The air was thick with ash.
It clung to Iyi's skin, settled in his lungs, and coated every breath with bitterness. His boots crunched over scorched earth and broken stone as he stood at the threshold of what once was the Market of Ayepegba—a sacred town straddling the boundary between the mortal and spirit realms. Ayepegba had once been the living heart of a thousand forgotten economies, where merchants didn't trade gold or goods, but memories, forgotten names, and soul-bound promises. Now, it was silent. A wasteland of ruin.
The sky above him hung heavy with smoke, dimming the light of the sun until the world seemed to bleed shadows. Cracked timber, blackened metal, shattered stalls—everything was broken. The grand archway carved with ancestral runes that once welcomed all, mortal and spirit alike, now lay crumbled into the dust.
Iyi's chest ached.
Ayepegba had once been a sanctuary of balance, a domain ruled by ancestral laws older than time itself. Every lie told within the market turned to ash on the speaker's tongue. Every deal struck bound the soul. It was a place where even the spirits walked cautiously, where truth was coin and deception was death.
But now… it was desecrated.
The ruin whispered with the ghosts of the past. Around him, translucent figures flitted between collapsed stalls. Market-spirits, memory-mongers, shadow-dwellers—all now reduced to murmuring phantoms. They no longer spoke in languages of trade or ritual, but in soft laments. Their eyes were hollow, their forms flickering like torn fabric in the wind. The scent of burnt offerings lingered—incense, bloodwine, the smoke of shattered contracts.
He walked forward.
The ground beneath his boots cracked like bone. Every step he took echoed like a drumbeat in a chamber of loss.
He remembered.
He remembered the Three Stones. The ancient trials. The pain of reliving the betrayal of his father. The test of trust, the whisper of the Echo Queen. He remembered facing his Echo-self and reconciling with the shards of his own broken spirit. All of that had led him here—to this grave of divine commerce.
And now, the weight of those memories pressed down on his shoulders like a mantle.
Suddenly, a voice broke the silence.
"Ọmọ Iyi."
His heart stopped.
The name carried power. It was the name only spoken by those who knew his soul's origin. He turned, slowly, toward the voice.
Standing amidst the wreckage was Eni Ọba, the ancient king of the spirit realm.
The king was a figure of broken majesty. His once-vibrant robes were singed and dulled by soot. His crown, once gold, now hung tarnished and crooked upon his head. Yet his eyes—his eyes still blazed with the fire of the sun beneath the sea. Eternal. Unyielding.
Iyi bowed, instinctively. Not just out of respect—but grief.
Eni Ọba gestured toward the smoldering remains of the market. "This place was once a beacon," he said, voice low and resonant like thunder trapped in a bottle. "A haven of order. A sanctuary where spirits and mortals met in balance. No lies could thrive here. No betrayal could live."
Iyi's lips were dry. "I know what it was."
The king's gaze turned sharp. "Then you must understand what broke it. Greed crept in like mist in the night. Promises were sold for power. Spirits once bound by honor allowed their hunger to rot the roots of the market. The Balance was tipped. The market fell—not by fire, but by forgetting."
Iyi's jaw tightened.
He had seen the signs. The corrupted memory-keepers, the shadow traders who no longer bartered truth but fragments twisted by ambition. He had ignored them. Believed they were isolated. He had been wrong.
"I see the cost now," Iyi murmured.
Eni Ọba nodded. "And now it falls to you to carry the burden. To begin the healing."
A wind stirred.
It carried ash and sorrow with it, curling around their feet as they began to walk through the broken market. The shattered stalls were not just wood and metal—they were stories. One held a broken flute, another a cracked hourglass, another a mirror too clouded to reflect. Each item whispered its own tale.
This was not destruction.
It was consequence.
"The Market of Ayepegba reflects the soul of the realm," Eni Ọba said softly. "When trust dies, the market dies. When truth is sold, the foundations crumble. No place of spirit can stand on betrayal."
They stopped before the remains of the central altar—a round platform once used for soul-binding pacts. Now it was scorched, its runes faint beneath layers of soot.
Iyi felt something stir within his cloak.
The sponge.
The sacred relic he had carried from the Trial of the Wells. It pulsed faintly against his side, warm and alive. He placed a hand on it, grounding himself.
He looked up. "Can it be restored?"
Eni Ọba's face was unreadable. "Not by one alone. The market lives only if the spirits that walk it choose truth again. Healing begins within. You may begin the rebuilding, but the soul of Ayepegba must be reborn by many hands."
Silence stretched between them.
Then, from the distance, came the sound of drums.
Faint, irregular. As if someone—something—was remembering.
Iyi closed his eyes. In the darkness behind his lids, visions bloomed.
Faces.
Spirits, villagers, ancestors.
Children who had once played in the shade of memory trees. Elders who bartered their dreams to save their families. Guardians who watched over the borders of the living and the dead. They came and went in flashes of light and shadow, their fates entwined like threads of a shattered loom.
He understood.
This journey… it had never been just about him.
He was a vessel. A bridge.
He was not the savior of the market. He was the spark.
And sparks only mattered if others chose to gather wood and breathe life into flame.
When he opened his eyes, Eni Ọba was watching him—not with authority, but with a mournful kind of hope.
Iyi nodded.
Then, without a word, he knelt amidst the rubble.
His hands, once used for war and defense, now moved slowly—tenderly. He began to gather what remained: charred stones, slivers of burnt wood, cloth scorched at the edge but whole in the center. Each item he touched hummed with the memory of what it had once been.
He placed them in a circle.
Not a structure, not yet. A prayer. A memory ring.
"I remember you," he whispered to each fragment. "You were more than this. You held purpose."
And as he did, something shifted.
A breeze swept across the ruins, gentler now. The smoke thinned. A sliver of gold pierced the haze above—starlight breaking through early, ahead of nightfall.
Behind him, the ghostly figures paused.
Watched.
One, a child with hollow eyes, stepped forward. She held a cracked bell in her tiny hands.
Wordlessly, she placed it beside Iyi's ring.
Another spirit came. A merchant with tattered sleeves. He brought a scale missing one weight. Then an old woman with no feet—she carried a handful of soil.
They came.
One by one.
Offering what little they had left.
Not for trade.
But for remembrance.
For redemption.
Eni Ọba watched in silence, his form flickering slightly as though the realm itself was shifting with Iyi's actions.
As the fragments grew into a pattern—symbols of meaning, offerings of memory—the first true light in days began to emerge. It came not from the sky, but from the earth. A glow, faint and blue, pulsed from beneath the cracked stones.
Hope.
Iyi turned his face toward the stars, now fully visible in the ash-cleared sky. They were ancient witnesses, blinking solemnly above the ruined city.
"I don't know how long it will take," he whispered.
Eni Ọba placed a hand on his shoulder. "It doesn't matter. Healing does not come in haste. It comes in truth."
And in that moment, surrounded by ghosts, dust, and fragments of a shattered world, Iyi understood his next path.
Not war.
Not vengeance.
Restoration.
He would not run to the next battle. He would stay and rebuild. Even if stone by stone. Even if memory by memory.
As the last spirit stepped forward—a young boy clutching a wooden bead once worn by a priest—Iyi smiled gently.
And the bead, like all the others, began to glow.
Ayepegba was not gone.
It was remembering itself.