The river was not supposed to sing again.
Not after the Eighth Rhythm had been born. Not after the Ninth had been wrested from the jaws of destruction. Not after Ìkàkú—the rhythm that was not meant to be—was unspooled, soothed, and remembered into stillness.
And yet… the river sang again.
A different song.
Not old. Not new.
Just… waiting.
Ayanwale stood at its edge, the last light of dusk shimmering across its skin. His living drum rested beside him, now inscribed with ten luminous marks. The eleventh space—a blank still breathing—rested in the hollow between truth and imagination.
He could feel it. Something more.
Something not yet written, but already listening.
Amoke stood behind him, silent.
She'd stopped asking what came next.
Now she just waited to be told.
"Do you hear it?" Ayanwale asked.
"No," she replied. "But I feel it in my teeth."
A soft chuckle escaped him. "That's how I felt the first time the Royalty Drum spoke."
They sat in silence. The river rippled with unseen voices—whispers like rain. The kind of language you didn't hear in words, but in memories you hadn't lived.
And then, the river shifted.
It bent.
It split.
In the beginning, there was only one river.
The River of Echoes.
But now, a second branch curved off from it, carving a path through the forest with no permission from soil or time.
The villagers gathered to witness it—some fearful, others awestruck.
The elders called it Omi-Mẹ́ta, the Third Water. Not because it was the third river, but because it belonged to the Third Rhythm: Balance.
"Water that divides," said Yèyé Àṣà, "is water that remembers two truths at once."
"But why now?" asked one boy.
The elders had no answer.
Only Ayanwale did.
Because in his dreams, in his blood, in the drum now humming at his side, he understood:
The river had heard the Tenth Rhythm.
And it was responding.
That night, the spirits came.
Not through fire or smoke.
Through the river.
They rose like steam, humming in harmony. Drummers from ages past. Warriors who fought beside forgotten gods. Women who sang through war and silence. Even the Ajalu—once twisted—now returned in their earliest, truest forms.
Not evil.
Just wounded.
Just old.
And leading them was a girl with stars in her hair.
Ṣadé.
But not the Ṣadé that had slept in Amoke's hut and chased grasshoppers in the yam field.
This one walked like prophecy.
She had not aged.
But her eyes… her eyes had learned the age of the world.
She spoke without voice:
"It is not done."
Amoke, Amode, and Ayanwale followed her to the split in the river.
There, the spirits parted.
The girl walked into the water.
And it rose.
Not like a flood.
Like a stage.
A platform of memory, built by rhythm, held by trust.
And there, she told the truth:
There was another rhythm.
Not Eleventh.
Not Twelfth.
Something older than counting.
A rhythm that had never been born—
Because it had never been allowed.
"In the days before," she said, "before the First Drum… before even the Ajalu learned to speak with thunder and fire… there was the Breath Rhythm."
"The what?" Amoke asked.
"The breath. The sound before the sound. The choice before the note. The pause that meant life."
Ayanwale's heart thudded.
"You mean silence?"
"No," Ṣadé said gently. "Not the Fourth Rhythm. That was stillness."
"This one is suspension. The space between truths. The chance to begin again."
It struck him like lightning.
A rhythm… not for drumming.
For choosing.
They returned to the Grove of Shells. Lit no fires. Called no names.
They only waited.
And in the waiting, the rhythm began.
Each villager—young, old, broken, reborn—felt it.
Not as a beat.
As a pause.
A knowing.
One by one, people stepped forward—not to play the drum, but to sit beside it.
And listen.
To the sound before the world began.
Some cried.
Some saw lost mothers and never-born children.
Some only felt warmth.
But all knew:
This was the Breath Rhythm.
The world's first forgiveness.
Ayanwale walked into the river the next morning.
Alone.
The second branch of the river split again—parting for his steps.
He reached the center.
Where the currents kissed.
Where the past met the future.
And he placed the drum upon the water.
It did not sink.
It floated.
Then rose.
Then sang.
No hands touched it.
No skin struck it.
But a new mark formed—
A circle broken in two. A breath between halves.
The Eleventh Rhythm.
No longer forgotten.
Named.
But prophecy, like rhythm, cannot stop once it begins.
Because when Ayanwale returned, he found the village transformed.
No—transfigured.
Spirits danced with children.
The Ajalu taught farmers how to listen to the soil.
Amoke spoke to rivers and they replied.
Rotimi had begun teaching rhythm again—this time, to trees.
Even the old drums, buried and broken in shrines, had risen from the ground, mended by memory.
But there was a cost.
As always.
Because the more the world healed, the more one figure faded:
Ṣadé.
She stood at the river's edge the final night of the moon's cycle.
The drum beside her pulsed not with a mark—but with a fading glow.
"You can't go," Ayanwale said, desperate.
"I must," she replied. "I was not meant to carry this far."
"You brought the Tenth. You showed the Breath. Without you—"
She placed a finger over his lips.
"I was the rhythm waiting in your silence. But now… now you've remembered how to listen."
She turned to Amoke.
"You will teach the Twelfth."
"What is it?" Amoke whispered.
Ṣadé smiled, fading.
"You'll know it when you choose not to strike the drum."
And then she was gone.
Not into the air.
Into the pause between it.
The next morning, the river was quiet.
No split.
No song.
Just peace.
And in the heart of the Grove, the Royalty Drum stood alone.
Ten marks.
One breath.
And a final space.
Not blank.
Just…
Waiting.