Bound by ancestry - Chapter 12: Chapter 12

They came into Okigwe with the echo of bells still in their ears and the weight of memory in their hands. The Circle had grown. Now numbering more than thirty, they were joined by farmers, traders, hunters, and healers from every village they passed. Some had lost loved ones to the Obiri’s deception. Others came because their dreams no longer allowed silence.
Adaeze stood at the front of the procession, her staff glowing even in daylight. The spiral carved into its head now pulsed with a deeper light—sometimes gold, sometimes red. Chidubem walked beside her, still clutching the first seal they had ever uncovered. It was worn now, its edges chipped, but its energy remained strong.
As they approached the border of Abadaba—an old village rumored to be the first settlement built before the British arrived—they were greeted not with fear, but song. The elders had seen the signs. The rivers had risen without rain. Birds circled in formation every evening. The roots of trees glowed faintly in the night. The people knew something was awakening.
“We’ve waited for this return,” said Chief Ogwuma, his voice cracked with age but strong with memory. “We buried too much. We forgot too much. And now, the soil brings it all back.”
But the joy did not last long.
That night, as the village celebrated with dances and sacred chants, a stranger appeared.
He was tall, with a wide grin that never faded, and eyes that never blinked. His wrapper shimmered with patterns no one could name. He spoke gently, but his words carried strange weight.
“I’ve come to help,” he said. “I know the stories. I know the seals.”
He did not give a name.
Adaeze watched him carefully. The staff pulsed every time he drew near.
“He walks like a friend,” she whispered to Chidubem. “But the land winces when he moves.”
The man spoke to the villagers. He recited tales that were long lost, stories buried even before the Obiri were sealed. He laughed with children. He healed a blind boy with a single touch.
And yet, every mirror in the village cracked when he walked past.
On the third night, a girl disappeared.
Then another.
By dawn, four were gone.
The village searched every hut, every path, every shrine. But there were no tracks, no signs of struggle. Only silence.
Adaeze confronted the stranger. “Where are they?”
He smiled. “They followed the truth.”
Chidubem stepped forward. “You mean they followed a lie.”
The man turned to him. For the first time, his smile faded.
“Would you know the difference if it wore your mother’s voice?”
Chidubem froze.
The man walked away.
That night, Adaeze called a meeting of the Circle. The guardians stood behind her, silent but alert.
“This man is not one of us,” she said. “He does not walk with the land. He walks beside it, above it. That is not the way.”
One of the villagers—Uche, a young herbalist—raised her hand. “But he healed my mother.”
“He took four daughters,” Adaeze replied. “The land gave us gifts so we would not be desperate for counterfeits.”
The council agreed.
They approached the stranger with fire and ash, chanting the old names, placing salt on the ground.
He laughed at first. Then the flames grew higher. The salt sizzled. His form shimmered.
Then it changed.
He no longer had one face, but many.
A child’s. A soldier’s. A grandmother’s. A lover’s. Each face blinked once, then vanished.
“Do you see now?” Uzochi said, stepping forward. “He is one of the Old Deceivers—the Mouth of Doubt.”
The villagers recoiled. The guardians surrounded the spirit.
“Speak your name!” Adaeze commanded.
The man writhed. “I am the Silence Between Truths. I am the Shadow of Memory. I am the One Who Remembers Too Much.”
“But your time has ended,” she replied.
She raised the staff. Chidubem placed the seal beside her. The Circle began to chant, their voices joined with the names of the hills, the forests, the rivers.
The deceiver screamed.
One by one, his faces fell away, crumbling into ash.
He tried to run. The ground split beneath him. Roots rose like hands and pulled him into the earth.
The fires calmed.
The missing girls returned at dawn. Confused, but unharmed. Each one remembered being in a place made of mirrors, where every voice sounded familiar and every lie looked like comfort.
Adaeze embraced them. “You are home. You are whole.”
Abadaba rejoiced. The bell of the village rang for the first time in generations.
But Adaeze knew.
This was only one deceiver.
There would be others.
And deeper still, in the broken stronghold of the Obiri, Nwokeoji closed his eyes and whispered:
“They will come for us. Let them. For we too remember.”