CHAPTER 5 – The Oracle

It was the third night after the detention when the voice came.

Not loud.

Not holy.

Not in a dream.

Just… there.

Waiting in the glow of a phone screen when the rest of the world had gone to sleep and the only sounds left were geckos chirping from the roof, mosquitoes humming near ears, and the distant wheeze of an old diesel generator coughing in another man's yard.

K.B stared at the message like it had grown teeth.

"You're not the first to think it. But you could be the first to try."

– The Oracle

He read it again. And again. And once more, because he needed to feel every word settle inside his chest before he allowed himself to ask—how did they find me?

He didn't reply.

Not because he was afraid. But because silence was the only thing that made sense in that moment. Like someone tapping you in the dark and telling you your own name before you ever speak it aloud.

Who was The Oracle?

What did they want?

What did they see?

The next morning, the sky was grey. Not the kind that threatens rain—but the kind that reminds you of the heaviness of air. That kind of sky that says today will carry the weight of yesterday's sins.

He didn't go to school.

He didn't feel like memorizing dates of colonial treaties when his own present was already being negotiated without him.

Instead, he walked. From his house in Bomso down past the mosque with the cracked minaret, through the dusty shortcuts behind the old taxi rank, all the way to the footbridge where boys went to sell secondhand trousers and unregistered SIM cards. He didn't stop there. He didn't belong there. Not yet.

He climbed the pedestrian bridge, stood in the middle, and looked out over the roundabout.

Cars moved like ants with broken legs.

Vendors shouted from under umbrellas that barely held against the wind.

A preacher with no crowd screamed about salvation through a megaphone that hissed with every word.

And still, the world turned.

K.B pulled out his phone again. Opened the message.

This time, he replied.

"Who are you?"

The typing dots came instantly. Like the person on the other end had been sitting with the phone in their hand, waiting—expecting—like they had known the exact second he would break silence.

"Someone who failed when I was your age. But I'm not here to warn you. I'm here to give you something."

"What?"

"Perspective. And fire."

"Fire?"

"You're going to need it. They don't just kill ideas here. They shame them first. Mock them. Twist them until the people who once believed start to wonder if they ever did."

"How do I fight that?"

There was a pause this time. Long enough for him to hear the hum of the road below, the rise and fall of a woman cursing out her child near the waakye seller, the distant chant of schoolchildren in brown and yellow uniforms singing the national anthem with flat, tired voices.

Then the reply came.

"By remembering that the truth does not need approval to remain true."

He walked home in silence.

Didn't pass through the front. Used the back way. Slid into the house quietly, like a thief coming to steal his own breath back.

His mother was on the floor in the hall, peeling kontomire. Her fingers moved slow. Her eyes didn't look up.

"You didn't go to school."

"I couldn't," he answered.

"You're not safe."

"I know."

"You've been talking to people."

"I've been listening."

She sighed. Not loudly. Just enough.

"I once had a brother like you," she said. "Always asking questions. Always talking about change. Now I only see him in the face of his son."

She paused.

Then turned.

"I want to protect you. But if I hold you back, and the country eats itself in your silence… will you forgive me?"

K.B didn't speak. He walked to her. Sat beside her. Took the knife. Started peeling.

That night, the second message came.

"You have to build a network. Quietly. Carefully. Begin with ears, not mouths. Gather those who still remember how to feel shame when they see injustice. The ones who don't scroll past pain like it's just another tweet. Find the listeners. The watchers. The wounded."

K.B stared at the screen.

He looked around his small room—books, newspapers, the map he had pinned with a safety pin to the wall, the sketch of a flag he hadn't shown anyone yet.

He took out his old jotter. Opened to a blank page. Wrote one word at the top:

New Lineage

Below it, he began listing names.

Ama.

Yao.

Silas, if he could find him.

Maybe even the girl who sold plantain by the taxi rank.

Maybe more.

A new message.

"You're not trying to unite Africa yet. That comes later. First, you must awaken it."

K.B typed.

"How?"

"Tell a story that is so true, so raw, so buried in the memory of our blood, that even silence begins to speak."

The next morning, K.B went to the campus of the University of Ghana. Not to attend any class. Just to walk. To listen. To feel the heartbeat of the youth who had almost stopped believing in the rhythm of their own voices.

He found a poetry club meeting under a tree.

They were few. Quiet. But their words carried fire.

One girl stood and read a line that stopped him mid-step.

"I've stopped praying for change. I now pray I don't forget how to want it."

After she sat down, he walked up to her.

"Do you write often?" he asked.

She looked up, surprised. "Sometimes."

"Would you write something for me?"

"About what?"

"About a future you're not sure will ever come."

She stared at him.

"What for?"

"I want to build a continent," he said. "But first, I need to build a voice."

That night, The Oracle sent no message.

K.B stared at his phone for a long time anyway.

Then he took out the folder again.

Opened to the page with the old manifesto.

Wrote beside it:

"We were told to dream small. But the ancestors did not survive slavery and colonization for us to shrink."

He closed the book.

Listened to the rain begin outside.

And then…

One new message:

"They know your name now. So now you must decide what it should mean."