Chukwuemeka did not leave the site that night.
He stayed crouched beside the cracked stone until dawn, his palm pressed against it, feeling the slow pulse beneath. Not a heartbeat—something older. Something that did not rush.
The earth was learning him again.
It tested his presence with small movements. A twitch of soil. A ripple through buried roots. A whisper that brushed the edge of his mind and slipped away when he tried to listen.
He did not answer.
He had learned that lesson the hard way.
When morning came, workers returned in small groups, standing far from the site, whispering, pointing. No one crossed the fence. The ground looked calmer, but calm had become another lie.
Chukwuemeka stood and dusted soil from his clothes. His hands shook—not from fear, but from memory. The smell of the place was wrong. It reminded him too much of Ụmụọkụ. Of a land pretending nothing was buried beneath it.
Then he felt it.
Eyes on him.
He turned slowly.
Sadiq stood across the road, half-hidden behind a rusted container. The boy's face was pale. His hands were clenched tightly at his sides, knuckles white. He was staring directly at Chukwuemeka, not curious, not confused—
Recognizing.
Their eyes met.
The ground tightened.
Roots shifted beneath the surface like muscles flexing.
Chukwuemeka's heart sank.
He crossed the road slowly, keeping his movements calm. When he was close enough, he knelt so they were eye level.
"What is it saying to you?" he asked quietly.
Sadiq flinched.
"You can hear it too," the boy said.
It was not a question.
Chukwuemeka nodded once.
The boy's breath caught.
"It told me you would come," Sadiq whispered. "It said the first one always comes back."
Chukwuemeka closed his eyes.
So it remembered him clearly now.
"Has it shown you things?" he asked. "Dreams. Pictures. People who aren't alive anymore."
Sadiq nodded slowly.
"It shows me men inside the ground," he said. "Their mouths are open, but dirt keeps falling in."
Chukwuemeka swallowed hard.
"That's how it starts."
Before Sadiq could ask what he meant, a scream tore through the air.
They turned together.
A woman stood near the clinic, clawing at her chest. Blood poured from her nose and ears as roots forced their way out from beneath her skin, tearing her body open from the inside. She collapsed, stiffening, drying, becoming something hollow and brown in seconds.
People scattered.
The earth was no longer hiding.
Chukwuemeka stood up.
"You see?" he said softly to Sadiq. "It doesn't protect. It uses."
The ground vibrated violently.
The voice rose, angry now.
You fill his head with lies.
Chukwuemeka felt the words push against his mind like pressure.
"He's not yours," Chukwuemeka said aloud. "Not yet."
The soil cracked.
A root burst out between them, slamming into the air like a warning.
Sadiq screamed and stepped back.
Chukwuemeka did not move.
"You remember the stone," he said, speaking directly to the thing beneath them. "You remember how it burned."
The voice faltered.
Just slightly.
That was enough.
That night, Sadiq could not sleep.
The voice did not whisper gently anymore. It argued. It pushed. It showed him images of Chukwuemeka screaming beneath the earth, of roots ripping him apart, of silence afterward.
He will abandon you, it said.
Just like the others did.
Sadiq buried his face in his pillow.
"I don't want this," he cried.
The room smelled of damp soil.
Roots pressed against the walls from outside, slow and patient.
Chukwuemeka prepared.
He returned to the old market area and searched until he found what he was looking for—an elder woman who remembered too much. Her back was bent, her eyes cloudy, but when he mentioned the land, her hands began to shake.
"They warned us," she whispered. "They always warn, but nobody listens when money is involved."
She told him about the stone.
Not just one.
Three.
Bindings placed long ago by people who understood that some things could not be killed—only chained, fed carefully, forgotten at a distance.
Two had already broken.
The third was under the site.
Cracked.
Weak.
"If it breaks fully," the woman said, "it won't need children anymore."
Chukwuemeka felt cold spread through his chest.
"What happens then?"
"It walks," she replied.
The next incident came before midnight.
A child disappeared.
Not Sadiq.
Another boy. Younger. Dragged screaming into the ground behind his house while his mother watched helplessly as roots wrapped around his waist and pulled him under inch by inch.
The earth did not close afterward.
It stayed open.
Breathing.
Chukwuemeka ran toward the sound, ignoring the pain screaming through his scar. He reached the hole just as the boy's hand slipped beneath the surface.
He grabbed it.
The ground fought him.
Roots wrapped around his arms, his legs, his throat. He felt himself being pulled down, memories flooding back—darkness, weight, voices layered over each other.
Come back, the voice urged. You were perfect.
Chukwuemeka roared and drove his bleeding palm into the soil.
The roots recoiled.
The boy was yanked free, unconscious but alive.
The ground slammed shut.
Chukwuemeka collapsed beside the child, gasping.
Sadiq stood nearby, watching everything.
The voice inside him screamed.
Confused.
Angry.
Scared.
For the first time, Sadiq understood something clearly.
The thing beneath the earth could be hurt.
And Chukwuemeka was the proof.
That night, the ground did not sleep.
Roots shifted direction.
Not toward Sadiq.
Toward Chukwuemeka.
The hunt had begun.