The Council of the Unremembered

The road of memory didn't hum like flame or crackle like ash.

It pulsed.

With every step Mirella and Ayinla took, the path beneath their feet rearranged—changing color, texture, even temperature based on their thoughts. When Mirella remembered the morning her mother kissed her goodbye, the road bloomed with warm earth tones and birdsong. When Ayinla thought of the silence between him and his brother, the path darkened, echoing with distant thunder.

The spiral in her chest had stopped glowing.

But it hadn't gone dormant.

It was listening.

They walked for what felt like hours—though time bent strangely here. The sky never changed, yet the light shifted every few minutes. Sometimes it was lavender. Other times, rust. Occasionally, it vanished entirely, and they walked in grayscale, like sketches passing through a forgotten artist's mind.

Eventually, they reached a gate.

It was carved from bone—but not in a threatening way.

The bones were symbols, arranged like music notes on wind.

Guarding it were three figures.

Each was veiled.

Each bore no face—only masks stitched from languages Mirella couldn't understand. One mask was painted with Nsibidi glyphs that rearranged with every breath. Another glimmered with old Chinese oracle bone script. The last bore simple, harsh lines that reminded her of pre-Roman Italic runes.

They raised their hands.

And spoke in unison.

Do you come to remember—or to be remembered?

Mirella's voice was steady.

To remember.

Ayinla added, And to find what should not have been erased.

The gates opened.

Inside, silence.

And then—

the chorus of names.

They walked into a circular hall with no ceiling and no walls. The floor was made of etched stories—thousands of names, running like rivers across ivory stone.

Above them, floating in the air, were memories.

Some fluttered like leaves.

Others crackled like broken mirrors.

These were not simply forgotten people.

They were exiled truths.

We are the Council of the Unremembered, the masked figures said again, now standing behind them.

Each of us was cast from the Archive. Our names unrecorded, our memories unstored. We exist only because the Dream-Keeper crossed the tower.

Mirella looked up. Her hand moved instinctively to her chest.

You remember me.

We do. Because you became the flame that bore no witness. Until now.

Ayinla stepped forward.

We need to know who sealed you.

The center of the hall brightened.

And there stood a name.

Just one.

Glowing across the floor in a spiral:

Ẹbùn-dára Iku-Akọkọ

A name, Mirella whispered.

But not one I know.

It's older than you, one of the masked figures said. A Custodian who vanished before the First War. The one who tried to open all the gates at once.

And failed?

No. He succeeded.

But the cost was memory itself.

The glyphs beneath their feet rearranged.

Images rose from the floor: a young man, dark-skinned, eyes like shattered obsidian, standing in a sea of spirals. His hands were held high, each bearing a flame—and a name. One name he protected. The other, he destroyed.

The cost of truth is always story, the Council said.

And the cost of story is always self.

You must find him, Mirella said. This Ẹbùn-dára. He's the key to the fourth gate.

He does not want to be found, the Council replied. He has rewritten himself into forgetting.

How?

He placed his name inside the first sound ever spoken. You must learn to speak it backward.

Ayinla paled.

That's impossible.

Not for a Dream-Keeper, they replied.

The room dimmed.

And the floor cracked open.

A stair spiraled down, endless and glowing with soft blue light.

Your next journey begins below the Archive, said the Nsibidi-masked figure. Beneath memory. Beneath myth.

Where the Unnamed sleep.

Mirella turned to Ayinla.

You still with me?

He smiled faintly.

Where else would I be?

And together, they descended—into the forgotten world where truth began with silence.