They did not make it back to Obade before nightfall.
The cracked plain behind them settled into silence as dusk bled into shadow, but the voice in Ola's skull did not. It echoed, relentless and insidious. His own name — not whispered, not shouted — but spoken with a cold ownership that coiled in his chest like a serpent tightening its grip.
Every utterance tightened the cage of his ribs, each syllable a weight pulling at the inside of his bones.
Echo walked beside him, silent but watchful. Every few steps, her eyes flicked toward him, sharp and searching.
"You're pale," she said softly, not a question.
"I'm fine," Ola answered, his voice thin.
"That's a lie," she countered without hesitation.
He wanted to argue but the breath didn't come. The word hung, swallowed by a tightening throat.
Ahead, Iyagbẹ́kọ slowed her pace until she was even with them, her sharp gaze cutting through the thickening dusk like a blade. Her voice came low and steady.
"You heard it again."
Ola nodded, swallowing past the tightness in his throat. "It doesn't stop. It's like… it's wearing my name now."
Her eyes darkened beneath the heavy lids, flickering with a sorrow older than the night.
"Then it has begun," she said.
"What has?" Echo demanded, stepping closer.
Iyagbẹ́kọ's voice dropped even lower, words slow as ritual.
"When the first name was stolen, it didn't vanish. It was worn — taken like a mask by the thief. The one who holds your name holds a part of you. It can call you. Command you. Even walk in your shadow."
Echo's fingers brushed the hilt of her knife, restless.
"How do we stop it?"
"You can't," Iyagbẹ́kọ said flatly. "Not unless you take the name back."
Ola's throat clenched painfully. "And how do I do that?"
Her eyes held his, grave and unflinching.
"You follow the voice into the place it was spoken from. And you survive."
Nightfall at the Marsh's Edge
They made camp beneath sickled moonlight on a narrow spit of dry earth hemmed by tall reeds. The marsh whispered around them—water lapping quietly against mud and root, reeds swaying like pale ghosts.
Ola sat apart from the fire, its weak flames barely lighting the hollows beneath his eyes. Every so often, his head tilted—not toward any sound in the air, but toward the voice threading through the silence inside his mind.
Ola…
The syllables slid slickly like oil on metal. Familiar, but wrong.
He snapped his gaze to the shadowed edge of camp.
A figure stood there.
Tall. Cloaked in shifting shadows that breathed and moved like living smoke. No face showed beneath the hood, but the outline was wrong—too narrow at the shoulders, arms too long and thin.
The cloak twisted softly, as if alive.
Ola's hand dropped to the hilt of his machete.
"Who are you?"
The figure tilted its head in an impossible, mocking mimicry. Then, in his exact voice—soft, certain, cold—came the answer:
"I am you."
Echo was on her feet before the words finished, knife drawn in a flash. Iyagbẹ́kọ rose slowly, cane steady in one hand.
The figure stepped forward, emerging into the flickering firelight.
It wore his face.
Almost.
The skin was too pale, stretched too smooth. Its eyes were pools of utter black, voids that swallowed light. The mouth curved into a smile too wide and cruel to be his.
But it was him.
Height, frame, the scars along his jawline — all there, twisted into something wrong, something warped. Like a mask carved in haste, cracked and bleeding shadows.
"I carry your name," the figure said, voice a hollow echo of Ola's own.
"I walk where you cannot. I speak what you will not. I do what you are afraid to do."
Ola's fingers curled around the hilt.
"You're not me."
The smile stretched wider.
"I'm the part of you you left behind in the fire."
The figure moved with impossible speed. One moment it stood at the clearing's edge. The next, it was inches from Ola's face, breath faintly metallic.
Its hand—his hand—reached for his chest.
Pain exploded—sharp, searing, deeper than any wound. Fingers dug beneath skin, twisting inside without breaking flesh.
Echo lunged, slashing her knife, but the blade passed through the figure like smoke.
Iyagbẹ́kọ's voice rang sharp across the camp.
"Don't fight it with steel! Names answer to names!"
Ola staggered, breath ragged.
"What—?"
"Call it!" Iyagbẹ́kọ barked.
"Call your name as yours!"
The figure's grip tightened, black eyes burning into his. The smile stretched impossibly wide.
Say it, it whispered in his mind.
Or I'll keep it.
Ola's breath caught. Panic clawed his throat.
He thought of the shard, of the fire-stair, of the broken ones whose names burned with truth. The woman whose tongue was torn out. The child who sang into the river current. The boy with unseen eyes.
They did not ask for mercy.
They demanded to be remembered.
He swallowed the scream rising in his chest. Then, he opened his mouth.
And he roared his name into the night.
"Oláràyé!"
The figure froze.
Its black eyes widened, the smile faltered.
Ola stepped forward, voice rising, hammering the syllables again and again, louder, forcing them sharp like weapons.
"Oláràyé, son of Ákanni, blood of the river's promise! My name is mine!"
Light flared between them—neither firelight nor moonlight, but the raw gold of something older than both.
The figure staggered back.
Its features blurred and peeled, cracking and dissolving like paint in rain.
The voice inside Ola's head screamed—
Then, silence.
Only the marsh whispered, reeds bending in the breeze, water hissing softly against mud.
Ola dropped to his knees, chest heaving. Echo was beside him instantly, hands steady on his shoulders.
Iyagbẹ́kọ limped closer, her expression unreadable, her voice low and steady.
"It will try again. Until the shard is done with you, it will try again."
Ola swallowed hard, tasting dust and resolve.
"Then we finish this. We end it before it becomes stronger than me."
The old woman nodded slowly, eyes glittering in the firelight.
"Then you must go to where the thief waits. The true thief. The first one."
Echo's grip tightened on her knife.
"And where is that?"
Iyagbẹ́kọ's gaze drifted toward the dark water beyond the reeds — toward a place they had never spoken of aloud in years.
"The drowned city beneath the reeds."
Ola's breath caught cold.
"That place isn't real."
The old woman's eyes burned fierce as coals.
"It is now. And it has your name."
The Weight of Names and Shadows
They sat in silence as the fire sputtered low. The marsh exhaled soft, restless sounds, carrying echoes of forgotten footsteps beneath the water.
Ola's mind churned with the truth they had just lived. The name wasn't simply a word—it was a part of the soul. A tether between self and shadow.
The figure that had worn his name was more than a phantom. It was a fragment of his own silence, his fear, his truths too long hidden.
And it had come to claim him.
Echo's eyes never left him.
"You fought it with your name. That was the only way."
Ola nodded slowly, fingers tracing the burn on his palm—the shard's cruel gift.
"I wasn't sure if I could."
Iyagbẹ́kọ coughed, a dry sound like dust shifting.
"You will face it again. The shadow that wears your name grows stronger each time you let it speak your silence."
A shudder passed through the marsh grass. Somewhere beneath the water, something stirred.
"The drowned city," Iyagbẹ́kọ repeated. "It is where the first name was taken — where the thief made his lair."
Ola's heart tightened.
"If I go there… will I find myself?"
The old woman's gaze was sharp.
"You will find what you lost—and what you tried to leave behind."
Echo placed a steady hand on his arm.
"We go with you."
Ola looked at the two women—two warriors with scars as deep as his own. They carried the weight of the past as clearly as he carried the shard.
The night grew deeper, the moon sliding behind clouds. The fire flickered low, and silence wrapped around them like a shroud.
Yet the name still whispered in his mind.
Oláràyé…
And somewhere beneath the reeds, the drowned city waited.
Dawn of Reckoning
Before sleep could claim him, Ola's eyes traced the dark shapes around their camp—the reeds, the water, the endless marsh stretching toward the unknown.
The shard pulsed softly against his ribs, a reminder of the names it held.
They wait for you.
For the first time since the journey began, the weight of those names felt less like a burden and more like a summons.
The time to reclaim what was stolen was coming.
And he would not walk that path alone.