They left the village before sunrise.
Ayanwale didn't tell anyone—not even Rotimi, who was still recovering from the Ajalu attack. Amoke insisted: "This journey must begin in silence."
So they moved like shadows—Ayanwale, Amoke, and the Royalty Drum—across narrow paths through the bush, into lands that felt like forgotten breath. The air grew thicker. The trees leaned in. No birds sang.
After hours, they reached it.
A hollowed-out ravine surrounded by black rocks, silent as death. There were no homes, no fires, no voices. Just drums, stacked like bones, hanging from trees, buried in the earth.
And there, scattered in a half-circle, sat others—men and women in dark robes, their faces masked in woven cloth, each holding a drum close to their chest like a sleeping child.
The Silent Drummers.
Amoke motioned for Ayanwale to kneel. Then she stepped forward, facing the circle.
"He is the blood of the Twin Lines," she announced. "Son of Sound and Water. He carries the Royalty Drum and has awakened three rhythms. Today, we prepare him for the fourth."
No one replied.
But the drums responded.
A quiet thrum filled the air. Not a beat. A presence.
Ayanwale felt it in his chest—a pressure, like silence waiting to speak.
Amoke turned to him.
"You've learned rhythm from movement. Now you must learn from stillness."
She handed him a drum—but it was strange. Its skin was stone. It made no sound when struck.
"This is your test," she said. "To play what cannot be heard. To learn the rhythm buried inside silence."
They gave him no food. No water. No guidance.
Just the stone-skinned drum and the silence of the ravine.
For two days, Ayanwale sat in complete stillness, listening to the world beneath the world. He tapped the drum. Nothing. Again. Nothing.
On the third night, something changed.
He stopped tapping. Closed his eyes.
And for the first time, he listened within.
His heartbeat slowed. His breath became wind. He stopped thinking—and began feeling.
And that's when he heard it.
The Fourth Rhythm wasn't made by hands. It was the pause between two beats. The space that gives sound its shape. The breath between words. The grief before a scream. The spirit of sound itself.
He struck the drum—not to make noise, but to hold silence.
And the world answered.
The stone drum lit with blue light.
Around him, the Silent Drummers stirred.
Amoke stepped forward, her voice low with awe.
"You've heard the silence that binds all sound. You've learned what even the loudest never hear."
She knelt beside him and whispered:
"With this rhythm, you can stop the voice of spirits. Steal the sound from a lie. Shatter a curse mid-sentence."
Then she showed him the final mark that had appeared on the Royalty Drum:
A circle split in half, one side black, one side blank—The Mark of Silence.
As they prepared to leave the ravine, Amoke turned serious.
"Now they'll know you've passed the fourth. The Ajalu won't just send spirits next time. They'll send the corrupted—those born human but twisted by pact and envy."
Ayanwale nodded.
"I'll be ready."
But he wasn't.
Because while he had embraced silence…
…someone in the village had already betrayed him.