They came at dusk.
Not summoned. Not expected. Yet they arrived—six figures walking barefoot along the southern trail into Obade. Their footsteps made no sound. Only the rhythmic clatter of bone charms wrapped around their ankles echoed, like warning bells calling out from a graveyard at twilight. Their cloaks were dusted with ochre earth and river-silt, as if they had climbed from beneath the soil itself.
Echo felt the shift first. A tremor in the space between breath and echo. Something like glass cracking without a spark.
"They're not spirits," she said softly, her voice folding across the warm earth.
Ola turned, brow furrowed. "Then what are they?"
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ emerged from behind them, her cane tapping firmly against the ground. "Reckonings," she said. "Fragments of what we buried—and prayed would never crawl back."
The road narrowed here, edged with wild vine and ancient palms. Ahead, villagers had gathered, drawn by rumor. Some braced themselves, clutching old charms beneath their cloth. Others peeked from doorways, dread twisted in their stilled expressions. No one moved.
The tallest of the six halted first.
They were silent for long beats.
Then, softly, the tallest spoke:
"Ìkàbó."
The word struck the air like lightning in a cave. A flint strike to bone.
Echo whispered it under her breath, tasting its weight. "Ìkàbó…"
Iyagbẹ́kọ́'s hands tightened on her staff. "That name was sealed in our archives long ago. Buried under forty layers of silence."
Ola swallowed. "What does it mean?"
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ did not answer. Instead, she closed her eyes, remembering.
Beside them, one of the six—thin-haired, sharp-eyed—stepped forward and unwrapped a bundle with careful reverence. Inside lay a jawbone, carved with abandoned glyphs. A child's jaw, teeth missing, edges blackened from fire. The smell of ash rose faintly.
Gasps rippled in the crowd. Some turned away, tears coursing. Others clutched cloths to mouth.
Yet the six remained statuesque.
Then Ola, drawn by something primal, moved forward. He passed Echo, passed the outer altar, and knelt before the tallest. The air felt colder here, as if chilled by remembrance.
"If you have come to return what was lost," he said, voice steady, "then we receive you."
The six paused. Then, one by one, they knelt and placed their relics at the ring's edge: jawbones, shards of burned charms, torn cloth stained with sorrow and shame.
Then—silence.
A tense stillness.
Until one whispered:
"Not all who were erased were innocent."
Another said: "Some were feared for what they became."
Third whispered, disquiet thick: "Monsters."
Echo stepped forward, gaze unwavering.
"No," she corrected. "Not monsters. Mirrors."
The tallest figure then asked, voice soft but severe:
"Will you still sing for those who brought ruin? For the cursed? For the betrayers? For the ones you cast out not because they were forgotten—but because they recalled too much?"
The words crackled like embers in the dark.
Echo's reply came low, unwavering:
"If we refuse, then we become worse than those who silenced them."
The figure exhaled a release that seemed to echo across generations. Slowly, they removed the cloth from their face.
Underneath: skin scarred in fractal glyphs, silver-threaded tears etched under eyes. Their stare was silver-white, reflecting ancient hunger.
Ola stepped back, breath catching.
"You…were us."
"No," the figure corrected. "We were you, until you decided we were not."
A scream rose from the crowd—not of fear, but of tragic recognition: an old midwife collapsed, shaking. She gasped between sobs:
"It was you… the one I watched burn. I—I called you possessed. I—I betrayed you."
The figure placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.
"You were afraid," they replied. "Your fear did not erase what you did."
Echo knelt beside both of them.
"We will not ask for forgiveness," she said. "But we will ask you to reclaim your names."
The figure nodded, not in submission but in belonging.
Behind them, the remaining five stood and drifted into a new alignment—a broken circle outside the survivors' Ring of the Erased.
A third ring—unspoken, unsanctioned, pregnant.
One not made of memory.
But of consequence.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ broke the hush, voice clear as a gong:
"Let the fire between stones be called what it is. Let it stand as the Circle of Reckoning—for those whose remembrance demands more than apologies."
Tears and murmurs surfaced as the villagers realized what was unfolding.
This was no longer a ceremony.
This was a truth-place.
Where truth hewn into flesh becomes sacred.
The Fire After Silence
That evening, three rings burned beneath the midnight sky.
The Remembering Place, glowing steady gold, held ancestors once forgotten now returned.
The Ring of the Erased, lit blue—river grief pressed into flame, sorrow made ritual.
But the Circle of Reckoning burned violet—bloodlight in flame, unheated but searing, truth unspooled raw and living.
Young children were kept away from the violet flicker. They would come later, when the village learned the difference between reckoning and relapse.
But adults approached. One by one, they stepped into violet flamelight, knelt, whispered names through tears or clenched throats, laid stones—names of sisters hidden, brothers beaten into silence, mothers burned for song.
Every spoken name cracked otherwise impossible silence deeper.
Ola entered last. His steps were silent. He held nothing in his hands—except breath, which felt weightier than metalsmith's anvil in his chest. He whispered:
"Ìkàbó."
The violet fire pulsed. No tremor in earth.
But something inside everyone shifted. The world seemed a fraction wider.
When he stepped out, Echo waited. Her eyes flickered under firelight.
"You did it," she said.
"No," Ola replied. He lowered his head. "We're doing it."
She reached for his hand, fingers entwining.
"There's more to find," she whispered.
He looked up, eyes raw. "More names?"
Echo's gaze turned distant, set toward the river's shimmering flow.
"No," she said. "Something deeper."
River Voices and Hidden Currents
By dawn, the river had changed again.
Its water no longer murmured safe lullabies.
It hummed with accusation and invitation.
Echo heard voices in the current: names, hummed in Gẹ̀lẹ́dé tones, jeweled syllables heavy with unsung pain. Not just ancestors. Not only saints of memory—but why-not saints—those who were drowned not by curse but by accusation, by scorn, by community-sanctioned fear.
A child—a girl no more than seven—awoke shrieking:
"They're coming," she cried. "From the deep places. They want to walk with us."
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ heard her weeping at the edge of the Remembering Place, clasped the child's hands gently.
Then she said to the gathered dreamwalkers:
"We make a road for the names to travel home."
They heard the river's mood shift. There was urgency now—not of healing only, but of preparation.
For memory becomes reckoning.
And reckoning becomes life.
Dawn of the Circle
As sunlight filtered through mist, Echo and Ola stood side by side at dawn's threshold.
Their palms pressed to cold stone of the outer ring. The Circle of Reckoning lay behind them like ripple upon river-edge.
Echo leaned in, voice soft:
"This is only the first turning."
Ola exhaled, chest heavy.
"What does come next?"
She looked out at the river, reflecting dawn's rose-gold light.
"More bones to name. More voices to invite. But not all names are peaceful."
He swallowed hard.
"What if we unearth something monstrous again?"
Echo's eyes met his.
"We will remember it too," she said. "Truth is not sacred because it comforts. It is sacred because it survives."
He nodded slowly, breath steadying at final understanding.
They turned toward Obade—where circles burned and stones glowed beneath past and future.
And behind them, the river whispered with a jagged-edge lullaby:
What else have you buried?