The night came like a funeral shroud.
Obade stood still every door shut, every lantern snuffed, every breath held in the cradle of fear.
The river was no longer water.
It moved like smoke, rising in coils.
The spirits had withdrawn.
Because he had come.
The Drumfather stood at the edge of the shrine, his footsteps shaking the earth like thunder.
No one could look directly at him he was not meant for human eyes.
Where his heart should have been, a drum pulsed violently.
And in place of breath, his mouth beat rhythmic silence.
The Ritual Circle
Aleshọ́rú knelt before the shrine, the scroll open, the ash-lines drawn.
Ola stepped into the circle barefoot, his lips already dry, his tongue marked with sigils.
The Final Drum was placed at the center.
Amaka stood behind them with the other villagers, her hands clenched, her prayers silent.
The wind stopped.
Time staggered.
And the Drumfather raised his nailed arms.
The shrine trembled.
"Begin," Aleshọ́rú said.
Ola's Song
Ola took a breath that felt like a thousand years pressing on his lungs.
Then he sang.
But it wasn't a song made of melody.
It was sound pulled from grief.
From guilt.
From memory.
Each word peeled open old wounds.
"I name the girls whose names were buried.
I call the children whose bones became rhythm.
I unbind what my blood helped bind."
The Drumfather stopped.
Tilted his head.
The stitched mouth quivered.
Ola stepped forward, voice rising, cracking.
"Let this drum end with me.
Let my voice be the last you ever wear."
The Clash
The Drumfather roared.
But no sound came.
Instead waves of memory burst outward: screams, chants, cries of women silenced, girls dragged to the river, men who carved rhythms from pain.
Ola staggered, nearly fell.
The final line was close.
He reached deep past shame, past fear and screamed the last verse.
"Silence, I give you my name.
Now bind the beast that beat the bones."
He struck the Final Drum.
Once.
Twice.
The third strike never landed.
The Drumfather lunged.
The Intervention
But someone else was already moving.
Ifeoma.
She burst from the shadows her spirit barely holding its form.
She reached Ola as the Drumfather descended.
She touched his throat.
"Let me bear it," she whispered.
She pulled the final verse from his lips and sang it herself.
Her voice clear, broken, sacred struck the air like fire.
The Drumfather's chest cracked.
The drum within his body shattered.
He screamed, and this time we heard it.
It was the scream of every soul he had ever silenced.
And then…
he turned to ash.
Aftermath
The shrine collapsed.
The drum split in two.
And Ifeoma vanished.
Ola sat in the dust, bleeding from the mouth.
He opened his eyes.
Tried to speak.
No sound came.
Aleshọ́rú knelt beside him, tears falling freely.
"You live," she whispered.
"But the voice belongs to her now."
Ola nodded.
A single tear fell from his eye.
Then he looked to the river.
And from it, a whisper came gentle, soft, familiar.
"Thank you."