The Sky That Should Not Burn
Mirella did not sleep that night.
Or rather, she entered something between sleep and vision—a realm where time was folded like wet cloth and faces she had never seen called her by name.
She stood beneath a red sky.
On the horizon: eight suns, burning in rhythmic pulses.
Behind her: a forest of black glass trees, each branch hung with ancient masks—Yoruba, Nok, Egyptian, Han dynasty, and others she couldn't name.
They whispered her name.
Not "Mirella."
Something older.
"Edo-Ana."
She turned and saw Ayinla—no, not Ayinla, but a version of him clothed in white ash and golden light, his eyes filled with galaxies.
He spoke in a language she couldn't understand, but somehow, her bones ached with recognition.
Then she heard the drums.
Low. Distant. Alive.
She woke gasping, the sheets soaked through. Her right hand burned.
When she turned on the light, a symbol had appeared on her palm—faint, red, as if branded into the skin.
The broken sun ring.
By dawn, Efua had arrived.
She wore indigo robes, her hair bound tightly beneath a scarf dyed in Adinkra symbols. Her face was round and still, eyes as sharp as obsidian.
She walked through the camp without speaking, nodding once to Ayinla, then to Mirella.
"I brought something," she said, producing a smooth black stone from her satchel. It shimmered with internal light.
"Obsidian from Lake Bosumtwi," she explained. "Where meteors fall and ancestors speak."
She walked into the chamber and stood in silence.
"The Veil," she finally said, tracing a hand along the air, "has thinned."
Ayinla spoke: "What does that mean—exactly?"
"It means what was once separated is beginning to touch again. Our world, their world. Memory. Future. Bloodlines forgotten."
Efua turned to Mirella.
"You've been chosen by memory," she said. "You both have. That symbol on your hand is not a curse. It is a key."
Mirella met her gaze. "A key to what?"
Efua smiled, just slightly.
"To the truth buried in all your blood."
That afternoon, an encrypted message arrived.
It was from Matteo Ricci II, the Vatican-funded scientist and ancient linguistics scholar who'd helped authenticate the site months earlier.
The message was brief.
"Leave the dig. Now.
The stone is not a relic. It's a seal.
And something has begun to remember your names."
A second message came 30 minutes later, then deleted itself after opening.
"The Custodians are watching.
Not all of them are human anymore."
As night fell again, Ayinla, Mirella, and Efua followed a strange magnetic trail detected under the dig site. It led to a fault line that pulsed with residual heat—though no lava or geothermal activity had ever been reported in the region.
They broke through a false wall of layered stone.
And beyond it…
A spiral staircase descending into total darkness, lined with symbols glowing faintly along the walls. Some looked African. Some Chinese. Some alien.
Efua lit her obsidian stone. Its light pulsed in rhythm with something deeper.
Below, the air whispered not in sound—but in memory.
And far, far below, a shape waited.
Something neither man nor myth.
Something old.