The sun had yet to fully rise when the trucks began to move. The stone, heavy, dark, breathing in silence, had been loaded with great struggle onto the flatbed of Andar Holdings' oldest truck. Keyslar, the site foreman, had ordered the move with tight lips and tired eyes. No ceremony. No loud announcements. Just a quiet, urgent decision made after too many sleepless nights and deaths no one could explain.
He stood at the edge of the site that had become a wound in the heart of Kinamis, his boots sinking slightly into the soft, blackened earth. Around him, the remaining workers avoided eye contact, their bodies tense, as if even standing too close to the stone could invite misfortune. Grat, Emral, Kento, and Elinz moved slowly, their hands steady but stiff. Kizito said nothing, scribbling into his notebook with fingers that shook more than they should have.
The forest on the outskirts of the next town over, had been chosen. Not because it was safe, but because it was far. And wild. And forgotten by most. The kind of place where you could leave something behind and hope the earth would seal it in.
They drove in silence. Five trucks in total. The first led with machete-wielding men to clear the old forest path. The second carried fuel, tools, and spare tires. The third bore the stone, wrapped loosely in tarpaulin that bulged and shifted unnaturally as the wind touched it. Keyslar and Grat rode in the fourth, following closely. Elinz and Emral brought up the rear.
The road was rough, winding between ancient trees with bark like cracked leather and roots like sleeping snakes. Birds did not sing here. Even the insects buzzed with caution.
Twice they stopped. Once when a tree, old and dry, fell suddenly across the road without warning. The men chopped at it quickly, nervously. Then again when one of the drivers claimed he saw someone, or something, standing in the trees. When they looked, nothing was there.
And then the wind came.
It came as they neared the chosen dumping ground, a hollowed stretch of land surrounded by tall, jagged rocks and whispering grass. The wind howled in a way that seemed to pass through flesh. It wasn't cold, but it chilled.
The tarpaulin began to flap wildly. Elinz leapt from the last truck to tighten the ropes, but her hand brushed the surface of the stone and she screamed. Not from pain, but from something deeper. A sudden, engulfing dread. She stared at her hand, as if something had seeped into it.
They lowered the stone with chains and iron rods, each clang echoing like a drumbeat from a forgotten war. When it finally touched the earth, the ground trembled. Not visibly, but they all felt it.
Keyslar stepped back. He gave a nod. "Cover it. Bury it deep. Then we leave."
They dug. The ground resisted at first, turning their shovels and spades against them. But they persisted. For hours they toiled, sweat pouring down backs and faces, until the pit was ready. Then they rolled the stone in.
As it slid, it gave off a sound. Not loud. Not even audible to all. But Kizito fell to his knees, blood running from his nose.
No one spoke.
The pit was filled quickly after that. Shovel after shovel of red earth thrown over the dark relic until it disappeared beneath the surface. Elinz threw the final handful, her hand still trembling.
The wind stopped.
But the silence that followed was worse.
The workers returned to their trucks. Engines groaned to life. No one looked back.
As they drove, the trees behind them stood still. The birds remained gone. And deep beneath the soil, the stone pulsed. Not dead. Not dormant. Waiting.
Back in Kinamis, the air felt lighter. Children laughed again. Crops, once withered, began to green. It was as if the town had taken a deep breath for the first time in months.
King Marcus walked among his people, his once-sweating palms now dry as the bark of the iroko tree. The sun hung low over Kinamis, casting a golden haze across the open square, where stalls overflowed with harvest, bulging sacks, earthen mounds, and baskets lined with the day's labor. He moved quietly, not as a ruler demanding attention, but as a man searching for something deeper than the greetings offered to him.
His robes, once clinging to his skin with the unbearable damp of his mysterious affliction, now floated behind him like a silken breeze. He felt the softness of the fabric, how it brushed against his legs with ease. The sticky discomfort that had plagued him for weeks, palm sweat that soaked through parchment, stained his bed, and made even the lightest touch unbearable, was gone. But the memory of it still hovered in his chest like a whisper that wouldn't leave.
He nodded to the people in the open square, who paused in their daily tasks and dipped their heads in respect; to the children playing with little carved lions in the sand, who stopped and looked up with wide eyes before running away; and to the older ones resting in the shade nearby, who lifted their hands and whispered blessings with voices worn by time.
And still, despite the respectful murmurs, the warmth of recognition, Marcus felt the silence beneath the surface, the kind that no applause or song could drown.
Because inside him, the warning still burned.
The sorcerer's words had not faded with the passing days. They clung to him like shadows, even in bright places. The god stirs. The stone is not still. And you, King Marcus, must not pretend the earth has not been wounded.
He had felt it first in his body. The sweating had started the night the stone was unearthed. At first, it was only in his palms, damp enough to be bothersome but not alarming. But as the days passed, the sweat grew heavier. During council meetings, parchments curled and smudged in his hands. At night, his wives whispered worriedly, laying his hands on cool stones or placing leaves beneath them to soak the wetness. Still, the sweat poured.
Physicians came. They brought herbs and oils, poultices and powders. Nothing worked. A rumor bloomed: that the king's body knew what his lips dared not say, that something foul had been awakened in Kinamis, and the king's flesh was reacting to it. One old healer even wept upon seeing his palms, saying the body often knows the things the mind denies. Marcus dismissed her, but the words haunted him.
Then came the journey to the sorcerer.
That treacherous journey, where termites chewed at their feet in the middle of a sleeping forest, where a mighty wind encircled them like an invisible wall, howling without mercy. The moment his sweat fell to the soil during the storm, something changed. The wind stopped. The silence cracked open. He remembered watching the drops fall, fat and glistening, and seeing them turn dark red as they touched the earth, like blood pulled from an unseen wound. And then, just like that, the wind scattered and fled.
After that day, the sweat slowed. Gradually, his palms cooled. The dampness became a faint stickiness. Then dryness. The healers were astonished. They had not administered anything new, and yet the king stood before them days later with dry hands and clear eyes. Only Marcus understood. The storm had not just tested his journey, it had marked his submission. His acceptance that Kinamis was no longer in a state of peace, that Osungho was not just a tale carved into old stones or whispered under firelight. The god had returned.
Still, he said nothing to his people.
So now, as he walked through the heart of Kinamis, past the blacksmith's stall where metal hissed in flames, past the old stone structure where smoke curled into the pale morning sky, he kept his thoughts buried. His steps were measured, steady, as though afraid the ground might shift beneath him. His eyes moved from face to face, searching, sensing. Something had changed, and he needed to know if they felt it too.
And some did. He caught it in the way a woman quickly folded her arms, her smile barely holding. In the boy who stared a moment too long before ducking behind his father. In the cats that lingered at doorways but refused to cross his path. It was in the silence that trailed behind him, subtle, but heavy.
He paused beneath the baobab tree that marked the center of Kinamis and looked up. The branches swayed slightly, though no wind stirred. He remembered what the sorcerer had told him just before they parted: The wind remembers the steps of gods. It walks differently when they return.
And the wind had changed in Kinamis. Even in its silence, it carried something unseen.
King Marcus lowered his hand and pressed his now-dry palm to the bark of the baobab. The surface was rough, steady. The tree had stood for hundreds of years, unmoved by wars, fires, or storms. But even it seemed uncertain now, as though waiting.
He turned to go.
There were duties to attend to, council meetings, inquiries about the halted construction, rumors of a boy drawing symbols in the earth. But beneath it all, King Marcus knew he was no longer just a ruler of men. He was a witness. And perhaps, soon, a sacrifice.
The sweat might have dried from his hands, but the truth had settled into his bones.
And truth had never been so heavy.
"You can bury it, but the earth remembers."
And in a hut on the edge of Kinamis, Iboro sat cross-legged, his eyes closed. He did not speak. He did not move. Mrs. Adian watched him with worry deep in her bones.
That night, he dreamed again.
This time, the stone was not buried. It floated. Spinning. Whispering. And around it stood men with no eyes, mouths sewn shut, each holding a weapon made of bone. The sky above them cracked like old leather, and from it poured a rain not of water, but ash.
He woke with a gasp. The mark on his chest glowing faintly.
The stone was not done. Not yet.