The journey began in silence.
No fanfare. No crowds.
Only Amoke, who walked beside Ayanwale, and the Royalty Drum, which now bore seven glowing marks—each pulsing like a heartbeat.
The river's path wound through the whispering forest, deeper than any trail mapped by man. Birds refused to sing. Leaves bowed in reverence. Even the wind slowed its voice, as though the forest itself held its breath.
"How far is it?" Ayanwale asked quietly.
"You don't measure this journey in steps," Amoke replied. "You measure it in memory."
They reached it at midnight.
The River of Echoes.
Its waters shimmered not with moonlight, but with reflected moments—like a mirror that showed time instead of sky.
Every ripple shimmered with voices.
Laughs of ancestors.
Cries of lost children.
The soft beat of drums long since silenced.
Ayanwale stepped toward the edge.
The river called to him—not his name, but his rhythm.
"Do you hear it?" Amoke whispered.
"Yes. It's… singing to me."
"Then it's ready."
Ayanwale sat on the sand.
Placed the Royalty Drum before him.
And waited.
The water slowly receded from the shoreline, revealing a pattern burned into the ground: eight concentric circles.
He placed the drum at the center.
He had played seven rhythms.
But the eighth?
No one knew what it was.
No one could teach it.
Because it was not a rhythm passed down.
It was one given—by the river itself.
Suddenly, the current stopped moving.
A terrible silence fell.
Then the water rose—not as waves, but as figures.
Spirits.
Old ones.
Drummers with no mouths.
Children with drums in place of hearts.
One by one, they surrounded Ayanwale, humming low notes that made the earth shake. Each step they took brought a flash of someone else's life into his mind—his grandfather farming, his mother bleeding at the river, his father striking the drum with tears in his eyes.
"To play the Eighth Rhythm," they said in one voice, "you must surrender the rhythm you are."
"You mean die?"
"No. Worse. Forget."
Ayanwale looked to Amoke.
She was already fading.
Her image—dissolving like fog.
"If you play it," she whispered, "you may not come back to me."
"But if I don't," he said, "none of this was worth it."
He closed his eyes.
And let go.
He forgot.
His name.
His parents.
The pain.
The victory.
Even the drum.
All that remained was sound.
A slow, beating heart.
A thunderous echo of the womb.
A mother's voice.
The world being born.
He reached forward—not with hands, but with soul—and struck the river.
No skin.
No wood.
Just memory.
BOOM.
The Eighth Rhythm.
It rang not in the air—but in the past.
Across every bloodline.
Every village.
Every tree and spirit.
Even Baba Oro, in his shrine of bones, dropped his cursed drum and fell to his knees.
"He did it," the old man gasped. "He… became it."
And in that moment—Ayanwale returned.
Not as a boy.
Not even as a drummer.
But as a bridge.
The Royalty Drum cracked cleanly in half.
And from its broken shell, a light rose.
A new drum, carved from water and flame, floated before him.
Its mark?
A single symbol:
Amoke wept when he stepped from the river.
"You remember me?"
"No," Ayanwale said gently. "But my spirit does."
He took her hand.
"And that's enough."
Far across the world, drums began to play without players.
Rain fell upward.
And the spirits stirred.
Because the Eighth Rhythm had returned.
And with it—a new prophecy.
"When the Ninth Rhythm is born… the world will change."