The tooth lay on the altar like it was breathing.
No — not breathing. Pulsing.
Slow, steady, as though it had a heart.
Ola couldn't stop looking at it. The thing was slick with marsh‑water that did not dry, even in the shrine's warm air. The tooth was longer than his thumb, curved slightly, ridged with faint spiral grooves like the growth rings of a tree.
Iyagbẹ́kọ refused to touch it. "Teeth are for holding. For tearing. For keeping." Her voice was tight. "You think it will give you answers, but all it will do is claim you."
Echo stood at his shoulder. "What kind of creature loses something like that in a place like the marsh?"
"Not a creature," Iyagbẹ́kọ said darkly. "A keeper."
Ola tore his eyes from the altar. "A keeper of what?"
Iyagbẹ́kọ's gaze slid to him, unreadable. "The kind of keeper you only see when you've gone too far into another world and can't find your way out. The tooth is a warning."
"It's a key," Ola insisted. "And I think I know what it unlocks."
That night, the afflicted came again.
Drawn to the marsh.
Drawn to him.
They didn't knock on doors or call out to one another. They simply woke, walked barefoot through the sleeping village, and made their way into the reeds. Their eyes were open but clouded, their mouths shaping silent syllables.
Ola followed. Again.
The path through the reeds was familiar now — a narrow, serpentine track worn by feet that did not feel the mud. The moon hung low, casting silver blades across the water. He counted them as they waded into the black circle at the marsh's heart.
Nine.
Nine bodies swaying gently in the water, all facing the same point far across the marsh, where the darkness seemed to breathe.
Then he heard it.
A sound under the water.
Low, deep, almost too slow to be a rhythm.
A heartbeat.
The tooth in his satchel began to throb in time.
"Don't go in," Echo's voice whispered behind him. She had followed without sound, her bare feet pale against the mud.
"I can't just watch them stand there," Ola said.
"You can't save them by joining them."
"I can't save them by staying on the bank either."
Before she could stop him, he stepped forward into the marsh. The water rose to his knees, then his waist, then his chest. The nine didn't turn toward him — didn't acknowledge him at all. They were fixed on something beyond sight.
The heartbeat grew louder.
And then the water moved.
Not in ripples. In a single, massive shift, as though something beneath them had stirred. The black surface swelled, and Ola's breath caught.
A shadow loomed below.
It was not the drowned city.
This was older.
A great shape, pale and boned, coiled under the water. It was impossible to tell where it began and ended — ribs curving like the arches of a cathedral, spines rising like the pilings of a bridge. And at its center, where its skull should have been, there was only a great black hollow.
The tooth burned in his satchel.
The shadow's hollow face turned toward him.
The heartbeat stopped.
And in the silence, a voice slid into his skull.
Bring it back.
He clutched the satchel. "Why?"
Because you took it.
His breath came fast. "It was in the water. Waiting for me."
Waiting to be returned. Or to bring you down with it.
The nine in the water swayed closer to him now, their movements synchronized like reeds in a wind. Their eyes opened wide — all black, the same as in the drowned city.
Bring it back, the voice said again. Or we will take you down and keep you.
The heartbeat resumed. Louder. Faster.
Ola backed away. The nine followed.
He burst from the water, splashing through the reeds. Echo was there to grab his arm, pulling him hard until they reached solid ground.
"What happened?" she demanded.
"They want it back."
"The tooth?"
He nodded, chest heaving. "And if I don't give it back, they'll take me instead."
Her eyes searched his. "So give it back."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because if I do, they'll stop calling the afflicted — but they'll call something worse instead. That thing in the water… it's not just a keeper. It's a door."
By dawn, the sickness had spread to three more villagers. Iyagbẹ́kọ called a council in the shrine courtyard. Elders. Mothers. Hunters. All of them restless, voices raised.
"It's his fault!" one man shouted, pointing at Ola. "He went into the marsh and brought this thing back. Now our people walk into the water like sleepwalkers."
"I went into the marsh because it was already calling them," Ola snapped. "You think closing your eyes will keep the voice from finding you?"
"Then take it back!"
"And if that wakes something worse?"
The council erupted in argument again.
Iyagbẹ́kọ raised her staff. The crack of wood on stone silenced them. "Enough. If the tooth is a key, as Ola says, then the door it belongs to is already half‑open. The only choice we have is who walks through it first."
Her gaze found Ola. "And I think we already know who that will be."
They prepared him in silence. Ash smeared along his cheekbones. Strips of cloth tied around his wrists, dyed with the blood of a black‑feathered hen. The tooth hung from a cord around his neck now, cool against his skin — though he could still feel its pulse in his bones.
Echo walked with him to the marsh's edge. "If you go down again," she said, "don't bargain. Don't answer questions. Don't let it show you the city unless you have no choice."
He managed a faint smile. "And if it asks my name?"
Her grip tightened on his arm. "Run."
The water was waiting.
As soon as he stepped into the black circle, it closed over his head without warning. He sank fast — faster than the first time — the reeds rising above him like a green curtain closing on the world above.
The heartbeat returned, all around him.
Bring it back.
The shape moved below — the great ribbed coil turning slowly, as if stirring from sleep. The black hollow in its head yawned open.
Ola pulled the tooth from around his neck. For a moment, the water brightened faintly, the spiral grooves catching the dim light from above.
And then he saw it — a narrow crack in the base of the skull‑hollow. The tooth fit perfectly.
The coil shuddered as it slid into place.
And then the door opened.
Light burst from the hollow, not golden or white, but the pale blue of drowned lanterns. It spread through the water, revealing shapes far below — more coils, more bones, and beyond them, a passageway carved of stone and coral, leading deeper than the marsh should allow.
The voice came again, almost a whisper now.
Come and see.
Ola took one breath of the marsh‑water, tasting iron and salt.
And he swam down.