The drums began before the screams.
Low. Distant. Patient.
They did not come from one place. They came from the ground itself, a slow heartbeat thudding beneath roots and stones, beneath memory. Chukwudi felt it in his teeth. In the hollow behind his ribs. In the place where fear slept.
Adaeze froze mid-step.
"Those are not human drums," she said.
Obinna swallowed. "They're calling something."
They stood at the edge of a settlement that should not have existed—a ring of huts half-sunk into the earth, roofs sagging as if pressed down by invisible hands. No smoke rose from cooking fires. No dogs barked. Yet the drums continued.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The cursed children shifted uneasily.
"This land is wrong," whispered the shadow-girl. "It smells… eaten."
Chukwudi nodded. The soil here felt thin, stretched, as though something beneath it had been scraping upward for a long time.
"We don't go in," Obinna said quickly.
But the drums grew louder.
And then—voices joined them.
Not singing.
Counting.
---
They found the bodies first.
Villagers knelt in a wide circle, backs straight, faces calm. Too calm. Their eyes were open, reflecting nothing. Each held a wooden charm carved with the same symbol—a broken spiral biting its own tail.
None of them breathed.
Yet the drums beat on.
Chukwudi stepped closer and flinched.
The ground beneath the villagers' knees was damp—not with blood, but with something darker, thicker. The earth itself seemed swollen, as if fed too well.
Adaeze hissed, fury curling in her throat. "A feeding ritual."
"By who?" Obinna asked.
The answer came from behind them.
"By us."
Figures emerged from the huts—men and women, faces wrapped in white clay, eyes blackened until they looked hollow. They moved stiffly, like puppets who had forgotten their strings.
One stepped forward, holding a drum made of stretched skin.
"We drum," the figure said calmly, "so it stays asleep."
Chukwudi felt the lie immediately.
"Or so it doesn't wake hungry," he replied.
The figure tilted its head. "Same thing."
---
The earth shuddered.
A crack split the circle of kneeling villagers. The soil peeled back slowly, reverently, revealing darkness beneath—depth without bottom.
Something breathed.
Not air.
Pressure.
The drums faltered.
"No," one drummer whispered. "We didn't stop. We didn't—"
The ground opened wider.
A shape pressed upward—not fully formed, not fully awake. Limbs suggested themselves, then withdrew. Faces appeared in the soil, mouths open in silent pleas, then sank back down.
Obinna screamed.
Adaeze roared, her form shifting violently as scales burst across her arms. "You fed it people!"
"We fed it names," the cultist corrected. "Memories. Histories. That's what it eats."
Chukwudi's head throbbed.
He understood.
This thing wasn't an alụsị.
It was what remained when a god starved but refused to die.
---
The drums stopped.
Everything screamed.
The ground surged upward, hurling villagers aside like dolls. The thing beneath the earth rose just enough for Chukwudi to feel it—an intelligence vast and broken, aware only of hunger and loss.
CHILD OF THE COIL, it whispered inside his skull.
YOU SMELL LIKE BIRTH AND BURIAL.
Chukwudi staggered.
Adaeze lunged forward, placing herself between him and the crack. "Do not speak to him!"
The earth-thing laughed.
MOTHER OF SCALES, YOU LEFT ME BELOW.
She froze.
The cultists fell to their knees, chanting frantically, voices cracking.
The thing surged higher.
Villagers who had been lifeless suddenly screamed as their shadows tore free of their bodies and were dragged downward, stretched into nothing.
Obinna retched.
"This is wrong," he sobbed. "This is wrong."
Chukwudi closed his eyes.
And listened.
---
He did not command the earth.
He begged it.
He reached into the soil's memory—not the hunger, not the pain—but the moment before all of it, when this land had been whole, unnamed, unbroken.
"Enough," he whispered.
The ground hesitated.
Adaeze felt it too. She sank her claws into the earth, anchoring him, lending her ancient will.
Together, they pressed downward.
The crack began to close.
The earth-thing howled—not in rage, but grief.
REMEMBER ME, it pleaded.
DO NOT BURY ME ALONE.
Chukwudi spoke softly, tears burning his eyes.
"I will remember," he said. "But you will not feed again."
The earth sealed shut.
Silence slammed down like a grave lid.
---
When it was over, the settlement collapsed into itself, huts sinking gently into the soil as if accepting judgment.
No cultists remained.
No villagers breathed.
Only the drums lay scattered—silent, cracked, useless.
The cursed children stood shaking.
Obinna stared at Chukwudi. "What… what did you just do?"
Chukwudi wiped his face with trembling hands.
"I chose," he said. "And it's getting harder every time."
Adaeze watched the ruined land, eyes dark.
"You did not kill a monster," she said quietly. "You buried a god that no one mourned."
As they walked away, the earth behind them shifted once—just once.
Like something turning over in its sleep.
And far away, other drums began to answer.