CHAPTER 27 – The Threads That Refuse
365 Words
The moment Ayotunde and Kehinde stepped out of the tapestry, the Weaving Hall felt different.
Quieter.
The Watchers stood motionless, their expressions unreadable. Only Sàké stepped forward, her eyes locked on theirs.
“You named it,” she said softly. “You named Aró.”
Ayotunde nodded. “It wasn’t evil. It was just… forgotten.”
Kehinde added, “It needed to be heard. Just like us.”
But not everyone in the Hall agreed.
A tall, broad-shouldered Watcher with a carved staff stepped forward, eyes blazing like stormlight.
“You’ve made a mistake,” he said. “The silence was sacred. It held chaos back.”
Sàké stiffened. “The silence was a prison.”
“No,” the Watcher barked. “It was protection. Now you’ve given grief a name, and in naming it, you’ve set it free.”
The wind shifted.
Other Watchers murmured, tension humming through the Hall like a wire pulled tight.
Ayotunde stepped forward. “We didn’t free a monster. We freed a part of ourselves. One that should never have been locked away.”
A younger Watcher stepped out from the crowd—her eyes kind, her voice unsure. “But what if the silence was protecting us from something deeper?”
Sàké’s jaw clenched. “Then it’s time we faced it.”
A pulse ran through the roots of the Hall.
A tug.
Ayotunde felt it in her spine.
Something—or someone—had felt Aró’s naming across the bounds of the spirit world and was stirring.
Kehinde turned to Sàké. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
She nodded grimly. “Aró was only the first layer. The silence was deep, but what lived beneath it… that was sealed even before memory.”
Ayotunde’s heart skipped. “You mean there’s something older?”
Sàké looked at them both.
“The Third Thread.”
Gasps rippled across the Hall.
Some Watchers stepped back. Others began chanting, quietly, ancient words meant to still spirits before they rose.
But it was too late.
The tapestry behind Ayotunde cracked with a sound like splitting bone.
From within it came a soft, rhythmic tick, tick, tick…
A heartbeat.
No.
A countdown.
- Writer
