The salt‑road wound northward in a slow, shimmering curve, its dust clinging to sweat‑slicked skin and turning every breath into a dry ache.
By midday, heat pressed down like a heavy hand. The air rippled over the baked earth, and the sound of the river became a constant whisper off to their right, always near enough to hear, never close enough to touch.
Ola kept his eyes on it.
The Names inside him pulsed in rhythm with the river's current. Not loud — not yet — but steady, a heartbeat that was not his own. He tried to shut them out, to focus on the path, on the rhythm of his feet, on the way the light danced in the heat‑waves.
But each time he glanced at the silver ribbon of water, he had the uneasy sense that it was glancing back.
They reached the old ferry crossing just before the sun began to slide west. The post there was manned by one ferryman — a lean man with skin weathered to leather and eyes like stones sunk deep in a riverbed.
He said nothing as they approached, only pushed his pole into the shallows to draw the raft toward them.
"North passage?" he asked finally.
"Yes," Iyagbẹ́kọ said. "To the bend at Ọ̀rùn's Eye."
The man's gaze flicked briefly to Ola, then to the water. "The river's been restless. Best cross before moonrise."
The raft swayed under their weight. Ola took a seat near the edge. The smell of the water was stronger here — silt and fish‑oil, and something sharper beneath, like iron left too long in the sun.
Echo stayed close beside him. Iyagbẹ́kọ stood near the prow, staff planted firm, watching the far bank.
The ferryman pushed them off with slow, deliberate strokes. The current caught the raft and carried it sideways before straightening again. Ola kept his eyes on the water.
Shapes moved beneath the surface — long shadows that darted in and out of sight. Not fish. Too smooth. Too fast.
They know you're here, the Names whispered. They've been waiting since you left.
Ola's knuckles whitened against the edge of the raft.
Halfway across, the current deepened into a low hum. Echo's head turned sharply toward the sound. "Do you hear that?"
The ferryman's voice was flat. "Don't look."
But Ola did.
A wide circle was forming on the surface ahead — the water inside perfectly still, the edges trembling.
He knew that shape. The mouth.
Except this one was wrong.
The still water bulged upward, a slow, glassy dome, until it broke with a sound like a single deep breath. Something rose from it — pale, jointless fingers, each too long to belong to any living thing, curling gently toward the raft.
Echo's hand went to his arm. "Ola."
The ferryman drove his pole hard into the riverbed, pushing them away from the circle. The fingers flexed, then slid soundlessly back under. The surface smoothed, as if nothing had been there.
Only the wake behind them carried the memory.
On the far bank, the ferryman finally spoke. "That was the Watcher."
Ola frowned. "The what?"
"Every river has one," the man said. "Ours sleeps most years. But sometimes it wakes. Watches. Follows."
"Why?" Echo asked.
"To see who belongs to the water," he said simply. Then he fixed his gaze on Ola. "And who the water will take."
The settlement at Ọ̀rùn's Eye was little more than a scatter of reed‑roof huts and a single longhouse where traders gathered. The river bent wide here, forming a shallow crescent lined with smooth, sun‑bleached stones.
Children played in the shallows, their laughter high and bright. Women knelt at the bank, pounding clothes against the rocks, calling warnings when the younger ones strayed too far.
It looked almost like peace.
But Ola could feel the Watcher in the bend — the way the water seemed to lean toward shore, the way it slowed when he came near.
They found shelter in a hut belonging to an old friend of Iyagbẹ́kọ's — a woman named Dùrójaiyé, who wore her hair in long silver braids and whose eyes missed nothing. She served them plantain cooked in palm‑oil and smoked tilapia, setting the plates before them without ceremony.
"You've brought trouble," she said to Iyagbẹ́kọ.
"It follows us, not the other way," Iyagbẹ́kọ replied.
The woman's gaze lingered on Ola. "Sometimes there's no difference."
That night, the river's whisper deepened.
Ola woke to find the hut heavy with heat, the air unmoving. Outside, the water gleamed silver under a thin moon.
He stepped to the doorway.
Across the bend, something broke the surface — a pale oval, smooth as stone, rising slowly, too slow to be a fish. It hovered, dripping, then tilted.
A face.
Not human. But almost.
The eyes were black hollows, the mouth a long, unbroken curve. The current did not move it.
It was watching him.
The Names inside him surged, a dozen voices hissing at once. It knows your name. Ask it whose it carries.
Ola's throat felt tight. He stepped out onto the bank. The stones were cold under his bare feet.
The face did not move.
"What do you want?" he asked.
The mouth stretched wider. The water around it rippled.
Then it spoke.
Not aloud — in him. The words slid through his ribs, damp and cold.
I want the part of you that is already mine.
The bank shifted under his feet. Water licked his toes. He took an instinctive step back.
"Then you'll be waiting a long time," he said.
The face tilted. The mouth closed. Slowly, it sank back under.
The water smoothed.
But the Names were not soothed.
By dawn, Echo had already guessed something had happened. "You didn't sleep."
He shook his head. "The Watcher came."
Iyagbẹ́kọ's expression darkened. "Then it has chosen you. You cannot cross its river again without paying."
"What payment?" he asked.
She didn't answer.
That day, the settlement felt different. The children no longer strayed into the bend. The women worked closer to shore. And the Watcher's presence hung over the water like a shadow without a source.
Ola kept to the hut. The Names paced inside him like caged animals.
By nightfall, he realized something that made his stomach turn —
They weren't pacing anymore.
They were listening.
To the river.
To the Watcher.