The morning that dawned after the drums echoed into silence was not loud with celebration nor heavy with sorrow. It was a sacred hush the kind that cloaked the land in stillness, not because it lacked life, but because everything was listening.
Odanjo stood on the edge of a threshold, suspended between what had been and what might come next. The war was over. The Shadow King was vanquished. The five relics now slumbered within the Hall of Accord, where their light hummed beneath the stone, watched over by guardians whose names would soon become legend.
But Ayọ̀kúnlé could not sleep.
The horizon no longer bore the weight of night, yet his thoughts wandered toward the corners of the world where silence still held secrets. The kind of secrets that did not march with armies, but whispered in ruins, in lost tomes, in omens half-forgotten.
He stood atop the Watcher's Rise, a stony bluff that overlooked the newly rebuilt valley below. Smoke curled gently from the dwellings—round homes of earth and reed, painted with sigils of hope. Children played in the fields, where crops had been planted in ceremonial spirals, believed to bring good harvests and harmony.
It was peace. The kind that Ayọ̀kúnlé had dreamed of when he wandered the lands as a fugitive, a prince with no throne and a name burdened with fear.
And yet, the weight had changed. Not vanished, but transformed.
Beside him, Adérónké emerged with a wrapped bundle in her arms. Her eyes, once sharp with vengeance, now bore a different fire steady, tempered, protective.
"You're thinking of leaving again," she said, not accusing, but knowing.
"I have to," Ayọ̀kúnlé replied. "Not to run. To understand. The curse is gone, but the stories that created it still exist. If we don't confront the roots, someone else will find a way to grow them again."
She nodded. "Then I go with you."
He smiled, but she cut him off with a raised brow. "And don't you dare try to talk me out of it."
Tùndé appeared from the trail with Móyèṣọlá beside him. They carried packs, maps, scrolls. It seemed no one had waited for him to make the decision.
"You lead," Móyèṣọlá said, handing Ayọ̀kúnlé a folded parchment marked with sigils of the ancient seers. "But the path is wider now. No more lonely kings."
Together, they descended into the heart of Odanjo. The people had gathered in the central square, where the Unity Tree planted from the fused seeds of five old nations stood tall. It had bloomed earlier than expected, branches lined with golden leaves that rang like tiny bells in the wind.
An elder stepped forward, the same woman who once told Ayọ̀kúnlé to hide his face when the curse was strongest.
Now, she knelt before him.
But Ayọ̀kúnlé stopped her. "No more kneeling. Not to me."
He turned to the crowd. "You are the heart of this kingdom. It does not rise because of me it rises because of you. And it will stand because we choose each other, again and again."
He stepped aside. "I go now, to make sure what we built here does not vanish elsewhere. But I do not go alone."
The people pressed hands to their hearts, the new symbol of loyalty in the united lands of Odanjo.
That evening, as twilight painted the rooftops in hues of bronze and crimson, Ayọ̀kúnlé walked the rebuilt corridor of the former palace now renamed the Hall of Reconciliation. It bore no throne. Only an open circle where council would meet, where voices would rise together, not one above the others.
He paused at a mosaic still being laid on the floor. It depicted the Cradle of Spirits, and in its center, a figure not himself, but a faceless being crowned with light.
"The idea of a king," the artist explained, "not the man. A symbol, not a shadow."
Ayọ̀kúnlé's fingers grazed the tiles. It was not perfection. But it was true.
They departed the next morning at first light.
With Tùndé and Adérónké riding ahead, and Móyèṣọlá reciting a quiet litany to keep their path clear of old magic, Ayọ̀kúnlé found himself once again where he had begun in the space between exile and belonging.
But this time, his steps were not haunted.
They journeyed south through the hills of Ìwògbàra, where silent stone faces loomed from cliffs, carved by forgotten hands. The people there remembered the stories twisted by fear, faded by time but they welcomed him not as a cursed prince, but as the one who shattered the darkness.
In every village, songs had begun to change. The old ones still spoke of demons and betrayal, but new verses had emerged: verses of healing, of courage, of a prince who became more than a title.
One night, as they camped beneath the obsidian cliffs of Kárègbè, Adérónké shared a scroll she'd taken from the archives. It told of the Fire Whisperers, an ancient sect believed to have vanished before the rise of the first kings.
"They say they could speak to the flame," she mused. "Not control it. Converse with it."
Ayọ̀kúnlé considered that. "If flame could speak, what would it say?"
"That it burns not to destroy, but to remember," Móyèṣọlá answered, eyes distant.
And so their journey was no longer just to prevent a new war but to collect the wisdom that had been scattered in fear.
In the marshes of Àlàkọwe, they discovered a village where time flowed differently. The people measured days by the rhythm of tide-songs, and Ayọ̀kúnlé was made to listen before he could speak. They taught him how to read clouds like maps and how memories were stored in the bones of river eels.
They left with more questions than answers, but it felt right.
Further west, beyond the broken lands once ruled by the Shadow King, lay territories untouched since the first fall of Odanjo. There, strange stars blinked from pale skies, and whispering trees bore names in dialects none of them recognized.
They met a woman cloaked in night-feathers who claimed to have seen the first relic before it was hidden. She spoke in riddles and laughter, but her eyes were full of truth.
"You are not the last king," she told Ayọ̀kúnlé. "Only the first of the new."
That night, he dreamed not of fire or war, but of seeds falling into dark soil, and the sound of children laughing in languages yet to be born.
Weeks passed.
Then months.
And wherever they went, the curse did not return not in him, not in the hearts of those they met. But they did find shadows old remnants of fear still lingering in isolated places.
To these, Ayọ̀kúnlé did not bring swords.
He brought stories.
He told of a boy born under omen, raised under threat, shaped by exile and how he became a man who chose not revenge, but rebuilding.
He told of friends who became family, of enemies turned allies, of a land that learned how to breathe again after centuries of holding its breath.
And slowly, piece by piece, even the most hardened places began to listen.
One evening, as the moon painted their camp in silver, Tùndé pulled out an old carving knife and began shaping a piece of driftwood. When he was done, he handed Ayọ̀kúnlé a figure: a tree growing from a sword.
"For the journey," he said. "So you remember what came first. And what must always come last."
Ayọ̀kúnlé turned it over in his hands.
"I won't forget," he said.
But even as he said it, he realized something deep and quiet had already shifted.
He no longer feared forgetting.
Because Odanjo no longer lived only in stories or relics or cursed names.
It lived in every step they took.
It lived in the eyes of children who would grow up learning about unity, not war.
It lived in the voices of elders who once whispered in fear, now singing by firelight.
It lived in the land, and it lived in him not as a burden, but as a promise.
And so Chapter 40 closed not with an ending.
But with a trail still stretching forward into lands uncharted, stories unwritten, and destinies unclaimed.
The Cursed Prince had become something else.
A keeper of peace.
A bearer of memory.
And the one who walked ahead, so others would never again have to walk alone.