The Weight Of Gold

The night had grown still, as if the world was holding its breath. After his encounter at the river, Iyi's skin still felt chilled, as though the spirits' hands had left behind frost deep in his bones. The sponge no longer glowed—it had absorbed something, or perhaps it had given something away. Either way, it was silent now. Silent, but not dead.

He walked back into the heart of the spirit-village, feet damp, garments clinging to him from the river's embrace. The air buzzed with something electric, like the aftermath of a lightning strike. Though no one had spoken to him directly since the ritual, eyes followed him not eyes of people, but those of the trees, the rocks, the carved wooden masks nailed to the huts. Everything watched. Everything remembered.

He found himself drawn toward a hut unlike the others round and low, with thin tendrils of smoke curling from beneath the eaves. A woven garment hung across the entrance like a veil, made not of cloth, but of dried leaves, feathers, and strings of small bones.

The voice that greeted him was deep and low, almost a growl.

"Remove the garment," it said. "And step inside."

Iyi reached out and parted the curtain. The bones clinked against each other, whispering secrets in languages he didn't understand.

Inside, the hut was dark. Not dim, but dark. A darkness that didn't feel empty it felt alive, thick with presence.

He could not see who had spoken. But he could feel them.

The air smelled of crushed charcoal, ash, and something faintly sweet like palm oil and decay. There were no candles, no flame, yet something glowed softly on the floor: a circular basin filled with black water, and beside it, a folded garment.

The voice came again, this time softer, closer.

"You have bathed your skin. Now you must uncover what lies beneath it."

Iyi stepped closer, pulse quickening.

The folded garment was not made for beauty. It was woven from coarse, brittle fabric, patched with leather and stamped with symbols he could not decipher. Yet it radiated something old older than the village, older than any city he had known.

"Put it on," the voice said. "But first, remove the one you wear."

Iyi hesitated. His clothes were already soaked, sticking to him like a second skin. But that wasn't the source of his discomfort.

Removing the garment meant shedding what was left of his identity.

He reached for the hem of his shirt, his fingers trembling slightly, and began to undress.

The hut felt colder as he did.

When he was bare, he stepped into the basin of dark water. It was warm surprisingly so and it swirled with black and gold. The sponge floated near his feet, turning slowly, lazily, as if dreaming.

The water wrapped around his legs, whispering against his skin like silk. And then

He gasped.

Visions surged through him.

He saw his mother, kneeling by the cooking pot with nothing but tears in her eyes.

He saw the first lie he told to scam a stranger how easy it had felt.

He saw the river again, but this time it had a face: a woman with eyes like moonlight and a mouth that wept.

The voice inside the hut said, "You must wear the past before you bury it."

When Iyi stepped out of the basin, his skin was steaming.

He reached for the strange garment and pulled it over his head.

It clung to him tightly not just his body, but his soul. As if it recognized him.

The feathers on the shoulders rustled.

The bones hanging from the belt began to rattle, softly, like laughter or warning.

The hut changed. A fire sparked to life in the center, revealing a figure seated in the shadows a man, ancient and thin as bone, his face painted in ash, his lips stitched shut by threads of smoke.

The man lifted a hand and pointed at Iyi's chest.

Beneath the garment, something pulsed. A sigil of light.

"You carry hunger," said the stitched-mouth man, though he did not speak. The words bloomed in Iyi's mind like a thought that wasn't his. "But now it wears you."

Iyi fell to his knees, overcome by the weight of it all.

He wasn't wearing a robe.

He was wearing a memory a legacy stitched from the pain and power of those who walked this road before him.

The garment was alive.

It was part of the trial.

Part of the debt.

And the only way forward was through the silence that waited behind stitched lips.