The first rally wasn't planned.
It happened after a mother posted a photo of her missing daughter gone for three years, buried in silence.
She captioned it:
"They told me she ran. I know now she was erased."
By noon, it had over 50,000 shares.
By nightfall, there were candles on courthouse steps.
Posters stapled to street poles.
Faces long forgotten suddenly lit up city walls.
#WeRemember
A movement had been born.
Not Elara's.
Theirs.
But she was the match.
Khalid opened the door to a room full of strangers.
Not politicians.
Not journalists.
Women.
Dozens of them.
Old, young, limping, pregnant. Some veiled. Some wearing protest pins.
Some carrying only grief.
They didn't ask for permission.
They sat.
And waited for Elara to speak.
She stood at the front of the old hall, no microphone, no podium, just her voice.
"My name is Elara Amina Bello."
Pause.
"Daughter of a man who taught me silence was survival.
Sister of a girl who died because she believed in truth."
She looked each woman in the eye.
"You weren't weak. You weren't forgettable.
They made you invisible on purpose."
Another pause.
"But we are done disappearing."
The room erupted.
NUMA sent new coordinates.
Another leak.
Not financial.
Surveillance footage.
From private estate cameras.
A file labeled: "The Amara Room – Final Hour."
Elara didn't watch it right away.
She couldn't.
She sat with it on a hard drive in her lap, knees pulled to her chest, Halima sleeping in the next room.
Khalid waited in silence.
Finally, she pressed play.
The footage was grainy, colorless.
Amara's room. Midnight.
A shadow entered.
Male. Tall. Confident.
Not her father.
Someone else.
Senator Diri followed moments later.
They argued. Amara stepped back. The man raised his hand. The screen went black.
And when it returned, Amara was on the floor.
Still.
Elara closed the laptop.
Her fingers dug into her palms until they bled.
"I'm going to destroy them," she whispered.
Khalid knelt in front of her.
"Not alone."
The next rally had microphones.
Flags.
Crowds.
And chants.
Women raised signs with names: Kayra. Halima. Amara.
"You can't kill every witness!"
"Truth doesn't bleed alone!"
"Burn the silence!"
Council forces tried to stop it.
Police blocked streets.
Signal jammers cut livestreams.
State media claimed it was "a cult gathering."
But the people didn't stop.
Because it was no longer about politics.
It was survival.
Elara posted a single line on her hidden channel:
"This time, we burn together."
Within hours, it was everywhere.
Spray-painted on walls.
Scrawled on the backs of hands.
Projected onto the Bello Foundation's Lagos headquarters.
Her father finally made his move.
A televised address.
He wore white.
He spoke of unity, grace, healing.
And at the end, he said:
"I raised my children to think.
But thinking does not make them right."
Elara didn't watch the full speech.
She didn't need to.
She knew his calm was a mask.
She'd worn it once.
Back at the base, Halima woke in a panic.
"They're coming," she said. "I heard it. I saw him. In the room."
Khalid calmed her down. Elara held her hand.
And when Halima finally slept again, Elara whispered to herself:
"They don't just kill.
They haunt."
The next morning, Elara called a meeting.
In the same dusty hall.
More women came.
More names were added to the Ashlist.
But now there was a second wall.
A new list.
One not of enemies.
But survivors.
Witnesses.
Flames.
"We won't leak anymore," Elara said.
"We'll testify."