The first sign that something had gone terribly wrong came three days after the collapse.
The missing worker returned.
His name was Ibrahim.
They found him at dawn, standing at the edge of the construction site where the earth had swallowed the machines. He was barefoot. His clothes were stiff with dried mud. His helmet hung loosely in his hand, cracked down the middle.
He did not speak.
At first, the men thought he was in shock. Someone called his name. Another man stepped closer and touched his shoulder.
Ibrahim turned slowly.
That was when they saw his eyes.
They were open—but empty. Not white. Not rolled back. Just hollow, like something had scooped them out and forgotten to fill the space again. His mouth opened slightly, and dirt spilled out, falling onto his chest in a steady stream.
One of the men screamed.
Ibrahim raised his hand and pointed at the ground.
Then he collapsed.
They rushed him to the clinic.
The nurse ran out crying before they could ask questions.
Inside the small room, Ibrahim's body lay still on the bed. But his chest was moving—not breathing. Something was shifting beneath his skin. His ribs pushed outward slowly, as if something inside him was stretching, testing its space.
Roots burst through his stomach.
Thin at first. Then thick.
They tore him open without blood. His body dried instantly, shrinking, hardening, turning dark like old wood. Within minutes, there was nothing left on the bed but a hollow shell wrapped in roots.
The clinic was shut down.
The story spread.
Some said Ibrahim was cursed. Others said it was witchcraft. A pastor came and prayed loudly, sweating and shaking, but left before nightfall without explanation.
Sadiq watched everything.
He stood behind his mother, quiet, his heart beating fast.
The voice beneath the ground had grown stronger.
They opened the wound, it said.
And wounds remember hands.
That night, Sadiq dreamed of roots crawling up his legs, wrapping gently, lovingly. He dreamed of being pulled underground and held tight by something that felt familiar.
He woke screaming.
Chukwuemeka arrived two days later.
He did not come like a hero. No thunder followed him. No sign marked his arrival. Just a thin, tired man stepping off a bus with a small bag and eyes that looked too deep for his face.
The moment his feet touched the soil, his scar burned.
He knelt and pressed his palm to the ground.
"It's worse," he whispered. "You're not starving anymore."
The earth vibrated beneath him.
He followed the feeling to the construction site.
Police tape flapped uselessly in the wind. Machines sat half-buried, rust already forming. The air was heavy, wet, wrong.
Then he saw Sadiq.
The boy stood near the fence, staring straight at the ground.
Chukwuemeka felt it immediately.
Recognition.
Not of the boy—but of the silence around him. The way the earth leaned toward him. The way roots just beneath the surface trembled when he moved.
The same way it once did for him.
Chukwuemeka's stomach dropped.
"No," he whispered. "Not another one."
That evening, something happened that sealed the truth.
A group of young men, drunk and angry, decided fear was weakness. They went to the site with fire and machetes, shouting that nothing controlled them.
They laughed as they crossed the broken fence.
The laughter stopped.
The ground turned soft beneath their feet.
One man sank to his knees, then his waist. Roots wrapped around his arms and pulled them apart with a sound like wet cloth tearing. Another tried to run, but a tree root burst from the soil and pierced through his chest, lifting him into the air.
The last man made it to the fence.
He grabbed the wire.
The ground split beneath him.
A mouth opened.
Not a hole.
A mouth.
Teeth made of stone and root closed around his legs and pulled him down screaming.
The earth closed.
Silence returned.
Sadiq watched from his window.
The voice spoke warmly now.
You see?
I protect you.
Sadiq shook his head, tears falling.
"I don't want this," he whispered.
Neither did the first one, the voice replied.
That night, Chukwuemeka broke into the site.
He dug with his bare hands until blood mixed with soil. He ignored the pain, the pulling, the whispering. He dug until he reached something hard.
Stone.
The old binding.
Cracked.
Weakened.
"They built over it," he said, laughing bitterly. "They always do."
The earth trembled.
You came back, the voice said to him.
Why?
Chukwuemeka pressed his bleeding palm to the stone.
"Because you're reaching again," he said. "And this time, I won't run."
From the shadows, Sadiq watched.
The boy felt something change.
The voice hesitated.
For the first time, it was unsure.
And deep underground, roots began to shift—not upward this time, but toward conflict.