The bus dropped me off at the fork between the mango grove and the ancient baobab that locals claimed could whisper at night.
I adjusted my kitenge shawl, shielding myself from the sharp coastal breeze that sometimes carried both salt and secrets. My boots kicked up red dust as I started down the footpath—a narrow, winding trail shaded by towering trees, their roots tangled like ancestral stories.
The further I walked, the more the modern world slipped away.
No network.
No distractions.
Just the rhythm of cicadas, the ocean's distant lull, and the scent of burning herbs.
I hadn't seen Aunt Maari in years. My mother always called her strange, too old ways, and too knowing. But after the visions… after the jar… after the night Alani collapsed—I needed answers the city couldn't give.
Her house appeared like a memory—carved into the side of a rocky hill, with vines curling around the weathered wood panels. Shells and bones dangled from the doorway like a curtain, clinking like wind chimes made by ghosts.
I hesitated.
Then a voice—calm, low, and eerily expectant—called from inside:
"Misha… You took your time."
My heart skipped.
She knew I was coming.
Of course she did.
Not the kind that stretched across your skin like gauze, thick and watching. It reminded her too much of the temple rooms in her childhood,where women whispered about bloodlines and binding, and children were taught to hold memories like secrets sealed in bone.
She hadn't heard those whispers in years.
But tonight, they returned.
She sat on the steps of her aunt Maari's coastal home, the ocean churning just beyond the cliffs. The air was salted and heavy, and the coconut trees creaked like old bones.
Maari lit a clay lantern beside her, then passed her a cup of warm tamarind tea.
"You saw something again," the old woman said—not a question.
Misha nodded, jaw tight. "She's remembering."
"Sasha?"
"Yes. And it's pulling mine back too."
Maari didn't answer right away. Instead, she pulled out a small cloth pouch and emptied its contents into her palm—dried leaves, bone fragments, and a smooth obsidian bead etched with a sigil.
"Do you know why the mark on your back still burns some nights?" Maari asked softly.
Misha swallowed hard. She knew. She had always known.
"It wasn't a gift," Maari continued. "It was a tether. You were all linked—Sasha, Naima, you and the rest. But one of you... was never supposed to remember."
Misha looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"
"The ritual. It was done in halves—one carried the blood, another the memory, and the last... the burden. One of you was the burden-bearer. The one who had to forget so the curse could rest."
"But something's changed," Misha whispered. "The seal is breaking."
Maari nodded gravely. "And someone is helping it unravel."
That night, Misha slept in the prayer room.
She hadn't set foot in it since her grandmother died. She and her mom moved.
Incense smoke hung in the air like ghosts, and she lay surrounded by her grandmother's protective wards, half hoping they would keep the dreams out.
They didn't.
In her dream, she was a child again—running barefoot through the Mapatoni estate gardens.
She turned a corner and found Naima, older now, wrapped in ceremonial red, her face marked with the white lines of a blood rite.
"You have to hold it," Naima said, placing something warm and pulsing into her hands. "It's not time yet for her to see. If she remembers too soon..."
A voice cut in from behind the trees.
"Then the blood tide begins."
Misha turned, and saw a man in shadows—his face familiar and forgotten all at once.
She jolted awake.
The obsidian bead Maari had shown her earlier was now clutched in her hand—though she had no memory of picking it up.
And on her back?
The sigil burned.
She wasn't just watching Sasha's awakening.
She was bound to it.
And something was coming for them both.