Chapter 3: The Echo Engineer

From Echoes Beneath Ohio
by Esi Noire

Zola Okoye had always heard things no one else could hear.

Not voices, exactly… more like music without melody. Soft vibrations in soil. Hums beneath power lines. Patterns in the wind that spoke in pulses instead of words.

Her grandmother, Nana Oye, called it “thread-hearing.”

“It runs through our blood,” she’d say, touching Zola’s forehead with frankincense oil.

“You were born with your ears tuned to the Before.”

Zola had thought it was just stories. Until the night her dreams turned violet.

In the dream, she stood at the edge of a field that shimmered like glass. On the other side: a blade, half-buried in cracked earth, glowing faintly with the same hue as the night sky above it. A figure stood beside it, wrapped in shadow and starlight.

The figure didn’t speak. It just pointed … to her chest.

Zola awoke gasping, hand pressed to her heart, hearing the now-familiar hum again.

But this time, it wasn’t from a dream.

It was coming from the radio tower outside Dayton. And the static wasn’t static anymore.

It was a voice.

“Echo… activated… sequence: voidseed… dreaming… garden…”

“Grandma?” she whispered, stepping barefoot across their apartment floor.

Nana Oye was already waiting in the living room. Eyes closed. Rocking in silence.

“You heard it too?” Zola asked.

Her grandmother nodded once. “It’s begun. The Blade’s song has reached this timeline.”

Later that day, Nana Oye opened a locked drawer Zola had never seen before. Inside was a small metallic disc, blackened with time and etched with the same glyphs Zola had seen in her dream.

“This came from your great-grandmother,” she said. “Said it was left behind when a garden was closed… not planted, but buried.”

Zola picked it up.

It vibrated in her hand like it knew her name.

That night, she dreamed again. But this time the blade was in her own hand. Behind her stood not one, but hundreds of figures, cloaked in light and shadow, whispering in a chorus:

“The Echo Engineer has awakened. Now the signals must flow.”