it screamed.
A violent tremor passed through the soles of her bare feet. She flinched, hand tightening around her small gourd of ash. With the other, she traced a protective àṣẹ symbol in the soil, an invocation of safety, of guidance. The spiral she etched glowed faintly before settling into stillness.
Around her, the villagers formed a ring. Old, young, the broken and the faithful—all stood in hushed reverence. Their eyes betrayed awe and fear in equal measure. None dared speak. The sinkhole had grown overnight, its jagged mouth now wide enough to swallow an ox whole. It had devoured what remained of the altar's base, cracked sacred stones that had stood unshaken for centuries.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ stood nearby, upright and unmoved. Her cane, which once seemed like a simple tool for balance, was now a totem—carved from palmwood, adorned with charms, its brass cap glinting faintly. Her face was unreadable, carved of granite and memory. Behind her stood Ola, younger than the others, sweat clinging to his temple, his breath shallow. His dreams had been shifting again—deep, echoing visions that left him restless and strange upon waking.
"It's ready," Ọmọjolá said quietly, almost reverently. "The way has opened."
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ tilted her head, listening to something the others could not hear. Then she nodded. "Only those with memory may enter," she said. "Only those who carry the song… or the silence it left behind."
Ola shifted, the words making his stomach churn. "What are we going to find down there?" he asked, his voice tight with something between fear and expectation.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́'s eyes did not leave the yawning mouth of the earth. Her gaze flicked only briefly to Ọmọjolá's gourd before returning to the broken shrine.
"Ìlàró," she said at last.
Ola blinked. "The dream city?"
"The womb of all dreamwalkers," Ọmọjolá said softly. "Lost. Forgotten. Until now."
No one spoke after that.
The descent began at dusk.
The sun bled into the horizon like an opened vein, casting long shadows over the shrine. Ọmọjolá led the way, her bare feet sure as if the ground itself guided her. With every step, she whispered ancient prayers—some remembered, some inherited from beneath her skin, from the very bones of her bloodline.
Ola followed. He said nothing, but each step made his skin prickle. There was something down there. A pull. Like a string stitched into his ribs being drawn slowly inward. As if the river's memory—long thought to be a metaphor—had roots, and those roots recognized him.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ came last, her cane now a staff. Symbols once dormant now shimmered along its shaft, etched in gold and ochre. Prayers, names, truths.
The tunnel they entered was not made—it had grown. Root systems arched overhead like cathedral vaults. Stone columns, long buried, bore carvings of gods whose names had been stolen by time. The deeper they moved, the louder the silence became, until even breath seemed disrespectful.
"What is this place?" Ola whispered once. But his voice sounded too loud. He didn't speak again.
Soon, the soil underfoot shifted. The damp, earthy loam gave way to polished obsidian laced with veins of pearl and bone. It shimmered faintly under their footsteps, like it remembered them.
At the threshold of a great chamber, they paused.
And there it was.
Ìlàró.
A city. Not forgotten—merely buried. Sleeping beneath the skin of the world. It sprawled outward in impossible symmetry, sculpted into the earth's ribs. Towers of amber and bloodstone. Altars of broken glass and luminous ochre. Pools of still water that shimmered as if whispering secrets to the air.
Ola could barely breathe. "It's real," he said, voice hoarse.
"Yes," Iyagbẹ́kọ́ replied. "But it mourns."
Ọmọjolá nodded. "It feels the silence of its children."
As they entered the chamber, a low hum passed through the air. Not a voice. Not exactly. A melody. Familiar. Haunting.
Ola froze. It wasn't imagination. He knew that tune. A lullaby. The one Echo had sung in his dreams, long before the flood. The one that had wrapped itself around his ribs and refused to let go.
He whispered her name. "Echo?"
There was no reply. But the melody lingered, drifting like the scent of smoke from a long-dead fire.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ rested a hand on his shoulder. "Her memory has roots here, too."
At the center of the chamber stood a statue. A woman, carved from basalt, arms stretched upward. Her face wept stone tears. Around her feet were smaller carvings—children, elders, dancers—all reaching skyward.
Beneath her was a spiral path, leading deeper.
"We must go farther," Ọmọjolá said. "The Cradle lies below."
They descended again. The air grew warmer, dense with memory. The scent of burnt kola nut, healing balm, and something older—unspoken forgiveness. The path narrowed, lit only by a soft glow pulsing from the walls.
It was not darkness that met them below, but amber light.
The chamber was circular, its ceiling domed with roots and quartz. At the center lay the Cradle.
A cocoon of woven light and soil. Memory given form. Spectral figures surrounded it, drifting silently like smoke with eyes. Their features were blurred by time but ancient in posture.
Guardians.
One stepped forward. A woman. Or something that had once been.
"You have brought the ash of the unburied," the guardian said. Her voice was like wind through dry leaves. "The memory of the drowned. The silence of the silenced."
Ọmọjolá stepped forward and lifted her gourd with both hands.
"I carry the ashes of those whose names were never grieved," she said, voice trembling. "Let them rest."
She poured the ash in a wide spiral, each grain glowing as it hit the ground. As it reached the cocoon's edge, the chamber vibrated—low and ancient.
Another guardian turned to Ola. "You carry her song."
Ola hesitated. His throat closed. Then, something opened within him. He didn't sing with words.
He sang with memory.
With longing.
The lullaby Echo had left in him. The song of grief wrapped in love, of rivers holding stories they dare not speak. The air shimmered with it.
And the cocoon responded.
It pulsed. Then unraveled slowly.
Light spilled out—not blinding, but soft and full of breath. A heartbeat. A murmur.
From the light stepped a figure.
Not Echo.
But someone older.
A woman formed of soil, starlight, and tears. Her hair flowed like riverweed, her eyes held aeons. Her presence filled the chamber like truth.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ fell to one knee. "The first dreamwalker," she whispered.
"She remembers us," Ọmọjolá said, sobbing now.
The woman approached. She reached for Ola, and her touch was neither warm nor cold—it was knowing.
"You have carried the wound well," she said, her voice a blend of river and wind. "But now you must carry the story."
She touched his chest.
And Ola remembered.
Not just his life. Not just Echo's. But all of them. The first dreamers. The flood. The lullabies. The songs lost. The prayers whispered into soil in hope someone might one day listen.
He saw his ancestors. Their grief. Their joy. Their power.
He saw Ìlàró being sung into being—birthed not by architects, but by storytellers. He saw it buried not by accident, but by fear. A culture hidden to protect its flame.
Tears ran down his face.
The woman nodded. "Tell it," she said. "Before they forget again."
And as the chamber glowed brighter, the figures around them bowed their heads.
The Cradle had remembered.
And the story had begun to rise.