The Adeyẹmí cloth felt heavier than wet clay in Ola's hand.
It had no right to weigh this much. But the longer he held it, the more it dragged at his bones.
The black‑threaded sigil — a reed crossed with a fishhook — had survived the water as though the river itself had respected its stubbornness. Old wealth. Old power. And the stink of old guilt that not even the marsh could wash away.
Inside Ola's head, the Names seethed. One rose above the rest, sharp as a hooked spine.
Him.
The voice was jagged, scraping the inside of his skull. It wasn't a request. It wasn't even rage. It was hunger.
Iyagbẹ́kọ's voice broke through the noise. "You hear them."
"Yes."
"Which one?"
He didn't answer. He didn't have to. Her gaze sharpened. She knew.
From the far side of the shrine, Ìyá Sùn — who had watched without a word until now — spoke. Her voice carried the kind of stillness that drew the air tight around it. "The river doesn't return bones without reason. It's telling you where the rot lies."
Echo folded her arms. "And if he digs every time the river spits something out, he'll drown before the season turns."
The voice in Ola's skull was relentless. You lived this long by swallowing your words. You will live longer if you speak mine.
Ola looked down at the sigil again. The wet cloth seemed to breathe.
By dusk, Obade was already chewing on the news.
The market chatter was low and sour; the pounding of pestles slowed as women leaned closer to murmur. Older men lingered at the palm‑wine stalls, pretending to talk about fishing nets while their eyes flicked toward the Adeyẹmí compound at the far edge of the village.
The Adeyẹmí house stood apart, as though distance itself were a shield. Wide‑shouldered clay walls, carved gates inlaid with river patterns, a quiet courtyard of stone paths and still water. The gates had never needed to be locked. Power was its own lock.
Ola stood before them now.
The gatekeeper frowned. "Your business?"
"I've come to return something that belongs to your master."
The man's eyes narrowed, but he stepped aside.
Inside, reed mats muffled his steps. The scent of palm oil and smoked fish clung to the walls. The head of the house, Olórí Adeyẹmí, sat at a low table, his frame tall and sinewy, skin the dark sheen of river silt. A faint scar ran from jaw to collarbone — not from battle, but from something older, more intimate.
Ola placed the folded cloth on the table between them. "Your sigil. It was found wrapped around bones in the river."
The Olórí's eyes flicked down, then up again. The flicker in them was too quick for guilt, too slow for innocence. "That could have been stolen. Or placed there to poison a name."
"The bones were fresh," Ola said.
A shadow moved in the man's jaw.
"You come here with gossip and water‑rot," the Olórí said flatly. "Take it back to the shrine. Let them burn herbs over it if they must. I have no time for the river's games."
The Name inside Ola roared. His breath caught. A woman's face surfaced in his mind — round cheeks, wet lashes, eyes frozen wide. Hands pressing her down into black water. Moonlight fracturing across her last breath.
Ola's voice came low. "Her name was Aramide."
The man's stillness was sudden and total.
"She remembers you," Ola said. "She knows what you did."
The Olórí's guards stiffened at the door.
"You carry dangerous words, boy."
"They carry me," Ola said.
The man's smile was slow and deliberate, a thing carved for intimidation. "Do you think speaking her name will pull her back from the reeds? Do you think it will matter to anyone outside your little shrine?"
Ola's hands curled at his sides. The Name inside was fire now, flooding his veins. It wanted him to lunge, to drag the man into the river and let the marsh decide his fate.
But he didn't move. Not yet.
"You'll hear her name again," Ola said. "Everywhere. Until the day it's the only thing anyone calls you."
The man's smile didn't waver, but something in his gaze shifted — a shadow in the light.
Ola turned and walked out.
Night pressed low over the village. Echo stood at the bend in the path, lantern in hand.
"You went to him," she said.
"Yes."
"Did you get what you wanted?"
"No."
"Then why do you look like you did?"
Ola's hand tightened on his satchel. "Because he heard her name. That's a start."
"And if that's not enough?"
He didn't answer. The Names shifted under his skin like restless water.
The first sign came two nights later.
A scream in the dark. Then the orange bloom of fire.
By the time villagers reached the Adeyẹmí storehouse, flames were chewing through roof‑thatch and wall‑plaster. The air was a storm of heat and sparks. Sacks of grain burst in the blaze like muffled thunder.
No one saw who set it. No one saw Ola leave his mat that night.
But when he woke, his hands smelled faintly of smoke.
The Names were silent. Sated.
For now.
The Adeyẹmí cloth felt heavier than wet clay in Ola's hand.
It had no right to weigh this much. It was no more than a piece of finely woven fabric, yet its presence seemed to drag at his bones, pulling him toward a dark and ancient force that whispered beneath his breath. He could feel it in the way his fingers trembled against the silk threads—sharp, like the prick of an old wound that refused to heal.
For a moment, he could almost hear the river, the thick pulse of its waters that churned with the stories of the dead. It was the kind of sound that hummed in the back of one's skull, just below the surface of thought, like an itch that couldn't be scratched. He closed his eyes and let the sensation wash over him.
The sigil on the cloth—the reed crossed with a fishhook—was a symbol of old power, a power tied to blood and bone, to death and rebirth. The kind of power that didn't belong to the living, and certainly not to men who had long forgotten their place within the circle of the world.
As he held it, the weight of it seemed to grow, pressing against him, seeping into his flesh. The sigil had survived the water. The river itself had respected its stubbornness, its refusal to yield to time. That much was clear.
But the stink of guilt lingered. A guilt so old that it had sunk into the very fabric of the cloth, into the bones of those who once wore it. It was the kind of guilt that even the river couldn't wash away.
Inside his skull, the Names stirred, murmuring low. They slithered and hissed like serpents, their voices tangled together in a chorus of hunger and need. And then, like the claw of a beast breaking through the surface of a still pond, one Name rose above the rest.
Him.
The word was jagged, cutting through the noise of the others with the sharpness of a hook tearing into soft flesh. It wasn't a request. It wasn't a plea. It wasn't even anger. It was hunger, pure and unrelenting.
Ola's breath caught in his throat. His grip on the cloth tightened. He could feel it then—the pull in his gut, the compulsion to move, to speak, to call out to the man whose Name now throbbed in his mind.
"Iyagbẹ́kọ," he murmured, his voice strained as he forced the words past the tightness in his chest.
The woman at his side—silent, watchful—nodded. Her sharp eyes, always alert to the shifting tides of the world, caught his gaze.
"You hear them," she said, her tone flat but knowing.
"Yes."
"Which one?"
Ola didn't answer right away. He didn't have to. She knew. Her gaze didn't waver, but the sharpness of it grew as she took in the tension in his body. The Names, swirling beneath his skin, were loud now, insistent. But this time, Iyagbẹ́kọ was no stranger to them. She could hear the reverberations too.
She looked at the cloth in his hands, her eyes narrowing slightly. "That one," she murmured under her breath. She didn't ask again. She didn't need to.
From the far side of the shrine, Ìyá Sùn spoke. Her voice, low and steady, had a kind of stillness that filled the room. It was the kind of stillness that could turn a crowd to silence with a single word.
"The river doesn't return bones without reason. It's telling you where the rot lies."
Echo, standing with her arms folded near the entrance, let out a sound that was almost a laugh, though it held no humor. "And if he digs every time the river spits something out, he'll drown before the season turns."
The words lingered in the air like smoke. Ola felt them sink into him, but they weren't enough to stop the churn inside his mind. The hunger of the Name was still there, gnawing at his insides.
The voice was relentless now, like the pulse of the river itself: You lived this long by swallowing your words. You will live longer if you speak mine.
It was the kind of voice that could shatter a man from the inside, a voice that came from the deepest parts of the world—places where the living were mere whispers against the weight of the dead.
Ola's thoughts drifted, sharp as the cold bite of a river at midnight, to the sigil. The wet cloth seemed to breathe in his hand. The river had sent it to him. It was the river's gift, or its curse, depending on how one saw it.
By dusk, word had already begun to spread.
Obade was chewing on the news. Word traveled quickly in villages like this one, where the market was always full of gossip, and the palm-wine stalls were filled with older men who had more time to speculate than they knew what to do with.
The market chatter had already begun to sour, the quiet thrum of the pestles slowing as women leaned closer to exchange whispers. The air felt thick with tension, heavy with the undercurrent of something about to break. Eyes flicked toward the Adeyẹmí compound at the far edge of the village. It was as though the very earth itself recognized that something was coming.
The Adeyẹmí house was always an outlier in the village. It stood apart, like an island surrounded by the soft, unyielding marshlands. The walls were thick and wide-shouldered, made from the kind of clay that only the river could provide, and the gates were inlaid with intricate patterns of reeds and waterlines, as though even the walls themselves had been shaped by the flow of time. The courtyard, silent and still, held the weight of centuries in its stone paths and shallow pools of water.
The gates had never needed to be locked.
Power was its own lock.
Ola stood before those gates now, watching as the gatekeeper approached. The man's eyes narrowed as he took in Ola's presence, his lips drawn tight in suspicion.
"Your business?" the gatekeeper asked, his tone low, guarded.
"I've come to return something that belongs to your master," Ola replied, his voice even.
The gatekeeper hesitated, his gaze flicking between Ola and the bundle in his hands. But then, with a grunt, he stepped aside.
Inside the compound, the air was thick with the smell of palm oil and smoked fish, and the sound of reed mats muffled the soft echo of his footsteps. The walls seemed to breathe with the heaviness of history. Ola felt it, pressing against his chest, against his thoughts. The head of the house, Olórí Adeyẹmí, sat at a low table, his body tall and sinewy. The kind of man who had lived through the years like a river carves through rock—slow, steady, inevitable. His skin was a deep, rich brown, like river silt, and his eyes held the weight of knowing things that should never be known.
A faint scar ran from his jaw to his collarbone. It wasn't from battle; it wasn't from anything that could be seen as "honorable." It was the mark of something older. Something intimate.
Ola stepped forward and placed the folded cloth on the table between them. The sigil stared up at the man, as though daring him to remember.
"Your sigil," Ola said quietly. "It was found wrapped around bones in the river."
Olórí Adeyẹmí didn't flinch. His eyes flicked down, then up again, the movement too quick for guilt, too slow for innocence. He studied the cloth for a moment longer than necessary, but his voice remained steady.
"That could have been stolen," he said, his words like stones dropped into the water. "Or placed there to poison a name."
Ola shook his head. "The bones were fresh," he said, his voice low but firm.
A shadow moved in the man's jaw. The stillness of his face grew harder, more defined, like the line of a river's edge—unyielding.
"You come here with gossip and water-rot," Olórí Adeyẹmí said flatly, his tone dismissive. "Take it back to the shrine. Let them burn herbs over it if they must. I have no time for the river's games."
But the voice inside Ola's skull roared. A woman's face surfaced in his mind—round cheeks, wet lashes, eyes frozen wide in horror. Hands pressing her down into black water, moonlight fracturing across her last breath.
Ola's voice came low, an edge to it that had not been there before. "Her name was Aramide."
The words hit like a strike to the gut. Olórí's stillness was sudden, total.
Ola saw it then—the slight tightening of the man's jaw, the flicker of something just beneath the surface of his eyes. It wasn't guilt. No. It was fear. Fear of a name long buried, a name that had risen from the depths of the river.
"She remembers you," Ola said, his voice like a knife. "She knows what you did."
The guards at the door stiffened, their hands moving to the hilts of their weapons.
"You carry dangerous words, boy," Olórí said slowly, his smile twisting like a blade drawn out too long.
"They carry me," Ola replied, his voice colder now, his body rigid with the weight of the Name still thrumming beneath his skin.
Olórí's smile didn't falter. It was slow, deliberate. A thing carved for intimidation. "Do you think speaking her name will pull her back from the reeds?" he asked, his voice low and mocking, like he was dismissing a child's threat. "Do you think it will matter to anyone outside your little shrine?"
Ola's breath caught in his chest, the air around him thick with the tension of unspoken words. The Name inside him surged, hot as a fever, desperate to be unleashed. He could feel it, clawing at his throat, demanding to be spoken, to be acknowledged.
But he held back. Not yet.
He clenched his hands at his sides, the anger boiling just beneath his skin. The hunger of the Name was relentless, gnawing at him like a beast starving for its prey. His nails dug into his palms as he forced the words out, his voice a quiet promise that vibrated through the thick air.
"You'll hear her name again," he said, the words soft but powerful. "Everywhere. Until the day it's the only thing anyone calls you."
For a heartbeat, there was nothing but the sound of his own breath. The silence stretched like a taut rope between them. Olórí Adeyẹmí's smile wavered, just for a moment, and Ola saw it—just a flicker of something real in the older man's eyes. Something like recognition, something like fear.
But it was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared, buried under a thick layer of arrogance.
"You carry dangerous words, boy," Olórí said again, his voice hardening. "Words like that have a way of coming back to bite those who speak them. Remember that."
Ola didn't answer. He turned on his heel, his hand still gripping the cloth tightly, as though it were the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.
The sound of his footsteps echoed through the compound as he walked away, but the weight of the sigil in his hand didn't lighten. If anything, it seemed to grow heavier with each step. The Names pulsed under his skin, demanding his attention, urging him to do more.
But for now, he walked out.
Outside, the village was quiet. Night pressed low over the land, a heavy, suffocating blanket that seemed to choke the life out of everything. The lanterns flickered, casting long, trembling shadows along the path. The river was still, its dark surface reflecting the cold light of the moon.
At the bend in the path, Echo stood waiting, a lantern swinging from her hand. Her eyes glinted in the dim light, unreadable but sharp.
"You went to him," she said, her voice steady but laced with something like curiosity.
"Yes," Ola replied, his throat tight. He could still hear the ringing of Olórí's words, the challenge in the man's voice, the quiet threat of the Adeyẹmí name hanging in the air like a noose.
"Did you get what you wanted?" Echo asked, her tone more measured now, but there was a hint of something like pity in her gaze. Pity for the inevitable, for the path Ola was on.
"No."
His answer was flat, but the weight in his chest spoke of something more. There had been no satisfaction in confronting Olórí. No relief. Just a hollow emptiness that seemed to stretch out forever. The Names inside him were quiet, for now. But Ola knew it wouldn't last.
"Then why do you look like you did?" Echo pressed, her voice gentle but insistent.
Ola glanced down at his hands, still trembling, still holding the cloth. It felt lighter now, but not by much. It was as though the sigil itself had marked him, branded him with a darkness that he couldn't scrub away. The smell of old river water, of guilt and death, lingered in his nostrils.
"Because he heard her name," Ola said, his voice strained. "That's a start."
Echo didn't say anything for a long time. She simply watched him, her face unreadable. The lantern light flickered between them, casting strange, angular shadows on the ground.
"And if that's not enough?" she asked after a beat, her words a soft challenge.
Ola didn't answer. His eyes were distant, focused on something only he could see. The Names were stirring again, restless, restless as the river itself. They were never truly silent, never truly still.
The first sign came two nights later.
It wasn't a sudden thing. No, it never was with the river. It was slow. It was a whisper before it became a roar.
It started with a scream. High-pitched, wild with fear, and then the unmistakable sound of fire crackling in the night.
The village awoke in chaos. Men and women spilled out of their homes, clutching weapons and lanterns, their voices a frantic blur of questions and panic. The heat from the flames cut through the night like a knife. The market square, usually quiet in the hours after dusk, was now alive with motion, a mess of people running in every direction.
Ola stood at the edge of the chaos, watching as the flames swallowed the Adeyẹmí storehouse. The blaze was relentless, chewing through the roof-thatch and wall-plaster with the kind of hunger that made even the seasoned villagers step back. Sacks of grain exploded in the fire, bursting like muffled thunder. The acrid smell of burning wood mixed with the heavy scent of palm oil, thick and bitter in the air.
No one saw who set it. No one knew who had lit the flames that devoured the house of power, of wealth, of secrets.
But there were whispers.
There were always whispers.
When the villagers arrived at the storehouse, the flames had already eaten through the heart of it, leaving only charred remains and smoldering rubble behind. The night air hung thick with smoke, a storm of heat and embers that stung the skin.
By the time the fire was out, the village was quiet again, save for the crackling of the last burning embers. The storehouse, once a symbol of the Adeyẹmí family's power, was now nothing but ash. The air still held the bitter taste of smoke.
No one saw Ola leave his mat that night.
But when he woke, his hands smelled faintly of smoke.
The Names were silent.
For now.
The days that followed were uneasy. The village moved with a kind of nervous energy, the undercurrent of fear still humming in the air. The market was quieter than usual, and the palm-wine stalls were emptier, as if the people were waiting for something—waiting for the inevitable next strike.
But Olórí Adeyẹmí did not respond to the fire. Not in the way anyone had expected. There were no recriminations, no vengeance. Instead, the Adeyẹmí compound stood as it always had—silent, still, untouched. Power, after all, was its own lock.
Still, the Name inside Ola stirred with anticipation, as though it was waiting for the next movement in a game that only it understood.
Echo didn't ask about the fire, but her eyes followed him whenever he passed. She knew.
She always knew.
And Ola knew, too, that this was only the beginning. The river had given him the first clue. The first step.
But the rest of the journey would be far darker. Far more dangerous.
And there was no turning back now.
The Names were patient.
But they would not wait forever.