The water tasted like a memory gone sour.
Not just salt — not just silt.
It was the taste of voices swallowed mid‑song.
Ola forced himself deeper, into the narrow throat of stone and coral that yawned beneath the Keeper's hollow skull. The pale‑blue light spilled from fissures in the walls, bending and warping like moonlight seen through tears.
The deeper he swam, the quieter the heartbeat became. In its place rose another sound — soft, high, a tremor of glass chimes carried by the current. At first, he thought it came from the stone itself. Then he saw them.
Lanterns.
Not hung. Not fixed. Floating.
Each one no larger than his palm, a perfect sphere of pale glass. And inside each — a single human eye, open and unblinking. The lantern‑eyes turned toward him as he passed, tracking his every stroke.
The current grew stronger, pulling him forward. He let it take him. The passage opened into a vast chamber, its ceiling so high it vanished into the blue haze. The floor was uneven, made of massive slabs of stone that looked placed rather than fallen.
And there, in the center, stood the city beneath the marsh.
Not the drowned city he had seen before. This was something older — its buildings carved from coral and whale bone, archways shaped like ribs, doorways framed with the jawbones of beasts. The pale‑blue lanterns drifted between them like slow stars.
The eyes inside the lanterns never blinked.
A figure waited at the edge of the nearest street.
At first, Ola thought it was another of the drowned — pale, hair streaming in the current. But as it drew closer, he saw that its face was masked in bone, and its limbs were jointed wrong, bending too far backward at the knees. It held a staff capped with another lantern‑eye.
"You brought the tooth," it said, its voice more felt than heard.
"Yes." Ola's own voice was muffled by the water but carried easily, as if the chamber swallowed and returned it to him.
The figure's head tilted. "And so you brought the door. Do you understand what you have opened?"
"I'm beginning to," Ola said.
The staff lowered, pointing toward the heart of the coral city. "They are waiting for you."
"Who?"
"The ones who never drowned. The ones who gave themselves to the water before it could take them."
Ola hesitated. "Why?"
The figure's masked face leaned closer. "Because you carry a name that should have been theirs."
The streets twisted like intestines. As Ola followed, more of the bone‑masked figures emerged from doorways, from behind coral pillars. All carried lanterns. All watched him without a word. The eyes in their lanterns shifted — some wide with fear, some narrowed with suspicion.
The current here was thick, slow, as if the water itself had weight. Ola's limbs ached from pushing against it.
They reached a courtyard ringed by whale ribs. In its center rose a column of dark stone etched with spirals. At its base, a circle of kneeling figures faced inward, hands pressed to the stone. Their bodies were thin, almost skeletal, but their hair floated long and black in the water.
"They've been here since before the river," the guide murmured beside him. "Since before the marsh was a marsh. Before your people forgot the old name for this place."
"What do they want with me?" Ola asked.
The guide's masked face turned toward him. "To hear your confession. And to decide if you will walk back into your world, or remain here as one of them."
The kneeling figures began to hum.
Not a song — not exactly. It was a vibration, a low tremor that ran through the stone and into Ola's bones. His chest felt tight, as if the sound were squeezing something from inside him.
The name‑thief's voice stirred in his head.
Leave.
Now.
But Ola didn't move.
The column glowed faintly under the touch of the kneeling ones. Spirals of light spun upward, curling into the water above. In the glow, Ola saw shapes — faces — memories.
The reed‑field girl.
The Hollowed child left to die.
The woman who sang to the river even as the elders bound her mouth.
All the silences he had carried.
One of the kneeling figures rose. Her face was bare, unmasked — though her eyes were the pale blue of the lanterns. She reached toward him, fingers long and web‑thin.
"You brought the tooth," she said softly. "But will you give us the rest of what you took?"
"I didn't take anything," Ola said.
Her eyes narrowed slightly. "You kept your breath when we gave ours. You kept your name when we cast ours into the deep. We were the ones who should have been remembered. Yet here you are — speaking where we are silent."
Ola's throat tightened. "Then take it."
The blue in her eyes flared. "We cannot take what you must give."
She pressed her palm to his chest.
Pain lanced through him. Not physical — deeper. As if she were peeling away the walls he had built inside himself.
Images flooded his mind — the day he turned away from a friend's grief, the moment he chose not to speak in the council, the hours he had hidden by the river instead of standing with the condemned.
Shame, hot and heavy, filled his lungs.
Leave. The name‑thief's voice again. Before they keep you.
The kneeling ones rose now, all turning toward him. The current shifted, tightening around his body like unseen hands.
The guide leaned close. "You can walk out with your name. Or you can kneel here forever and keep ours."
Ola's pulse roared in his ears.
He remembered Iyagbẹ́kọ's warning. Echo's voice telling him not to bargain.
But he also remembered the truth — that he had come here for more than just his name. He had come because someone had to hear these people.
He took the woman's hand from his chest and clasped it in his own. "Then I'll carry them. All of them. Your names. Your silences. Your dead."
The courtyard seemed to still. The spirals of light slowed their climb. The kneeling ones exchanged glances.
The woman's blue eyes deepened to something darker — ocean‑dark.
"Then you are no longer just Ola," she whispered.
The current released him.
The guide stepped back.
"Go," the woman said. "And speak as if every word you say is ours."
When Ola emerged into the marsh hours later, the moon was low and pale. Echo was there, crouched at the water's edge, lantern in hand.
"You're late," she said.
He climbed onto the bank, dripping, the tooth gone from around his neck. His eyes were different now — touched with the pale‑blue gleam of the lanterns.
"Did you get it?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. His voice was steady, but softer than before. "And something else."
She frowned. "What?"
He looked back at the black water. "A vow."