The forest beyond the golden river was unlike any place Iyi had ever walked. There were no birdsongs, no rustling of creatures in the underbrush, no playful wind whispering through the trees. Just silence. Deep, ancient silence. The kind that made the soul stir with questions too old to answer.
The path beneath his feet was soft with a thick carpet of fallen leaves, their edges curling like brittle secrets. Each step he took was careful, deliberate. And though the world around him was hushed, his every footfall echoed loud within his chest — the sound of a heart that had bled, endured, and still beat forward.
He moved slowly, reverently, as though aware that even his breathing was being measured by unseen eyes.
Behind him lay everything he had known — the market of masks, the golden river of debts, the names whispered and shed like old skin. Each trial had carved something out of him. Each lesson had removed a piece he once thought essential. And yet, here he was, lighter. Not hollow, not broken, but light — like the breeze that did not need roots to matter.
Before him, the forest began to shimmer, as though reality itself thinned the closer he came to its heart.
Then he saw it.
A clearing opened, sudden and absolute. At its center stood an old stone altar — rough, unpolished, and covered in moss that shimmered faintly under the pale light filtering through the canopy. There were no carvings, no names, no offerings. Nothing to indicate worship. And yet, Iyi felt it — the presence.
This was the place the spirits had spoken of.
The altar of He Who Carries Nothing.
He stepped into the clearing, the silence deepening with each stride. His breath caught, not from fear, but from the sacredness that soaked the air like mist.
He thought of all he had left behind. The sponge buried by the riverbank. The whispered debts marked into his skin. The names he'd once clung to, now nothing more than echoes behind him.
This altar wasn't a monument — it was a mirror. A test. A final gate.
Iyi approached and placed his hand upon the cold stone.
And the world broke.
Everything around him disintegrated in an instant. The trees fell away, the sky bled into darkness, and the ground dissolved beneath his feet. There was no up, no down, no edge, no form. Just void — black and vast, a sea of absence.
He was nowhere.
He was nothing.
Floating.
Drifting.
Alone.
At first, he panicked. He reached for the ground that wasn't there. He called out — to the river, to the spirits, to his own name — but his voice was swallowed by silence.
No reply came.
Then came the fear. Not of monsters or pain, but of losing himself — of vanishing into this emptiness, eroded by silence until nothing of him remained.
Who was he without his past?
Without the guilt?
Without the pain?
Without the boy who watched his mother disappear into smoke, or the young man who'd traded names just to survive?
Was there even a self left?
And just as that despair began to rise like cold water, he heard it.
Thump.
A faint rhythm.
Thump. Thump.
Not loud. Not urgent. But steady — like a distant drum carried on memory.
It pulsed beneath his skin, inside his chest, like a heart that had never stopped even when he thought it had.
He closed his eyes.
Thump.
The rhythm grew louder, stronger. Each beat called something forward from the depth of his being. A feeling not rooted in names, not forged by trauma, but something older.
Stillness.
Peace.
The self before the world wrote its expectations on him.
He allowed the emptiness to wash over him again — this time not as an enemy, but as a tide. And he did not resist. He floated in it. He surrendered to it.
His fears?
He let them go.
His memories?
He thanked them — and released them.
His hopes?
Even those, he placed aside, like garments no longer needed in this place of pure being.
Here, he wasn't Iyi.
He wasn't a son.
He wasn't a debtor.
He wasn't even a name.
He was space. Space for something sacred to grow.
In this strange womb of void, he realized the truth:
He had always been seeking something to carry.
To hold.
To prove he was someone.
But it was never about the burden.
It was always about the room.
The space he made within himself — to be soft where the world had hardened him, to love where hate had been easier, to forgive where vengeance whispered.
That was his true strength.
Not what he carried…
But what he let go of.
Suddenly, light poured into the void.
Not blinding, but warm. Golden. Gentle.
The forest returned — not as it had been before, but reborn. Dew clung to the leaves like blessings. The trees stood taller, prouder. The air shimmered with morning.
Iyi stood once more at the altar, but now he was changed.
He touched his chest. The drumbeat still pulsed — slow, steady, calm. Like the echo of truth.
And then he saw him.
Agba Oye.
The ancient spirit stood a few paces away, clothed in flowing ash-grey robes, eyes that carried the dust of forgotten ages. His face was unreadable, yet something behind the silence in his gaze shimmered with quiet pride.
"You have carried nothing," Agba Oye said, voice like rustling leaves, "and gained everything."
Iyi swallowed, his throat suddenly thick. "I thought I had to be someone," he said. "That I had to carry stories, names… proof of pain."
Agba Oye smiled faintly. "That is the lie whispered by the world. That the more you carry, the more you matter. But power… true power… does not come from possession. It comes from space — from being able to receive without clinging. To hold without owning."
He stepped closer.
"You came here with questions," Agba Oye continued. "Now, you may leave with silence. That is the gift."
Iyi bowed deeply, hands trembling at his sides. "I don't know what comes next."
"You're not meant to," the spirit said gently. "Not yet. But you walk now as one who is free — not because you have no chains, but because you no longer need them."
The wind stirred the leaves, and the altar behind Iyi began to fade.
It had served its purpose.
As he turned back toward the forest path, he felt the difference in his bones.
Each step no longer echoed with fear, or guilt, or the pressure to be more than he was.
He walked lightly.
Like a man newly born.
There would be more trials ahead — that much he knew. Life was never finished with its questions. The world would demand things again: names, allegiances, choices, sacrifices.
But he would not meet them as the boy who grasped for answers.
He would meet them as the one who carried nothing.
And from that space… he would create.
Far behind him, where the altar once stood, the clearing shimmered — then disappeared completely, as though it had only ever existed for him, and now returned to dream.
But within his chest, the rhythm continued — a silent, eternal drum that would guide him home.
He Who Carries Nothing is truly free.