The night cracked open with thunder.
Not natural thunder—but drum thunder, the kind that comes before a world unmaking.
In the distance, the sky turned black-violet, spiraling over Baba Oro's shrine. The birds stopped mid-flight and fell. Rivers ran backward. And the trees leaned away as though trying to escape the earth itself.
Ayanwale felt it immediately.
"He's trying to make the Ninth."
"But he hasn't earned it," Amoke said. "That rhythm can't be forged by evil."
"No," Ayanwale said darkly. "But it can be forced."
Far in his mountain shrine, Baba Oro stood over a circle of bound souls.
Each was a descendant of the original drummers—his cousins, his bloodline rivals, those who had refused to follow his path.
He held their names in a bowl carved from bone.
One by one, he burned them, feeding their echoes into a new drum—twisted, alive, wrapped in spirit-skin and etched with runes forbidden even in the language of the gods.
"The Ninth Rhythm shall be mine!" he bellowed. "No longer bound by bloodline or purity! I shall birth it from destruction!"
And the drum pulsed.
Once. Twice.
Thrice.
A terrible sound, like a heart breaking forever.
The mountain groaned. The wind howled like children screaming.
Ayanwale fell to his knees in the village square. Blood poured from his ears.
"We have to stop him now," he gasped.
"But how? You only just awakened the Eighth—"
"Which is why I can feel the Ninth trying to be born. He's rushing it. Twisting it. But if it comes to life that way, it won't be a rhythm—it'll be a curse."
He looked at Amoke.
"I need to go to him. Alone."
"No. I'm coming."
"You can't. If I fall, you must remain here. Keep the memory alive. Guard the Eighth."
"And if you succeed?"
"Then the Ninth will be what it's meant to be—not his weapon, but our bridge."
The final confrontation came at the mouth of the mountain.
Storms spun in the sky. Spirits wailed. The cursed drum in Baba Oro's hands now glowed black, alive, its surface swirling like oil over water.
"You came, nephew," Baba Oro said, voice layered with thousands of echoes. "Too late."
"You don't deserve the Ninth."
"Deserve?" the old man laughed. "I've buried every man who said that. Including your father."
Ayanwale's hand tightened on his living drum.
"Then let's finish this the way our ancestors began: not with words. With truth."
And they began to drum.
A duel unlike anything the spirit world had seen.
Each rhythm hit like lightning:
Baba Oro struck with Corruption.
Ayanwale countered with Memory.
Baba's drum answered with Blood of the Forgotten.
Ayanwale rose with Hope Recalled.
The forest burned.
The earth cracked.
Drums sang in the mouths of unborn children.
And then—Baba Oro screamed.
His cursed drum was collapsing.
"You've poisoned it with rhythm you don't even understand!" he roared.
"No," Ayanwale said, eyes glowing. "I understand it better than you ever could."
He placed his hand on the final mark.
A ninth symbol burned into the drum's skin:
A spiral, coiled inward like the eye of a storm.
"This," Ayanwale said, "is not power. It is balance."
And he played it.
The Ninth Rhythm.
It did not sound like victory.
It sounded like forgiveness.
Like a brother forgiving his brother.
A mother forgiving her past.
A boy forgiving the silence he was born into.
Baba Oro screamed as the cursed drum exploded into ash and light. His form twisted—first into a child, then into smoke, then into nothing.
And then... silence.
Real silence.
The kind that comes after healing.
Ayanwale fell to the earth, exhausted.
Amoke ran to him, cradling his head.
"You did it."
"Not me," he whispered. "We did."
All across the land, the skies cleared.
Babies born that night came into the world with rhythm in their fingers.
And in the center of the old village, a new shrine was built—not to Ayanwale, but to The Rhythms Themselves.
For they had returned.
And with them, a new age began.
Not ruled by blood.
But led by sound.