Elegosi stood tall, its towers gleaming with glass and pride. To the untrained eye, it was the city of the future. But Odogwu had learned that beneath the steel and concrete lay an older truth—bones that had never rested.
He returned from Umunwagbara different. Not changed. Clarified.
"Do you hear them?" he asked Zuru one morning, as they walked past the downtown business district.
"Hear what?" Zuru replied.
"The bones beneath our feet. They are restless."
At first, Zuru thought it was a metaphor. But that night, as he crossed Elegosi Bridge, he heard it too—a soft rumble, like a drum far underground, pulsing in rhythm with something ancient.
Odogwu convened the Council of the Grove.
Ngozi, Aisha, Una, Zuru, and a new voice—Maazi Kelechi, a griot and bone-mapper from the ancient lines of Anaguta.
"The bones speak," Kelechi said. "They are not just of the dead. They are memory structures. Forgotten martyrs. Silenced builders. Hidden healers."
Zuru asked, "What do they want?"
Kelechi placed his ear to the marble floor and whispered, "To be named. To be acknowledged. To be sung back into the story."
Thus began Project Kpakpando—The Bone Chronicle.
Using ancient mapping rituals and seismic harmonics, the team began identifying old burial grounds, forgotten shrines, and displaced ancestral sites beneath Elegosi.
Each site was approached with rites, not machines.
Drummers would circle the spot.
A child would whisper a question.
If the wind responded, they dug.
If it didn't, they moved on.
And so they found them—thousands.
Skulls with tribal markings erased by time.
Bones wrapped in palm fronds, still holding the scent of kola.
Fragments of prayer stones, pipes, musical flutes, and shattered amulets.
All buried beneath shopping malls, highways, even a football stadium.
The news exploded.
Some applauded.
Some protested.
The Mayor of Elegosi called for "respectful investigation."
A tech billionaire offered to digitize the findings.
Odogwu declined.
"These are not exhibits," he said. "They are elders. Let them speak in their own language."
The Council created the Ọdịnala Wellspring, an underground sanctuary beneath the city's central roundabout. Not a museum. A listening chamber.
Each visitor removed their shoes.
Walked barefoot on memory tiles.
Each tile played a sound—a child laughing, a woman wailing, a drumbeat, a war cry, a love song.
The chamber became a cathedral of the unheard.
One day, a girl fainted in the chamber.
When she awoke, she began to speak in a language long lost.
A linguist identified it as Proto-Idu, spoken only in chants by the High Priests of Uloka.
She translated the girl's words:
"We do not want monuments. We want to dance again."
"We want to be remembered with joy, not pity."
Odogwu wiped a tear. "Then we will dance with them."
He announced the Festival of Bone and Bloom.
All across Elegosi, people danced on rooftops, in markets, on sidewalks.
Drums were played.
Old songs revived.
Names once erased were painted in gold on buses and billboards.
But the Ụmụ Ọchịchị returned.
This time, not in secret.
They staged a protest: "Let the Dead Lie!"
They accused Odogwu of witchcraft, of disturbing peace, of resurrecting pain.
A televised debate was held.
The opposing speaker said, "Why dig up bones? Let's move forward."
Odogwu replied:
"You cannot build a house on top of a scream and expect silence."
"To move forward, you must first face backward and bow."
"Not to worship the past. But to understand it."
His words rippled.
The crowd was silent.
A mother stepped forward and handed him a broken bracelet.
"My son wore this," she said. "He disappeared in 1983. You found him."
And just like that, the tide shifted.
Now, schools in Elegosi begin each day with a name.
A name from the Bone Chronicle.
Children write letters to the unnamed, read aloud under moonlight.
Odogwu, standing at the highest point of the city, looked down and whispered:
"Now, they rise. Not as ghosts. But as guides."
And the bones beneath the city—finally—were at peace.