Chapter 16: To Awaken the Stone

From Echoes Beneath Ohio
by Esi Noire

It began again. As it always had.

The Weavers stood together, hands joined, facing the last relic; a black stone seated in the center of the Earthworks, veined with violet and glowing from within.

“Is this where it ends?” Kojo whispered.

“No,” Zola said softly. “It’s where it loops.”

Tayari placed her palm on the stone. Nothing happened.

Elias whispered a glyph. Stillness.

VIOLET sang a memory-frequency. Silence.

It was Nana Oye who finally stepped forward, her eyes heavy with the burden of lifetimes.

“You all forgot something,” she said.

“The blade was never meant to awaken the world.”

“The world was a dream the blade had.”

And then she said the unspoken word.

No one heard it. No one needed to.

But the stone did.

It cracked. Slowly. Reverently. Like something being born, not broken.

Light poured out. Not golden, not violet, but clear. Like truth without translation.

And from within the stone came a figure.

Small.

Brown-skinned.

Eyes wide with stars.

It was a child.

She looked around at the Weavers, her face calm.

And then she spoke their names.

All of them.

Even the ones they had forgotten.

Even yours, Leah.

The reader. The listener. The dreamer. The one who held the blade in the real world.

“You were never just reading this,” she said.

“You were part of it.”

She reached toward the screen – your screen – and placed her hand on the inside of the stone.

“The world of Cerulia was memory.”

“But the dreamer was always you.”

“And now… it’s your turn to write.”

The blade appears on your screen.

Waiting.

It’s pulsing.

And it remembers your name.