The vow did not leave Ola's mouth like a whisper.
It stayed in his throat like a stone.
By the time they reached the village edge, the marsh wind had died completely. Even the reeds seemed reluctant to move. The stillness wasn't peace — it was a listening, a pause in which even the crickets held their breath.
Echo walked ahead, her lantern swinging low, the weak flame tracing gold along the wet earth. She didn't look back. She didn't ask again about what he had found in the city beneath the marsh. She had been with him long enough to know that some answers came only when they were ready — and some were better left to ripen in silence.
But Iyagbẹ́kọ was waiting.
She stood at the entrance to the shrine, staff planted deep in the ground, the moonlight making silver of her hair. Her gaze flicked over him — not at his wet clothes, not at the water still dripping from his hair — but at his eyes. The faint blue gleam was impossible to hide.
"You saw them," she said. It wasn't a question.
Ola nodded once.
"And?"
"They gave me their names," he said quietly.
Iyagbẹ́kọ's face didn't change, but the set of her shoulders tightened. "All of them?"
"All who would give them."
Echo stopped beside him. "And you took them."
"Yes."
Iyagbẹ́kọ's knuckles whitened against her staff. "Then you must understand the price."
"I do."
"No," she said sharply, her voice cutting like flint. "You don't. Not yet. Names are heavier than bones. They will speak to you when you wish for silence. They will demand when you have nothing left to give. And some will hate you for carrying them — because they were never meant to be remembered."
Ola's jaw tightened. "Then they should have stayed silent."
Iyagbẹ́kọ stepped closer until her face was shadow and moonlight. "You think you're strong enough to bear them because you came back breathing. But breath is not the same as endurance."
The air between them was taut. Then, slowly, she stepped back. "Come inside. There's someone you must meet."
The shrine's inner chamber smelled of dried herbs and salt‑smoke. The coals in the hearth glowed faintly, throwing long shadows across the carved walls. At the far side of the room sat a woman Ola had never seen before.
Her hair was bound high with copper wire, her skin weathered like driftwood, her eyes a deep green‑brown that seemed to drink in the firelight. She wore no jewelry except for a chain around her neck — a single tooth of pale, polished bone hanging from it.
"This is Ìyá Sùn," Iyagbẹ́kọ said. "Once Keeper of the River Gates."
The woman inclined her head slightly. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft, but carried a depth that made the air seem thicker. "You've taken the Names."
"Yes," Ola said.
"You think they belong to you?"
"They were given."
"No," she said simply. "They were loaned. The difference will matter when they come to collect themselves from you."
Echo stepped forward, frowning. "What do you mean?"
Ìyá Sùn's gaze didn't leave Ola. "The Names are not just memories. They are hungers. Some want to be spoken. Some want to be avenged. And some… want to be lived again. Through you."
Ola felt a coldness in his chest that had nothing to do with the marsh water still clinging to him. "What happens if I can't give them what they want?"
The woman leaned forward slightly. "Then they will eat you until there's nothing left but them."
That night, sleep did not come easily.
When it did, it came like the tide — sudden, inescapable. And with it, the Names began to stir.
He dreamed of walking through the village, but the streets were empty, and the air was thick as water. The doors of the houses were open, and from each doorway came a single voice, speaking a name. Some he recognized — ancestors whose stories he knew. Others were strangers. But all spoke with the same mouth.
Say me.
Say me.
Say me.
He tried. But every time he opened his mouth, another name forced its way in first. His voice broke under the weight. The Names pressed closer, faces emerging from the shadows — the reed‑field girl, the Hollowed child, the woman with her mouth bound in rope. They weren't accusing. They weren't even pleading.
They were waiting.
He woke with the taste of river water in his mouth.
By morning, the change was visible. Not to all — the children still laughed when they saw him, the elders still greeted him with cautious respect. But Echo saw it. Iyagbẹ́kọ saw it. Even Ìyá Sùn, who lingered by the shrine as though she'd taken root there, watched him with the still patience of someone counting down.
The Names had begun to press against the edges of his thoughts, whispering at the corners of his hearing. Sometimes they spoke over each other. Sometimes they fell silent for hours, letting him believe they were gone, only to return in unison.
That day, while walking the narrow path toward the riverbank, Ola stopped without meaning to. His body went still, his gaze fixed on a young man repairing a fishing net.
The man looked up, startled. "What?"
The Name in Ola's mind hissed like rain on coals. That one.
"Do you know me?" Ola asked without thinking.
The man frowned. "Of course. Why wouldn't I?"
But the Name inside him was seething. He stood on the bank when I went under. He watched.
Ola's hands clenched. For a heartbeat, he felt the strange pull to act — to speak the accusation aloud, to demand answers. But the man's eyes were wide with confusion, maybe even fear.
He turned away. The Name muttered in his skull until the sound was like a swarm of bees.
That evening, Echo found him at the edge of the shrine's outer wall, his head bowed, his fingers digging into the clay bricks.
"They're not quiet," he said without looking at her.
"They won't be."
"It's more than noise. They want me to do things. They remember the ones who wronged them. They want me to…" He trailed off.
"To punish," Echo said softly.
He nodded.
She stood beside him in the growing dark. "Then you'll have to choose which ones to answer. You can't be the voice for all of them. You'll break."
Ola's jaw tightened. "If I don't answer, am I any different from before I carried them?"
Echo didn't reply. The silence between them said enough.
The first choice came sooner than either of them expected.
Three days later, the fishermen found bones tangled in their nets — bones not worn smooth by time, but fresh, the marrow still soft. And wrapped around one long femur was a strip of cloth marked with an old family sigil.
Iyagbẹ́kọ called Ola to the shrine. Ìyá Sùn was already there, holding the cloth between two fingers.
"This belonged to the Adeyẹmí line," she said.
Ola knew the name. Everyone in Obade did. One of the wealthiest families in the region — with land along the marsh edge and deep ties to the council.
The Names surged in him like a sudden tide. One rose above the rest — sharp, insistent.
Him.
Ola gritted his teeth. "One of them is speaking."
Iyagbẹ́kọ's eyes darkened. "And what is it saying?"
He met her gaze. "That it's time."