Whisper by the river

They called it Project Whisperglass.

A file. A blueprint. A ritual.

Hidden beneath decades of bureaucracy and silence, it was the Tribunal's final safeguard.

Not a gun.

Not a soldier.

But a story.

Engineered. Artificial. Purpose-built.

To overwrite hers.

The Theory

Every culture fears the void.

But more dangerous than the void is a lie dressed in truth's voice.

The Tribunal knew this.

So they built a counter-myth.

A queen like Ẹ̀nítàn—but broken. Faithless. Vengeful.

They gave her a name: Ìròkò-Níyà.

The Queen Who Devours Memory.

And they whispered her into the cracks of the internet, slid her into school curricula, folded her into lullabies with corrupted verses.

They paid poets to misremember. Paid priests to reinterpret.

She would be the shadow beneath the river's song.

And if she rose fast enough, she would turn the people's remembering into fear.

Deployment

It began subtly.

A viral video. Children screaming in sleep. A "sighting" in a neighboring town—an apparition at the river's edge with eyes of burning coal and no face.

"The Queen is angry," people began to say. "She wants blood, not balance."

On the news, experts debated.

Was it mass hysteria? A demonic cult? A psychological reaction to climate trauma?

And then came the burning.

Shrines across the Delta destroyed by unknown hands.

The riverside temple in Aghomi desecrated.

The palm-drum sanctuary in Ìkà chained shut.

The message was clear:

Forget her again. Or suffer.

In Obade: The Response

The people gathered.

The children wept—not in fear, but in confusion.

"They're saying she's come to destroy us," whispered little Sàlú. "But… she sings to me when I sleep. She sings peace."

Ola stood before the mural, its throne still glowing faintly.

He looked to Iyagbẹ́kọ. "What do we do?"

She answered without hesitation.

"We remember louder."

The Counter-Incantation

That night, they assembled at the platform.

Three drums. Twelve children. And the elders with chalk and salt.

They did not perform.

They declared.

Each child sang their remembered verse. Not from fear. Not for spectacle.

But as testimony.

And one by one, the lies began to flake.

The mural's throne shimmered—revealing now not one Queen.

But many.

Each face distinct. Each song different. All linked by a single note: truth recovered.

And in the mist, a voice.

Not of a child. Not of a ghost.

Ẹ̀nítàn.

"They have built a mirror of lies.

But mirrors shatter.

Memory remains."

Back in the Capital

The Shadow Tribunal reconvened.

But their broadcast feeds showed something they couldn't explain:

Rivers glowing blue at midnight.

Children speaking old names in perfect cadence.

Shrines reappearing in places once bulldozed.

And then—on the largest screen—Obade.

Iyagbẹ́kọ standing tall.

Ola holding the Queen's drum.

And the children chanting not in protest, but in invocation.

"Not Ìròkò-Níyà.

Ẹ̀nítàn lives.

And she remembers."

Collapse

In the server room beneath the Ministry of Cultural Integration, the Whisperglass algorithm failed.

It didn't crash.

It simply stopped receiving belief.

No one was repeating the lie.

No one was afraid of her.

Instead, the people were singing again.

And belief—true belief—had turned.

Back to the original rhythm.

Closing Scene

That night, in Obade, the river sang louder than ever.

Fireflies formed spirals in the air. Children traced them with their fingers.

At the shrine, Èkóyé lit a lantern and turned to Ola.

"We're not fighting stories anymore," he said. "We're fighting who gets to tell them."

Ola nodded.

"Then let's keep telling ours."

The river whispered.

And the throne in the mural blinked.

A new Queen was waking.