The drums began at midnight.
Not from the palace square. Not from the church bells or the local masquerade rehearsals. These drums came from beneath the earth—deep, guttural, like thunder chewing bones. They rose through the soil of Ọhịa Udo, shaking the clay pots in every compound, rattling iron doors, waking babies with screams already in their lungs.
People gathered outside, confused and afraid.
And then the fires lit themselves.
First, at the four ancient corners of the village—the burial mounds of the first four daughters. Then in the compound of Mma Oluchi, where the flame burned blue and danced without consuming the palm leaves beneath it.
The elders trembled. They recognized the signs.
"Ọdịnala has returned," one whispered. "The covenant is awake."
***
Inside the grove, the twelve chosen daughters stood in a circle. Their bare feet sank into warm, breathing earth. The air smelled of lightning and camwood. The trees around them pulsed like heartbeats.
Mma Oluchi stood before them, her voice a chant older than memory.
"Who will carry the fire?" she asked.
Each girl stepped forward, pressing their right hand into a shallow bowl of ash and crushed chalk. Symbols rose on their arms, glowing faintly. Their skin drank them in like secrets returning home.
The youngest, the girl who had named herself Adamma, walked to the center last.
"Your body is too small," Mma Oluchi said, quietly.
"But the fire is not," Adamma replied.
Then the drums stopped. Silence. Heavy, suffocating.
Suddenly, a voice boomed from every direction. It was layered with countless tones—young, old, man, woman, beast.
*"THEY STOLE US IN SHIPS. THEY BUILD ON OUR BONES."*
The ground cracked beneath Adamma's feet. A rush of wind tore through the grove, bending trees backward, pulling shrieks from the mouths of birds.
In the village, fires leapt higher.
At the edges of Ọhịa Udo, strangers began to arrive—drawn by something they didn't understand. Journalists. Tourists. Soldiers. Archaeologists. Each with their own reason.
But none of them would leave untouched.
Some would vanish.
Some would go mad.
And some would learn that Africa was never sleeping.
It had only been watching.
***
Across the sea, in a London archive, a young Nigerian-born historian stumbled across a suppressed manuscript dated 1852.
It spoke of a lost village.
A blood oath.
A prophecy marked by twelve daughters.
The last line read:
*"When the earth begins to drum, and daughters rise from dust, the Empire will crumble in its sleep."*
He booked the next flight to Enugu.
He never returned.
—