The Weight Of Gold

The garment clung to Iyi like smoke that had learned how to stay. It wasn't just fabric anymore it had become a skin, and the more he wore it, the more it whispered. Not in words, but in weight, in heat, in the way it seemed to hum whenever he stepped near fire or shadow. It knew where he was going before he did.

Outside the hut, the spirit-village had changed.

The night was still black as coal, but the silence had thickened. Even the trees no longer moved. Even the wind had forgotten how to blow.

Iyi stepped out, feet bare, carrying only the sponge tucked into the sash of the robe. He followed a narrow path paved with small white stones, each glowing faintly beneath his feet. Ahead, a gate more a crack in the fabric of the world than a doorway stood open between two ancient iroko trees. Their roots twisted like serpents around a ring of earth that pulsed with quiet energy.

Waiting beside the gate was a blindfolded woman dressed in red and wrapped in copper jewelry that jingled softly when she breathed. Her head was shaved clean, and her skin bore glowing scars that formed words he could not read. She stood barefoot, unmoving, hands outstretched.

Iyi approached her slowly.

He felt no fear. Not anymore. Only the sense that something was ending. Or beginning.

She spoke, but her lips did not move.

"You are not Iyi here."

He blinked. "Then who am I?"

"A question to carry, not to answer. Not yet." She stepped closer and placed a strip of black cloth in his palm. It shimmered, alive like everything else in this place. "Tie this over your eyes. To leave the realm of illusion, you must walk with your sight shut."

He hesitated.

"You must close the eyes that hunger," she added.

He understood.

It wasn't about vision it was about trust.

He tied the cloth around his head. Darkness swallowed everything.

The woman pressed a hand to his chest. "Walk forward until the earth forgets you."

He took the first step.

The white stones beneath his feet disappeared. The path turned soft, like ash, then hot, like iron beneath a blacksmith's hammer. He walked with no guide but the rhythm of his breath and the muffled sound of his own heartbeat.

Time stopped mattering.

There were no trees now. No stars. Only wind and the memory of wind.

Then something shifted.

A scent. Soap and river. Smoke and silence.

A familiar hum returned low, steady, like the river's song in his bones.

And then

He was lying on his back.

He did not remember falling. But now he lay still on something warm. Cloth, maybe. Skin, perhaps. He could feel his fingers damp with sweat and the sponge still gripped in one palm.

He reached up and removed the blindfold.

The village was gone.

He lay in a clearing surrounded by dark forest. Above him, the stars blazed.

But they were not the stars of Lagos.

These were older. Hungrier. Closer.

A soft voice spoke beside him.

"You have crossed."

He turned. The blindfolded woman was gone, but another presence had taken her place an old man seated on a stool made of bone and leaves, a drum slung across his lap, its surface cracked with age.

"You are no longer a stranger to the river," the man said. "But you have not yet become one of us. You must still be washed where the soul sleeps."

Iyi sat up slowly.

He understood.

One more bath remained.

Not for his skin.

Not even for his spirit.

But for the part of him that still clung to lies still hungered, still feared.

A bowl of water appeared beside him, resting on a mat of woven bark.

In the water floated a fourth sponge gray, worn, familiar.

He reached for it.

As he did, he saw his reflection not the boy who had once starved on the streets of Lagos, but something older. A face shaped by fire. Eyes that had shut but seen. A mouth that no longer needed to speak lies.

He began to wash not quickly, not out of panic or guilt but slowly, reverently, as if touching something sacred.

As he washed, the world faded to silence.

The stars blinked out.

The forest vanished.

Even thought dissolved.

And then nothing.

A sleep not of rest, but of reset.

Where the eyes shut, and all illusions fade.