CHAPTER XL
The compound gates held steady.
But something in the air shifted.
Not fear.
Conviction.
It started with a knock.
Then another.
Then twenty.
By midday, over forty women stood outside the safehouse — veiled, bare-faced, scarred, defiant.
Former Council wives.
Daughters of silenced journalists.
Nurses who altered files under threat.
Teachers who lost students to "reform centers."
They carried grief.
But they came with rage.
And Elara opened the door.
No speeches.
No banners.
Just eyes locked on hers.
Then one woman stepped forward — skin aged by sun and sorrow, her voice quiet but unwavering.
"We heard the Council named a new daughter."
"So we came to remind them of the old ones."
By nightfall, the war room was alive.
Names scribbled on glass.
Maps layered with thread.
Footage uploaded, burned, mirrored.
Every woman brought a piece of the system — a story, a code, a face no one else remembered.
NUMA called it a miracle.
Elara called it reckoning.
Fatima addressed them once — not as a leader, but as a mother.
"They told us to be small.
To be grateful.
To stay alive and silent."
"But survival without truth is not living."
"And tonight… we live louder than they ever imagined."
They called themselves The Daughters of Ash.
A name born from the fire they rose from.
Phase one: total exposure.
They uploaded the remaining names. Not in sequence. Not softly.
All at once.
A storm of truth no algorithm could bury.
One woman livestreamed herself reading every single name out loud — uninterrupted for seven hours.
Another hijacked a major news broadcast with survivor footage.
Aderonke, watching from the Swiss school, secretly sent access credentials to a global youth coalition.
They published it in twelve languages.
The country shook.
The courts filled.
Politicians fled.
Military checkpoints were abandoned in protest.
And still… the Council clung on.
Weaker. But desperate.
And desperation is dangerous.
They retaliated with blackouts.
Planted false leaks.
Tried to fracture the alliance.
But the Daughters were not a hierarchy.
They were a hydra.
Cut one voice—five more rose.
Elara stood at the center of it all. Not as the chosen. Not as the child of a legend.
But as a sister.
A witness.
A woman who once cried alone in a dorm hallway, wondering if the silence would swallow her.
Now, the silence was hers to command.
Khalid ran defense ops.
NUMA monitored intercepts.
Fatima started penning a book — not a memoir, but a record.
They weren't just burning the Council.
They were rewriting history.
On the tenth night, the compound was attacked.
Gas.
Drones.
Gunfire from masked men.
But the Daughters were ready.
They pushed back with stun traps, flares, and hacked security.
By dawn, five attackers were unmasked.
Two were soldiers.
One was a judge's son.
One… was a woman.
Paid. Coerced. Scared.
Elara didn't punish her.
She sent her away with food and a note:
"We fight for you, too."
The next morning, media outlets couldn't ignore it.
Headlines screamed:
"The Daughters Won't Stop."
"Council in Collapse."
"Who Really Runs Nigeria Now?"
And beneath every article…
Photos of women standing arm-in-arm.
No leaders.
Just a movement.
Fatima found Elara in the quiet afterward.
"You've done it," she said.
Elara shook her head.
"We've started it."
Then she pointed to a wall.
Photos of Amara. Kayra. Halima. NUMA. Her.
And now… Aderonke.
"We were always taught that sisterhood was soft," Elara said.
"That it meant patience. Prayer. Forgiveness."
She looked back at Fatima.
"But we know the truth."
"Sisterhood is a weapon."