The night in Obade was thick with a strange stillness. Not peace—never peace—but a waiting. As though the very air knew something had slipped into their village that could not simply be forgotten.
Ola sat alone in the shrine's outer court, darkness all around except for their small fire, flickering in the quiet. He cupped the shard of obsidian in his hands. In the firelight the surface seemed to breathe—tiny pulses of light rising and falling with some unseen heart. Each pulse carried a whisper: not enough to understand, not yet, but persistent enough to stop him from turning away.
He had tried once to put the shard down, laying it on the stone altar. The moment it left his palms, coldness seized his bones—the kind of cold that comes when a grave is dug too soon. Panic rose like bile in his throat, and he fumbled back to the shard, picking it up without thinking. Heat returned immediately—wrapping into his blood like living threads.
Iyagbẹ́kọ stood at the far side of the court, leaning into her cane, silent until now. She hadn't said a word since they returned from the vault. Even now, her gaze was fixed on the shard rather than him.
Finally she spoke, voice steady.
"You've already begun to hear it, haven't you?"
Ola didn't look up. He clutched the shard tighter. "Not words. Just… the weight of them."
"That's how it starts. The names won't come all at once. They'll seep into you, one by one. Until you can no longer tell where they end—and you begin."
He squeezed his eyes shut. "And if I let go?"
Iyagbẹ́kọ's lips curved—not a full smile, but a flash of pity mixed with warning. "You already tried. You know the answer."
He did.
From the shadows near the shrine wall, Echo stepped forward. She had removed the river beads from her hair; they hung from her wrist like fragments of memory. Her eyes went straight to the shard.
"It's feeding from you," she said softly.
Ola frowned. "You make it sound like a parasite."
"It is," she replied, "but parasite—even a dark one—feeds to grow heavy inside you. Not to kill you. At least, not yet."
Iyagbẹ́kọ's gaze shifted between them, patient but sharp.
"You both need to understand. This shard is not a tool. It's a mouth. It will open when it chooses—and when it does, it will speak with the voice of every name it carries. You can't control that."
He glanced at her. "Then why give it to me?"
"Because you were chosen by it," she said simply.
His laugh was short, bitter. "I didn't choose this."
Iyagbẹ́kọ's expression hardened. "Neither did the ones whose names you now carry."
The silence that followed cut deeper than any blade.
Echo took a step closer, shadow-lengthening over him. "We have to decide where to take it. We can't keep it here. It will tear the village apart before it ever speaks."
Iyagbẹ́kọ nodded slowly. "There is one place. But the road to it is not walked in daylight."
Ola saw the moon, swollen and red, rising over the ruined rooftops.
He swallowed. "Where?"
She inhaled, gathering her calm like a weapon.
"The Mouth of the Earth."
By the time they left, the moon had drifted low, its red glow dimming into dawn's promise. They moved silently through the village, avoiding the few watchers who stood in shadowed doorways. The shard pulsed faintly in Ola's hand as if unsettled by the quiet, hungry for the journey ahead.
Iyagbẹ́kọ guided them through a narrow reed-cut path winding through marshes. The reeds whispered around them, subtle voices echoing against stillness—reeds that didn't match the wind's rhythm. Underfoot, waterlogged soil sucked at their boots.
Before the sky had turned white, they reached their destination. The Mouth of the Earth was not a cavern entrance as Ola had expected—it was a wound in the land. A vast sinkhole where earth had collapsed inward, exposing layers of bone, clay, and ancient stone. The air rising from it was warm, humid—but not with life. It smelled of stone-smoke and something older than rain.
Echo peered into the abyss, lips parted.
"You've brought people here before," she said softly.
Iyagbẹ́kọ's face gave nothing away. "Only those who need to confess to the earth. Some return. Some do not."
Ola's grip on the shard tightened. The stone pulsed against his palm—impatient, aware.
"And you think this is where it belongs?"
She paused. Then spoke slowly: "I think this is the only place that will hold it without trying to use it."
A wind shifted around them. From the pit rose a sound—not wind, not water, but breathing. It filled their ears faintly, like exhaled regrets. Ola swallowed hard.
"What happens when I put it in?" he asked, voice strangled.
Iyagbẹ́kọ gestured toward the darkness.
"The same that happened when the vault gave it to you. It will choose."
Echo's gaze warmed with resolve. "And if it chooses not to stay?"
Iyagbẹ́kọ's eyes locked on Ola's: "Then it will follow you home."
He wished he could laugh. Instead, he took a step forward.
At the lip of the sinkhole, the earth crumbled slightly, loosened by his weight. Pebbles rattled into darkness. The shard pulsed fast now—so fast it felt frantic, like a heart escaping its cage.
He raised it over the void. For a heartbeat, eternity held its breath.
Then—
A hand shot out of the darkness.
Not human. Angled, jointed wrong, the fingers tipped with points like sharpened bone. It didn't grab the shard—it touched it. Feather-light, reverent.
Ola froze. The pulsing turned into a roar inside the stone, then steadied... and finally, he heard the whisper, clear as a bell cracked open.
Name me.
He swallowed. The voice came—not male, not female, neither young nor old. It carried the weight of a thousand mouths speaking at once.
His throat tightened. "I don't know your name."
The voice came again, softer, sharper:
Then remember it.
The hand withdrew, and the shard grew heavy—so heavy his arm sank under its weight. He dropped to one knee, head buzzing, skin burning from the contact.
Echo knelt beside him, whisper urgent. "Ola..."
Iyagbẹ́kọ held her back with a steady hand. "Let it finish."
The warmth from the shard turned into pain. The pain turned into sound: a flood of voices, memories forced through the shard into his mind. Flashes between the shards' pulses:
A girl laughing as she skipped across a courtyard—her neck snapped before her bones settled.
A man digging his own shallow grave, mud clinging to trembling hands.
A child singing a lullaby to the river before slipping beneath the current.
Names spoken of in fear, in resistance, in peaceful defiance.
Each memory ended abruptly, leaving the ache in its wake.
Names, names, names. So many that he thought his skull would crack under their weight.
Then abruptly—silence.
The shard cooled in his palm. Breathless, Ola forced himself upright. When at last he stood, he was shaking.
Echo's voice was soft but charged with urgency. "What happened?"
He looked at her, exhaustion written across every line in his face. Then, for the first time since the shard chose him, he let a smile break—hard, bitter, but real.
"It told me where to take it."
Iyagbẹ́kọ's gaze sharpened.
"Where?"
Ola turned toward the horizon, where pale dawn was bleeding into the sky—pink, then gold.
"To the place where the first name was ever stolen away."