The Hollow pulsed now with something new—not light, not sound, but the slow, rising murmur of things remembered. The stillness that had weighed on stone and spirit was lifting, like dawn bleeding across a stilled landscape.
Ola rose unsteadily to his feet. The gourd was locked in his trembling hands. He kept his gaze lowered as if the weight of what he carried might escape him. The air itself shifted: each inhalation brought the faint scent of soot, kola, and distant rain. Glyphs along the walls flickered—once motionless, now faintly luminous, as though they too were breathing again.
Ọmọjolá moved behind him, steadying his elbow. "You were gone a long time," she said softly, eyes wet with unspoken relief. "But something came back with you."
He nodded without words. A faint wheeze escaped him. "They… they gave me songs. Names. Fragments. It was like… listening through earth."
Her fingers tightened around his arm. In her breath, he heard pride, awe, and something tender—hope that the journey had not broken him.
From the spiral chamber's edge, Iyagbẹ́kọ́ took a slow step forward. Her staff tapped a solid rhythm against the floor. "Let us begin the work," she said. "The Hollow is waiting."
Reawakening the Spiral ChamberThey returned to the central spiral chamber. Even in the glow of memory, it felt sacred—a womb-like space carved from basalt, etched with murals that had begun to reassemble themselves. Lines of pigment realigned, forming scenes of ritual and harvest, birth and lament. Figures once shattered slowly regained coherence in stone. Ink-threaded patterns connected glyphs across walls.
Ola lowered the gourd onto the cracked stone floor. It hummed with low vibration, resonating with the chamber's growing heartbeat.
Ọmọjolá and Iyagbẹ́kọ́ took their places—on opposite sides of the spiral, like opposing guardians of memory. Ola stood between them, braced on uncertain knees.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ spoke first. Her voice had the weight of ancestral judgment. "This is a rite of listening. A weaving of what has been lost."
Ọmọjolá added gently, "We do not force the names. We offer them space to return."
Ola closed his eyes and nodded, then tilted the gourd's opening upward—and let the names begin to speak.
The Ceremony of ReturningA low rumble sprang from the gourd. Sound not words. A vibration that resonated through bone and blood. Tones layered over tones, each a whisper of a life once lived.
Glyphs on the walls lit up, line by trembling line. Scenes emerged where they hadn't existed moments before:
A child cradled an infant wrapped in cloth dyed with red soil.
A woman carved swirling lines into the bark of a tree.
A hunter sharpened an arrow by firelight.
A teacher traced shapes in sand for her apprentices.
Ola frowned, recoiling slightly. He had never truly seen memory so clearly before—so tactile, so heartbreakingly human.
The hum elevated. It became a chorus of names in tongues unspoken in generations:
Témi, Nyéléni, Omor—Yọlá…
Voices. Lives.
Then came the scream—a raw, sudden rupture. A shrieking chord that tore through the ceremony like a blade. Ola gasped. The basin in the chamber cracked along a jagged seam. Stone dust billowed. The gourd shook violently, sound slicing across the chamber. Ola raised his head to see swirling glyphs, splintering like glass.
าคาร่า
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ did not move. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing slow but steady.
"One resists," she said quietly. "A name that remembers too much."
Ola's heart beat so fast his vision blurred. He steeled himself, swallowed the fear, then knelt beside the cracked basin.
He reached inside the gourd again, plunging his hand deep into the humming core—into the storm of memory.
The chamber retracted, walls angling inward. The murals blotted out. The light dimmed, as though holding its breath.
The Trial of NamesOla opened his eyes to darkness.
He stood in a corridor, illuminated by a single faint glow that seemed to emanate from within. Beneath his feet was bone—but bone molded into arching ribs. He was enclosed within a vertebrae cavern—a spine of history.
Between each rib were names. Etched deeply—each scratched through with a burning stroke.
No eyes. No faces. Just names, erased.
Ola's chest tightened. He staggered, clutching his heart.
A presence came—not with sound, but with weight. A pulse in his chest.
He heard its voice.
"Why do you return what was taken?"
Ola swallowed. The corridor thrummed around him. He straightened his shoulders, voice echoing softly, though not spoken aloud.
"Because it is theirs. Because forgetting is a wound that never closes."
The corridor trembled. The ribs rattled, dust fluttering like bees.
"Then bear it."
A sudden weight crashed into his back—names and stories and sorrows pouring into him. He gasped as the weight of unnamed teachers, unnamed mothers, unnamed poets, unnamed dreamers pressed through his spine. Pain radiated. Memories embedded themselves on skin, in sinew, in bone.
He fell forward to his knees, breath ragged. The names burned. He felt their joy. Their sorrow. Their final breaths. Their unspoken hope.
But in the throes of agony came understanding. This was the mechanism of remembering—the cost, the weight, the responsibility.
"You carry the unbearable," the voice murmured. "Do not let it consume you."
A wave of release followed. The corridor blurred.
Return from the TrialHe awoke in the spiral chamber.
The gourd lay empty—its humming ceased. The basin before them was cracked but contained a clear liquid that glowed faintly.
Ọmọjolá knelt nearby, head bowed. Her hands glowed with residual glyph-light.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ stood behind Ola, her staff glowing faintly, arm resting gently on his shoulders.
They both watched him.
"Heaven," Ọmọjolá breathed. "They gave you the last."
Ola's mouth opened, but no sound came. He realized: the ceremony was not over.
Ola rose, steadied by their hands.
"What happened?" he asked hoarsely.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ said firmly, "The one who would not be forgotten has returned. You are now a vessel."
"We both claimed the names," said Ọmọjolá quietly. "But you, Ola—you carried the unbearable memory. Now they move through you."
Ola's heart pounded. He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the rhythmic thrum of countless lives inside him—some faint, some strong. A chorus, alive and demanding.
He looked into the basin. Faces shimmered—hundreds, flickering in half-light. Submerged. Smiling, crying, singing, praying. Each face began to detach from the liquid, drifting upward in soft luminescence.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ reached out, trailing a fingertip across the surface of the basin. "They are ready," she said. "The Hollow does not feel hollow anymore."
The chamber awakened. Walls hummed. Murals glowed. Glyphs shimmered alive again, dancing with story.
Ola drew a steady breath—slow, firm.
"Then," he whispered, "let's go where they are needed."
At that moment, the Hollow sighed—as though exhaling. And from its echo sprang the first chord of a new song.
AfterwordMinutes or hours passed—time lost meaning in that chamber. Yet when they emerged at the altar's edge at the top of the shrine, the sky had shifted. Night had given way to a pale dawn. The earth beneath the sinkhole no longer trembled. Roots had settled. The air smelled of wet stone and new beginnings.
Ola stepped into the sunlight, gourd empty but body full. Ọmọjolá and Iyagbẹ́kọ́ flanked him, their steps steady.
They walked back to the villagers—who had waited in reverent stillness, eyes wide, breath held.
Ola paused before them.
"I bring the names back," he declared. "Their songs will rise again—on our tongues. In our prayers. In our ceremonies."
A hush waited.
Then the eldest among the villagers stepped forward and placed her hand over her heart.
"They came back through you," she said. "Thank you, vessel of memory."
Ola felt tears sting his eyes.
Later, when they prepared to return home under that pale dawn, few spoke. The ceremony had changed them all. No one needed to ask what happened in the Hollow. It showed—in the way murals glowed bright, in the villagers' bowed heads, in the roots newly threaded through altar stone.
Ọmọjolá touched Ola's shoulder gently. "You decided to carry their weight. You decided to remember."
He nodded.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ spoke last. "Remember this morning. Remember what we learned. The world needs remembering. Especially that which was swallowed."
And they turned toward the river, toward home, toward the next song—and the next name waiting to rise.