It did not start with Chukwuemeka.
That was the lie people believed.
The truth was older.
Much older.
Long before the forest swallowed Ụmụọkụ, long before blood soaked the soil, something beneath the earth had learned patience. Hunger taught it that. Silence taught it better.
It waited.
Years passed. Roads were built. Phones rang. Churches rose where shrines once stood. People said the old gods were dead.
But underground, roots do not care about names.
They only grow.
---
The boy's name was Sadiq.
He lived in a small settlement near a new construction site—bulldozers, drilling machines, loud men who laughed too much and listened too little. They were clearing land for a road. Progress, they called it.
The earth screamed when they drilled.
No one heard it.
Except Sadiq.
He was ten. Quiet. Always dirty from playing alone. His mother thought he was slow. His teachers thought he was distracted. But at night, when the machines stopped and the ground cooled, Sadiq heard it.
A low sound.
Deep.
Like breathing.
The first time he told his mother, she laughed.
"Earth doesn't breathe," she said.
The second time, she prayed.
The third time, she slapped him.
"Stop talking rubbish."
But the sound grew louder.
The ground near the site began to change. Trees leaned inward. Ants left their holes. Dogs refused to pass near it. One morning, a worker disappeared. Just gone. His helmet was found near a pit filled with soft black soil.
They said he ran away.
Sadiq knew better.
The voice spoke to him that night.
Not kind.
Not angry.
Patient.
They dig where they should not.
Sadiq covered his ears.
"Go away," he whispered.
The voice laughed—not with joy, but with relief.
Another one who can hear.
---
Far away, Chukwuemeka woke from sleep.
Sweat soaked his body. His left palm burned like fire. The scar had opened again, dark and wet.
He knew that feeling.
He had prayed he would never feel it again.
"It's starting," he said to the empty room.
He packed his bag before sunrise.
---
Back at the construction site, the earth collapsed.
Not suddenly.
Slowly.
Like something stretching after a long sleep.
Three machines sank into the ground. One man was pulled down screaming, his legs disappearing first. Roots wrapped around him before anyone could help.
Panic followed.
Work stopped.
Elders were called.
They said the land was angry.
But anger was too simple a word.
That night, Sadiq stood outside his house, staring at the dark ground beyond the fence.
The earth pulsed.
And beneath it, something remembered being fed.