The air in Obade was no longer air. It pulsed, resonated, with something older than breath, heavier than memory. It moved as though carrying echoes not yet spoken, sorrows not yet remembered. Since Echo had emerged from the salt vessel—transfigured by the dreaming's heart and lit by the constellations of the First Memory—the village had become more than a place. It had become a threshold.
People whispered her name now in reverence, as if speaking the name of a newborn god: Echo, the Dream-Binder. And yet, she did not walk like a goddess. Her bare feet kissed the soil with a reverent gentleness, as if apologizing for returning changed. Her eyes—those eyes, brimming with time and river-deep sorrow—held no arrogance. Only ache. Only purpose.
Ola had not let her stray far from his sight. Though she was more than the woman he'd known, she was still her. In the quiet between their words, in the way her fingers brushed the edge of his wrist or paused to linger on the weft of a child's braid, he saw it—the flicker of the girl who once hesitated at the edge of the sacred spring. He had loved that girl. He loved this woman too, even if she now bore the dreaming's voice and walked with echoes older than gods.
But the peace was borrowed, and already the dreaming had begun to fray.
Each night since her return, Echo stood at the river's edge with Èkóyé at her side. Her hands moved with solemn grace, weaving threadlight into the sky like a living tapestry. But beneath the rituals, beneath her focused breath, a tension was growing. The river, once placid in its new illumination, now stirred with agitation. Animals that had once gathered peacefully at the banks now circled at a cautious distance. Dreamers began to speak of a singular vision: the veil was thinning.
Too fast.
"Iyagbẹ́kọ́, you have to tell me what this means," Ola said, pacing the perimeter of her hut. His voice trembled with urgency.
The elder matriarch sat at the center of her space, surrounded by broken calabashes and salt sigils that crackled at the edges. Her loom of ash-thread lay abandoned in the corner, its strands tangled and unraveled, as if unable to contain any more truth. She was unraveling too, her body diminishing even as her spirit seemed to burn more fiercely.
"I warned you," she murmured, voice brittle as scorched papyrus. "The First Memory is not a story. It's a wound. One that bleeds when touched."
Ola clenched his fists. "Then what do we do? If Echo's presence is accelerating this collapse, shouldn't we help her contain it? Control it?"
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ opened her eyes slowly. They were dull now, a milky haze settling over the once razor-sharp gaze. "She cannot control it. The First Memory isn't done speaking."
"Then who can?"
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ did not look at him. Instead, she pointed to the center of the room.
There, standing silently amidst the salt lines and broken prayer bowls, was Èkóyé.
She had come unnoticed, as she often did. The air around her shimmered faintly. Her eyes shimmered gold, her skin backlit as if a sun pulsed beneath it. She was humming softly, a sound without melody, but the hum moved the salt patterns on the floor. Spirals formed and unformed. Sigils shifted.
Iyagbẹ́kọ́'s voice dropped to a whisper. "She is remembering before remembering. She is not just a child, Ola. She is the echo of what came before any of us knew how to forget."
Ola stepped forward, his mouth dry. "You're saying she's—?"
"The other half," Iyagbẹ́kọ́ said. "Of what Echo has become."
That night, beneath a sky bleeding twilight into shadow, Echo stood with Èkóyé at the bend in the river. The child had not spoken since the humming began. But her presence grounded the air, anchored the edges of fraying reality.
"I see them," Echo whispered. "The ancestors who never crossed. The ones trapped between stories. They are gathering."
Èkóyé looked up and pointed to the water. The surface shimmered, revealed a shape beneath: a massive gate forged of bone, threadlight, and rusted truths. It pulsed once, then again. And then it began to open.
From beyond the veil, the Forgotten emerged.
They were not spirits, nor dreams. They were the remains of truth—memories that had been exiled, truths too sharp or too painful to be passed on. They bore colonial chains as crowns. Scarred tongues. Shattered totems. Some had no eyes, only empty sockets filled with ancestral ink.
All of them wept salt tears.
Ola stood behind Echo, mouth agape. "What are they doing here?"
"They heard the First Memory," Echo said, voice trembling. "And now they want to be remembered. All of them."
"But we can't hold them," he protested. "Obade is just a village."
Echo turned to him, her face illuminated by the gate's light. "Then we must make it more."
What followed was neither ritual nor riot, but something deeper. Something sacred.
For three days and nights, Obade transformed into a sanctuary. Salt lines were redrawn. Water from the sacred springs was carried and blessed. The villagers moved as one body, guided by memory and yearning. The dreamwalkers formed chanting lines, standing as guardians between the world of breath and the realm of dream. Children placed offerings of storystones, old dolls, broken amulets along the riverbanks.
Echo and Èkóyé stood at the center of it all, weaving a new form of threadlight. Not simply to tether the dreaming. But to expand it.
And at the edge of the river, Iyagbẹ́kọ́ watched. Her body weakened daily. Her limbs trembled. Her voice rasped. But her eyes never left the threadlight. They burned.
On the third night, she called for Ola.
He knelt beside her.
"My time is ending," she said, smiling faintly.
"No," Ola said, voice thick. "We still need you. You're the only one who understands what this is."
She shook her head. "I've played my part. But the dreaming needs a new keeper."
He looked toward Echo. "You mean her?"
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ closed her eyes. "No. It was never meant to be her alone."
Her hand lifted with effort, pointing toward the bend.
"Èkóyé," she said. "The child born of silence. She alone is untouched by forgetting. She can walk into the deepest dream and not be undone."
A tremor passed through Ola. "And if she can't?"
Iyagbẹ́kọ́ tightened her grip on his hand. "Then the dreaming collapses. The Forgotten vanish. And everything we've remembered turns to salt."
That night, as the stars spiraled and time bent inward, Èkóyé walked to the threshold.
The gate had fully opened. From it came a low moan—not of pain, but of truths too heavy to hold. Echo stood behind her, holding the new threadlight. Its strands glowed golden-blue, filled with both her voice and the hum of the child beside her.
"Are you ready?" Echo asked.
The girl nodded.
She stepped forward.
Her feet touched the veil, and it shimmered. The gate pulsed in answer. The Forgotten turned their hollow eyes to her.
And then, for the first time in recorded time, the veil did not resist.
It welcomed.
Inside the gate, Èkóyé vanished.
The dreaming held its breath.
Obade trembled. The river rose without wind. Trees bent without pressure. Above, the stars rearranged themselves, forming constellations never before seen—maps for stories not yet told.
Echo stood unmoving, her hands gripping the threadlight as it unraveled in rhythmic pulses.
"She's doing it," she whispered. "She's binding the deepest memory."
Ola stepped beside her. "And after? What happens next?"
Echo turned, tears streaking her cheeks, glowing like molten starlight.
"Then the world must decide what to remember."
Behind them, Iyagbẹ́kọ́ released her last breath. Her body shimmered to ash, her salt-ash carried gently by the wind to the river.
The villagers knelt.
The Forgotten wept.
And at the heart of the dream, Èkóyé touched the First Silence—
—and made it sing again.