They followed the old path north.
It wasn't marked on any map but Ìyá Mú's whisper, left behind in Ola's mind, guided them like a distant rhythm.
Through broken hills.
Through ghost villages.
Until they reached the land the locals called Abe-Oke "the mouth of the hill."
No one lived there anymore.
But something still breathed beneath the stones.
The house sat alone on a rise, ancient and caving in at the sides, yet still proud. Its front was covered in moss, but a faint, familiar symbol had been carved into the door:
A drum. Split down the middle. With an eye at the center.
Kareem paused. "That's it."
Ola nodded. "She says it's inside."
They pushed the door open.
Inside, dust danced like spirits in the fading light. The smell of dried herbs and old skin clung to the air. Animal skulls lined the walls. Dried feathers. Salt. Rusted blades.
Amaka turned toward the back wall.
There, covered in cloth and locked in a box of woven chain and bone, was a drum.
It looked simple no bigger than a child's chest. But the moment they saw it, the room groaned.
"Do you feel that?" Amaka whispered.
"The air," Kareem muttered. "It's heavier."
Ola walked toward the drum. "It's awake."
He touched it. Just once.
His body jerked.
Eyes wide.
Mouth open but no scream came out.
The drum had taken his voice.
Amaka lunged forward and yanked him back. The boy collapsed, coughing. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
"She's in there," he said, gasping. "A part of her. Her heart. It was bound inside the drum when they betrayed her."
Then came a sound that turned their blood cold.
A voice. From the dark hallway behind them.
"And if you destroy it... you destroy the only thing keeping her rage from burning this entire land."
They turned
An old man stepped out of the shadow.
Thin. Barefoot. His eyes milky white. But in his hands was a long ceremonial staff carved with snakes and thorns.
"I am the last," he said.
Kareem stepped forward. "The last of what?"
The old man smiled empty of warmth.
"The last Drummaker. The last keeper of the silence. And I will not let you awaken the full storm."
Suddenly, the walls pulsed.
The drum throbbed like a heart.
The windows cracked.
The air turned to static.
And then
The floor gave way.
They fell into darkness.
Spiraling down into the ancient chamber beneath the house.
A circle of stone.
A pit in the center.
And in that pit bones. Hundreds. Thousands.
Some still fresh.
Some still moving.
"This is where they fed her," Amaka whispered. "Sacrifices. Voice by voice."
The Drummaker appeared again, staff in hand, eyes blazing.
"You think freeing her will bring peace?" he spat. "You'll only unleash fire."
Ola stepped forward stronger now.
"No. We're not freeing her. We're giving her back what you stole."
He raised the jawbone recovered from the ruins. Held it toward the drum.
The symbols carved in its side ignited.
The Drummaker screamed
"No! That drum is the lock and the key! If you complete it"
But it was too late.
The jawbone sank into the drum.
The seal shattered.
And for the first time in centuries
Ìyá Mú was whole.
From the pit, a column of water exploded upward turning to smoke, then to flesh, then to shadow.
And there she stood:
Tall. Crowned in riverlight. Clad in grief and fury.
Ìyá Mú.
Returned.
She looked at the Drummaker, now on his knees, shaking.
"You fed my silence," she said.
"Now feed my song."
And with a wave of her hand he vanished.
Not killed.
Erased.
His history consumed by the river he once silenced.
Kareem turned to her. "What now?"
Ìyá Mú looked at all three of them—Kareem, Amaka, Ola.
Then spoke, not in rage… but in invitation.
"Now you remember.
Now you know.
And now
You must carry me forward."