The morning after the gathering of elders, the sky over Odanjo was the color of polished copper, threaded with streaks of light that moved like whispers. It was not a storm, nor was it sun it was something between, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
Ayọ̀kúnlé stood at the edge of the city, atop the northern bluff that once bore the bones of war. The last banner of the old resistance had long since been removed, replaced by a stone garden planted with native herbs. The air here smelled of healing.
Below, caravans were beginning their journey outward messengers, seekers, builders. The roads no longer led only to Odanjo, but away from it, stretching like veins into the world's unknown corners.
The map that had been delivered by the House of Ṣákó lay unrolled before him, anchored with stones. The ink shimmered in the light, as if alive. It depicted not just terrain, but memory rivers that once ran with fire, cities that had vanished into mist, mountains whose peaks were said to touch the stars.
There were symbols Ayọ̀kúnlé could not read, but somehow understood.
Circles of balance.
Spirals of time.
Crossed paths marked with a blood-colored stamp.
The world was speaking again. Not in prophecy, but in possibility.
Móyèṣọlá joined him, silent at first. She always let the wind speak before she did.
"You're thinking of going, aren't you?" she asked, though her tone made it clear she already knew.
Ayọ̀kúnlé didn't answer right away. His gaze lingered on the horizon, then drifted to the lines on the map that led far beyond Odanjo.
"I am," he finally said. "Not to escape but to understand."
"Do you think the curse ended at our border?"
"No," he said softly. "I think it was just the beginning."
Móyèṣọlá nodded. "Then you'll need eyes sharper than kings and hearts braver than swords."
"I have them," Ayọ̀kúnlé replied with a faint smile. "They are already walking with me."
Down in the courtyard, Adérónké was sharpening blades—not for war, but for ceremony. It was a ritual now, a way to remember what those weapons had cost, and to ensure they would never be raised without cause again.
Tùndé was instructing a group of new scouts, laughing with them as he demonstrated how to read the wind by watching birds' wings. He had become more than a warrior he was a keeper of instincts, a bridge between old ways and the new.
Preparations for the first diplomatic expedition were nearly complete. Three routes had been chosen one by land, one by sea, one through the sky-vaulted cliffs of the northern range. Each would carry not just scrolls and emissaries, but storytellers, healers, and singers.
"Ayọ̀kúnlé," Móyèṣọlá said as they descended toward the central plaza, "when you walk into other lands, they will see you first as a king. They'll look for conquest or judgment."
He glanced sideways at her. "Then I'll surprise them."
"How?"
"I'll bring gifts they've never seen before mercy, curiosity, and the ability to listen."
That afternoon, the city gathered in the Song Circle. It had once been a place of proclamations and punishments. Now, it was a stage for truth.
The people assembled not in fear, but in anticipation.
Ayọ̀kúnlé stepped forward, his royal garb replaced by the simple traveling robe of a seeker dark indigo, with silver thread around the collar: the color of the horizon at dusk.
"My people," he began, "we have mended the walls. We have remembered our names. We have planted the first seeds of something new."
He paused, letting the breeze carry his words between them.
"But the world is vast. It stretches beyond the rivers we know. Beyond the borders we once feared. And I must go to meet it not as a conqueror, not as a cursed soul, but as one of you. As a child of Odanjo. As your brother."
A soft murmur of assent rippled through the circle.
"This is not an end," he continued. "This is the widening of the story. And I go so that our children will never have to go alone."
An elder stepped forward, placing a carved amulet into his hand an ancient sigil of protection, etched with the shape of a leaf caught in wind.
"Take this," she said. "So the earth will always remember you."
At dawn the next day, Ayọ̀kúnlé departed.
There was no parade, no blaring horn.
Just the steady sound of hooves, the rustle of packs, and the quiet footsteps of those who had chosen to journey with him.
The gates of Odanjo opened not with a groan, but with a sigh like a book turning a page.
Behind him, the city continued to thrive.
Ahead of him, the world waited.
And somewhere far off, in lands where the moon burned green and the winds sang backwards, new stories stirred stories that had waited for a prince who had once been cursed, but now walked freely.
With every step, Ayọ̀kúnlé did not look back.
The past had shaped him.
But the future ah, the future was his to write.
And so Ayọ̀kúnlé walked, not with the weight of a crown, but with the rhythm of purpose in his stride.
The path ahead was not paved with certainty, nor lit by the prophecies that once haunted his dreams. It was rough, winding, and unfamiliar—yet it welcomed him. The land no longer recoiled from his footsteps as it once did when the curse followed him like a shadow. Now, the soil seemed to breathe beneath his heels, eager to be walked upon, to be known, to be listened to.
Birds he had never seen before circled above, their songs unlike those of Odanjo. Their calls were wild, unmeasured raw invitations to lands that had forgotten the name of peace, or perhaps had never known it.
Behind him, his small company traveled in silence. Not because they feared what was ahead, but because they understood the sacredness of beginnings. There was Tùndé, ever watchful. There was Móyèṣọlá, her steps steady, her gaze far-reaching. There were two healers, three scribes, and a young child whose only task was to draw everything they saw—so that memory would never fade into myth.
For a time, they moved through the valley of Echoing Winds, where sound bent strangely and voices returned in unexpected forms. It was said that if you spoke a truth here, the valley would keep it safe.
Ayọ̀kúnlé spoke none aloud. Instead, he listened.
He listened to the memory of drums carried on the wind.
To the hush of grass swaying like a lullaby.
To the low hum of the earth itself, murmuring in a language older than kings.
At the campfire that night, they shared no tales of battles or blood. Instead, they spoke of beginnings.
"I used to think the world ended at the river," the youngest scribe said, eyes wide as she traced new constellations into the dirt.
"It doesn't," Ayọ̀kúnlé replied gently. "It begins there."
They slept with stars overhead, no walls to protect them, no towers watching. And yet they felt safe not because there was no danger, but because there was no longer fear binding them.
Days passed like petals unfolding.
They crossed hills dyed with the scent of saffron and fireleaf, and came to a village carved into cliffs. Its people emerged in silence, eyes filled with questions.
They had heard stories of Odanjo.
Of a prince who had once been hunted by his own name.
Of a shadow lifted.
But they had never seen his face.
Ayọ̀kúnlé did not arrive as a savior. He came with stories.
He sat beside the weavers and shared their porridge.
He listened to their wind-songs and told them how his people had once forgotten how to sing.
And he learned.
He learned how grief shaped dance in this village.
How they painted their faces in ash not to mourn, but to remember joy.
How they believed spirits walked sideways, always seeing what mortals could not.
By the time they left, the village had no statue of him, no monument only his footprints, leading onward. And that was enough.
As they moved north, the terrain shifted. The air turned thin and sharp, the skies a deeper shade of blue. Here, the world was quieter. Not from absence, but from reverence.
It was in these highlands, on the fifteenth night, that they met the Watchers.
Tall, robed figures, faces hidden, eyes painted across their garments symbols of a long-forgotten order. They did not speak. They observed.
Ayọ̀kúnlé bowed, uncertain.
The Watchers bowed back.
One of them stepped forward, handed him a scroll sealed in black wax. When he broke it open, the parchment within was blank.
He turned it over, puzzled.
Móyèṣọlá took it gently and whispered, "Not blank. Waiting."
Ayọ̀kúnlé stared at the scroll for a long time that night. He knew what it meant. A call to write a new chapter. To create not only with action, but with intention. To understand that leadership was not in titles, but in the legacy of presence.
And so he began to write not grand declarations, but questions.
How do you govern without dominating?
How do you heal lands you do not fully understand?
How do you honor those who walk beside you, not beneath you?
He did not rush the answers.
They would come, in time.
As the moon turned and the path wove onward, new signs appeared ruins swallowed by vines, cities humming beneath waterfalls, peoples who had hidden for centuries waiting to see if this new world would pass them by or welcome them in.
Ayọ̀kúnlé stood at each threshold with open hands.
He did not come to conquer.
He came to learn the shape of the world's broken pieces, and how they might fit together once more.
He came as a weaver of the future.
And each time he moved forward, he did so not with fear, but with hope braided into every step.