There was no wind in the Hollow.
No birdsong. No rustle of air against skin. Even the memory of sound seemed unwelcome here—as though the earth itself had taken a vow of silence to protect whatever secrets lay buried in its shadow.
The three of them stood at the threshold of a place that refused names. Ọmọjolá stepped forward first, her bare feet pressing softly into cracked basalt that radiated a heat older than fire. Beneath her toes, faded glyphs slithered and twisted like worms, their lines reforming when she tried to focus on them. She whispered a prayer for patience, though the prayer itself sounded muted—as if spoken underwater.
The light from the cradle chamber behind them dimmed at their backs. Not in a gradual fade but an abrupt retreat, like a living thing recoiling from danger.
Ola hesitated at the boundary.
He kept his hand pressed tightly against his chest, over the spot where the First Dreamwalker had touched him. The warmth of her memory still pulsed within, but it brought no comfort here. In this place, even the most sacred blessings seemed to cower.
Something watched them.
Not with eyes. With absence.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́'s cane tapped once, twice against the stone, then stopped. She closed her eyes. Turned her head slowly, listening—not for sound, but for memory.
"This was once a name-place," she said at last, her voice low and reverent. "A hall of records. A place where truth lived. But it has been hollowed. The names are gone."
Ola stepped beside her, eyes scanning the ghost-light corridors that spiraled ahead. "Erased?" he asked.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ shook her head, the beads in her hair clicking softly. "No. Worse. Swallowed."
They moved forward together.
The corridor curved gently like a spine, lined with alcoves etched into the wall. Once, perhaps, these had held scrolls or carved memory stones—testimonies of lives, of lineages, of love and war and dreams. Now they cradled only dust. The scent of myrrh lingered faintly, brittle and stale, like incense burned too long ago to be remembered.
Ọmọjolá paused beside one of the glyphs etched into the wall, its form flickering at the edge of her vision. She reached out and pressed her fingertips to it gently.
It recoiled.
The glyph twisted away beneath her touch, as though flinching. She pulled back instinctively.
"They're alive," she whispered, eyes wide. "But scared. They won't speak."
Ola frowned. "Why would names be afraid?"
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ answered without turning. "Because names are power. And power that remembers its own loss… hungers."
The Hollow was unlike any dreaming-place Ola had ever walked. Dreamscapes usually buzzed with resonance—threads of song, flickers of ancestral whispers, the beating heart of the world's sleeping mind.
But here?
Nothing.
Only a cold hush. An abandoned sanctuary where the gods had been silenced mid-prayer. Even Ola's own heartbeat seemed too loud. He wanted to speak but dared not. It felt wrong to make noise in a place so devoutly empty.
They continued.
Time slowed. Or quickened. It became untrackable, slippery. Every turn of the corridor looked familiar, but not in the way a memory is familiar—in the way a looped nightmare is. Finally, they entered a chamber shaped like a spiral shell. Its walls curled upward like a nautilus, wrapped in worn murals that peeled at the edges like burned parchment. The air was thick. Grief lingered here, sticky as honey left too long in the sun.
At the center stood a basin.
It was made from stone darker than shadow, filled with a thick, unreflective liquid that absorbed all light. It did not ripple. It did not move. It simply was.
Ọmọjolá fell silent. Even her breathing slowed, as if the chamber asked for stillness.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ stepped to the basin's edge. She placed her staff before her, then murmured a forgotten invocation. A name with no vowels. A memory in syllables too old for human tongues.
The air pressed downward.
Ola staggered slightly under the weight of it, as though invisible hands had settled on his shoulders. The walls vibrated softly, and from the edges of the room came faint noises—fragments of speech struggling through syrup. Names. Laughter. A cry. All smothered before they could fully form.
"Drink," Iyagbẹ́kọ́ said. "It may remember you."
Ola stared at the basin. The surface remained still, unreadable. His pulse thundered in his ears.
Without speaking, he knelt. Slowly, he extended his fingers and touched the surface.
It was cold. Not icy, but anti-warm—like touching the idea of absence.
And then it moved.
The liquid snaked up his wrist like smoke, writhing with sudden urgency. He tried to pull away, but it clung, tightening. His breath hitched.
And then it dragged.
The Hollow Within the HollowOla stumbled forward.
He was no longer in the spiral chamber. The floor beneath his feet cracked with every step—clay fractured and bloodless. The sky above was a dull gray-purple, the color of old bruises. No sun. No stars. Just cloudless weight.
Statues lined the edges of a vast plain. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Each one half-carved. Faces unfinished. No eyes. No mouths. Limbs still fused to the blocks they were carved from. Some wept stone tears. Others had roots twisted through them, as though the ground was reclaiming what had once dared to rise.
A fire burned nearby, though it gave off no heat. The flames shimmered blue and white, flickering sideways.
Beside it sat a figure.
Cloaked in feathers and shadows, its face was a shifting mosaic—strangers' faces that melted into one another. A child. An elder. A warrior. A mother. A broken mask. A mirror. Each face lasted no more than a blink.
Ola approached slowly.
"You seek what was taken," the figure said. Its voice echoed like footsteps in a tomb. "But what will you give?"
Ola swallowed hard. "Who are you?"
"I am the Keeper of the Swallowed," it said. "I remember what was never meant to be found."
Ola's hands tightened into fists. "I need the names. The ones stolen from Ìlàró. The ones that were erased."
The Keeper tilted its head, and a dozen faces passed across its own in that instant.
"Names come at a cost," it said. "Some are not ready to be spoken. Some do not want to return."
"Then let me carry them," Ola said. "They deserve to be remembered."
The Keeper stood, towering now, though Ola had not seen it move.
"You cannot carry what you do not know," it said. "And knowledge cuts deeper than any blade."
With a flick of its hand, a hollow vessel appeared—a gourd, but not of calabash. It looked carved from bone and wrapped in woven strands of song itself. Notes shimmered along its surface. Each one mourned.
"Fill this," the Keeper said. "Then we will see."
Ola turned to the plain.
In the distance, he saw pits. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Some shallow, some deep. From each pit rose a single sound—a name, a cry, a lullaby, a sob. Fragments of lives lost to time and fear.
He walked toward the first pit, the gourd held tightly in his hands.
And he began to listen.
Each voice was a wound.
A girl named Aṣàbí who had sung healing into the bones of the dying. A boy named Témitọ́pẹ́ who had walked into fire to save his village. An old woman who had spoken with rivers but was burned for her knowledge. Mothers, hunters, dancers, midwives, warriors—names of those too dangerous, too bright, too unwritten to survive the age that swallowed them.
He knelt at each pit. Whispered, "I see you."
The gourd filled slowly. With song. With breath. With sorrow.
And when it was full, it hummed in his arms.
ReturnIn the waking Hollow, Ọmọjolá sat cross-legged beside Ola's body. Her voice was a low hum, vibrating with notes too old for language. Her fingers moved in slow, looping gestures—symbols of return, protection, remembrance.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ stood beside them, her eyes closed, her breath slow. She held her staff across her chest, the symbols along its shaft glowing faintly, pulsing with the rhythm of the underworld.
Then Ola gasped.
His eyes snapped open. His back arched as though something inside him fought its way free. He clutched the gourd tightly to his chest, breath ragged, face streaked with tears.
"They have names," he choked. "All of them. They remember."
Ọmọjolá reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Then we will remember them too."
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ opened her eyes. Her voice was firm, resolute.
"Then it is time," she said, "to give them back."