Chapter 42: “When Silence Speaks”

The skies over Odanjo were the color of wet ash. Neither thunderclouds nor sunshine just the pale hush of something ancient stirring behind the veil of dawn.

Ayọ̀kúnlé stood at the eastern tower of the palace, the high point where monarchs once watched for war banners or omens from the heavens. But he was not looking out for enemies this morning.

He was listening.

The air had grown quieter over the past few days. Too quiet.

Birdsong had vanished.

Temple bells, which usually echoed with prayers at first light, rang hollow as if forgotten by their keepers.

Even the fountains murmured more softly, as though water feared its own voice.

Beside him stood Móyèṣọlá, clad in her ceremonial indigo robes, the symbol of the old faiths woven into her shawl. She did not speak, only watched the horizon as if it might blink.

"This silence," Ayọ̀kúnlé said at last, "it feels… learned. Like a child who has been told not to cry."

Móyèṣọlá nodded slowly. "There are stories of this. Before the stars found their places in the sky, before the land had names, there was the Silence. It was not peaceful. It was a waiting."

He turned to her. "And the Forgotten One?"

"Was the waiting's memory. A presence that remained when even gods had not yet taken shape. We did not kill it. We could not. We only wrapped it in forgetting."

Ayọ̀kúnlé's hands curled around the stone railing. "And now that forgetting is unraveling."

Elsewhere, in the mountain sanctum of Ẹ̀lúmọ̀, a council of dream-weavers gathered. These were not seers in the usual sense they did not read stars or bones. They read the breaks between dreams.

The head of the sanctum, an old man named Òrùnmílà who had not spoken aloud in thirty years, stepped forward and placed both hands on the ground.

The earth beneath him vibrated a low tremor that unsettled dust from rafters and made birds take flight from miles away.

He opened his eyes, milky with age.

"Something that does not belong to time is pressing against time's door," he said softly.

A scribe blinked. "Is it death?"

Òrùnmílà shook his head.

"Worse," he murmured. "It is the memory of everything we chose not to become."

Back in Odanjo, Ayọ̀kúnlé convened the Guild of Memory an order formed in the wake of the curse's breaking. Their task was to collect lost stories, document truths twisted by fear or forgotten by time.

They came armed not with swords, but scrolls.

He addressed them from the golden dais in the memory hall.

"We do not fight what we do not know. We must remember what we buried, not just to guard against it—but to understand it. Tell me the oldest story you can find. Not the polished ones. The ones too jagged to sing."

A young archivist named Ẹ̀sá stepped forward, trembling slightly.

"We found a song, my king. Or part of one. It predates the oldest written verse. It goes:

'When the world was not yet shaped,The breath that was not yet namedSpoke into the void and was not answered.And so it wept.'

"We think it refers to… him."

Ayọ̀kúnlé closed his eyes. "The Forgotten One wasn't always forgotten. He was… abandoned."

Móyèṣọlá's voice was soft behind him. "That may be why he returns."

The first true sign came days later, not in the form of war, but in the form of silence.

The coastal village of Ìrànjé, known for its vibrant night markets and fishermen's drums, fell completely still.

When emissaries arrived, they found food still warm in clay pots.

Fires still burning low.

No bodies. No screams. No blood.

Only silence.

The silence was so thick, one could hear their own heartbeat echoing in their bones.

The emissaries returned shaken and changed. One of them, a woman named Témìtẹ́yọ̀, had forgotten her own name. She no longer responded to voices—only shadows.

Ayọ̀kúnlé stood before his war council. The room that once strategized against invading armies now considered something it could not stab nor bribe nor outmarch.

"We cannot treat this like a conventional threat," he said. "We are not fighting an enemy. We are fighting erasure."

Tùndé slammed a fist on the table. "Then what do we use? Words? Memories?"

"Yes," Móyèṣọlá said. "Because forgetting is his weapon. And remembering is ours."

The council fell into uneasy silence.

Then Adérónké, arms folded, said, "Then we must flood the land with stories."

So they began.

Minstrels were dispatched to every village, every township.

Scrolls were copied and carried into even the farthest hill huts.

Children were gathered nightly to hear tales not just of kings and monsters, but of farmers, of lovers, of those who had names and dreams and griefs.

Old songs were taught anew, especially the dissonant ones verses once banned, now restored.

And as the stories spread, the silence hesitated.

Ayọ̀kúnlé, meanwhile, returned once again to the Cradle of Spirits.

He sat where he had once fought his final battle and placed both palms on the ground.

"I need to see beyond time," he whispered.

The spirits answered not with speech, but sensation.

Wind curled around his limbs, earth warmed beneath him, light shimmered just beyond vision.

And then… he was no longer seated.

He stood in a plain made of echoes.

There were no stars above. Only a ceiling of shifting faces some familiar, others broken.

And in the center of that void stood a figure cloaked in shadows.

It had no eyes, yet it watched him.

It had no mouth, yet he felt it speak.

"You seek to bind what cannot be held."

Ayọ̀kúnlé stepped forward. "I seek to remember what was hidden."

The figure's voice was wind scraping bone. "Then remember this: I am not your enemy. I am your mirror."

With that, the figure stepped forward and Ayọ̀kúnlé saw, to his horror, his own face staring back at him.

But hollow. Empty.

Without scars. Without joy. Without history.

"Peace," the shadow whispered, "costs forgetting. I am that cost."

The plain shattered.

Ayọ̀kúnlé awoke gasping beneath the Spirit Tree.

The stars above burned with new clarity.

He did not cry.

He did not tremble.

He whispered instead:

"We will remember. Even if it hurts."

That night, the city of Odanjo lit fires on every rooftop.

Stories were shouted from balconies, sung in alleys, carved into walls.

Even the beggars shared parables of kindness passed down through hunger.

And in the far reaches of the hills, where the Forgotten One had been stirring, something paused.

The silence flinched.

Not yet defeated but not welcomed.

And that, too, was power.

Ayọ̀kúnlé stood again on the palace tower as the first light of morning cut across the rooftops.

Beside him, the blade of unity hung in its sheath not needed now, not yet.

Móyèṣọlá joined him.

"You saw him."

He nodded.

"He looks like me. But empty."

"And you?"

"I am full. Of pain. Of joy. Of truth."

"Then we still have a chance."

They watched the city awaken not just with labor, but with laughter.

And far in the distance, the drums of remembrance began again, not as warning but as rhythm.

As promise.