The Twin Queens
In the beginning, there were not three.
There were two.
Two songs.
Two truths.
Two queens.
And one was never meant to be forgotten.
The Mirror Awakens
Rerẹ́ stood before it—an obsidian sheet curved like a river's back, set into the deepest chamber of the Archive's foundation. It had no frame. No ornament. Just smooth, ancient truth.
Her reflection shimmered.
Then split.
Two faces.
Both hers.
But not.
One bore coral and tears.
One bore ash and flame.
And both spoke in unison:
"You found us."
"You called us."
"You remembered."
Ẹ̀nítàn Speaks
From the left—water shimmered, cool and slow.
Her voice was rhythm wrapped in grief:
"They made my melody into silence.
My name into warning.
My crown into weight."
"But silence is never empty."
"It listened."
Ẹ̀jìrẹ́ Speaks
From the right—light cracked like old embers.
Her voice was fire tamed by breath:
"They feared what I carried.
Not sorrow.
But balance."
"My story did not vanish.
It waited."
"And now it walks again—in you."
The Weaving Begins
The two queens extended their hands—not out, but inward.
Into Rerẹ́.
And Rerẹ́ did not step back.
She stepped through.
She became vessel.
Not possessed.
Not erased.
But threaded.
A river of memory surged through her bones. Not painful—clarifying.
Every lie she'd ever been told about the river cracked.
Every hidden truth hummed, vibrant and urgent.
Above, the Capital Shakes
At the Archive's gates, Obade had arrived.
They did not demand entrance.
They opened space.
Drums.
Chants.
A child drawing spirals in dust with their heel.
Elders walking barefoot across marble.
The sound gathered like a tide.
And then—
The gates opened themselves.
Inside the Mirror Room
The mirror fractured—not broken, but multiplied.
And from it stepped Ẹ̀nítàn.
And from it stepped Ẹ̀jìrẹ́.
Not as ghosts.
Not as visions.
As presence.
Queens not of kingdoms—but of memory.
They turned to Rerẹ́ and said:
"We were never enemies."
"We were divided by fear."
"But now, we return—together."
They touched her shoulders.
And in that moment, Rerẹ́ became more than a girl with a scroll.
She became the bridge between flame and river.
Between silence and song.
Elsewhere in the Archive
Historians fell to their knees as scrolls unburned themselves.
Servers glitched with ancestral names once deleted.
One young worker, barely old enough to remember the cleansing years, stared at a file folder blinking with red light.
The title: THE TWINS WHO NEVER FOUGHT.
The Voice of the Queens
Their voice rose, woven from both timbres:
"We were one story.
Split.
Rewritten.
Buried.
And now we rise—
Not to rule.
But to remind."
"The river was not cursed.
It was silenced."
"We are not vengeance.
We are reconciliation."
"And we have chosen a daughter."
Rerẹ́ Ascends
Not in power.
In presence.
She walked from the chamber glowing—not with light, but with memory revealed.
She carried both the water and the flame.
And as she reached the threshold of the Archive's surface level, the doors parted before her.
Final Lines
Obade stood waiting.
Ola, Èkóyé, Iyagbẹ́kọ—all at the front.
When they saw her, they did not cheer.
They bowed.
Not to royalty.
But to returning.
And behind Rerẹ́, the twin queens stepped forward into the morning.
Hand in hand.
Not myth.
Not metaphor.
But truth.