The morning after the Summit of Stones dawned slowly, like a secret unfurling. Mist still clung to the low hills surrounding the new capital, and the rivers, swollen with snowmelt and the tears of ancestors, glimmered like molten glass beneath the awakening sun.
Ayọ̀kúnlé stood alone atop the newly-built bastion known as Olúkọ́nrin's Watch named in honor of the ancient scout who had once warned the kingdom of an age-old betrayal. From this vantage point, he could see the expanse of what they had reclaimed: the river valleys once lost to shadow, the sacred groves that had bloomed again, the caravans moving cautiously down reopened trade roads.
But he could also see what had yet to be done.
The kingdoms were unified in paper, yes but peace on parchment meant little without trust. Some allies still eyed one another like wolves sharing a carcass. There were whisperings in the halls of chieftains of borders redrawn, of oaths to uphold, of reparations owed.
He knew it. And he would face it. But not as a boy bound by fate. Not as the cursed prince.
Now, he faced it as a sovereign of choice.
Behind him, quiet footsteps approached. Móyèṣọlá, her robes catching the breeze like threads of moonlight, stood beside him without speaking at first.
"There's a restlessness in you," she said, her eyes tracking the sky.
Ayọ̀kúnlé nodded. "Because peace is loud in its silence. You don't hear drums. You don't hear war horns. But you hear everything else."
Móyèṣọlá tilted her head. "What are you afraid of?"
He paused. "That we've won the war… but lost the memory of what made it necessary."
She reached into her satchel and drew out a scroll. A map not of territories, but of tongues. Lines drawn in languages lost dialects, forgotten glyphs, the scripts of vanished tribes.
"Then let's remind them," she said. "Not with more conquest. But with story."
Later that day, a gathering was held under the Great Canopy Tree of Odanjo a living monument where leaves changed color not by season, but by spirit. Representatives from every land now bound in alliance assembled beneath it: desert riders with sun-bronzed skin and sapphire beads; highland seers draped in storm-gray cloaks; river lords from the delta nations, perfumed and quiet-eyed.
Ayọ̀kúnlé stepped before them, not flanked by guards or draped in regalia, but in simple royal cloth the color of ash and starlight.
"My fathers once ruled by decree," he began, "and my mother ruled by wisdom. I carry their blood. But I will not rule by either. I will rule by listening."
A pause. Some murmured. Others leaned forward.
"The curse upon my name was a lesson. Not about vengeance but about forgetting. Forgetting that we were once one people. That we drank from the same rivers. That the sky has only one sun."
He looked at each delegation in turn. "Let today be the day we do not merely remember but rebuild. Not with swords. Not with spies. But with stories, trade, and trust."
Then, one by one, they each stood and pledged not to him, but to the future.
It was not unanimous. Some paused. Others hedged. But they stood.
And it was enough.
That night, a storm rolled in soft at first, then thunderous. But no one hid. Fires were kept lit beneath eaves, and music rose to challenge the rain. Dancers twirled barefoot in muddy courtyards. Children played in puddles, pretending to be river gods and rain-catchers.
Ayọ̀kúnlé sat beside the fire, Adérónké at one side, Tùndé at the other. They passed a drinking horn between them, its rim etched with the names of the fallen.
"I still dream of the battlefield," Tùndé confessed, voice low. "Not the death. The silence right before it began."
Adérónké nodded. "Because that's where we met ourselves."
"And now?" Ayọ̀kúnlé asked.
"Now," Tùndé said, "we make sure no child ever has to."
They toasted in silence.
Later, Ayọ̀kúnlé found himself wandering the sleeping quarters, not to inspect or secure but to simply… see. These were his people. These were his guests. These were the ones who had once called him a ghost, a blight, a myth.
Now, some whispered his name in prayers.
Others didn't speak it at all.
He understood. Forgiveness was not a switch. It was a tide.
And all tides take time.
Weeks passed. The first seeds were sown in the reclaimed terraces of the highlands. Temples long defiled by shadow magic were cleansed and blessed anew. Scholars arrived from distant isles to study the relics and translate their runes.
But something unexpected stirred something not dark, but deep.
Bards who traveled began to tell a new story: not just of Ayọ̀kúnlé the king, but of a new people called The Gathered. People not bound by bloodline or origin, but by choice. Refugees, warriors, traders, monks those who had no home before, and now had found one in the dream of Odanjo.
They started building outside the traditional cities. Circular villages. Multi-language schools. Artisan cooperatives that blended techniques from four different continents.
They didn't ask permission.
They just… began.
Ayọ̀kúnlé didn't stop them.
He visited, listened, and even helped raise a roof beam or two.
And in them, he saw something older than the curse. Older than even the first kingdom.
Hope.
Untamed. Unnamed.
But real.
One dusk, as the sun drowned itself in the gold-glass sea, Ayọ̀kúnlé returned to the Cradle of Spirits. Alone.
The chamber that had once challenged him, that had shown him his phantom self, now lay quiet. Peaceful.
He laid down the Fifth Relic not in surrender, but in honor.
"You taught me to carry legacy," he whispered. "Now I must teach others to carry the future."
The relic pulsed once, softly. Then stilled.
Ayọ̀kúnlé turned away from it, back toward the path he had carved with footsteps, not prophecy.
In the years that followed, he would face many trials—not of war, but of rebuilding.
There would be famines. There would be uprisings. There would be old debts and new doubts.
But Ayọ̀kúnlé would not flinch.
Because he had once faced himself in a hall of spirits and said, "No more chains."
And he had meant it.
Not just for himself.
But for all of them.