The map was hand-drawn.
Torn from a colonial journal buried deep in the Obade archives. On the fragile parchment, just beneath a faded crest of the British crown, were three words scrawled in red ink:
"Do not return."
Kareem and Amaka stood at the forest's edge, the old map pinned between gloved fingers and sweat-slick palms. Before them lay nothing but trees and fog. But somewhere inside those trees buried under moss and time was what the records called "Lower Obade."
The original village.
The first to fall.
The place where the drum was born.
They trekked for hours.
The deeper they walked, the quieter it got. Birds fell silent. Insects vanished. Even the wind refused to pass through.
And then they found it.
A clearing.
Stone remnants of huts. Broken altars. A totem lying on its side.
But what struck Kareem wasn't the ruin
It was the footprints.
Fresh. Bare.
"Someone's been here," he muttered.
"Or still is," Amaka whispered.
They split up carefully.
Kareem followed the broken path to a collapsed shrine.
There, half-buried in dirt and roots, was a small child's sandal.
Then, a voice:
"You shouldn't have come back."
Kareem spun, gun raised.
No one.
The whisper had come from under the ground.
He backed up slowly only to step on something soft.
He looked down.
A hand.
Sticking out of the soil. Fingers curled. Still fresh.
And carved into its wrist
The same symbol as the broken drum.
Elsewhere in the clearing, Amaka found the altar.
Or what remained of it.
Built from stone, it was covered in etched spirals each one a face screaming silently.
At the center of the altar was a large crack.
Inside the crack wrapped in layers of dried leaves was a jawbone.
Human.
But painted.
In the ochre symbols of pre-colonial priesthood.
She touched it carefully, and the moment she did
Her ears went silent.
No sound.
No heartbeat.
No breath.
Not even thought.
Just a single, deafening memory echoing in her mind:
"The woman was not just drowned. She was sealed. She was bound into the drum not to worship, but to contain."
Amaka staggered backward. The silence shattered like glass.
She knew now.
They hadn't made the drum to honor her.
They had made it to imprison her.
Just then, Kareem's voice came through the comm:
"Amaka. I found something. And I think… I think Ola's here."
"Alive?"
"Yes. But… he's not alone."