The sun returned the next morning with its usual stubborn heat, but the air on site felt colder, strangely so. Though the hum of machinery and the clang of steel carried on as if nothing had changed, the black stone rested in its tarpaulin shell like a buried heartbeat, pulsing quietly in the back of everyone's mind.
Keyslar arrived at the tool house early. He had barely slept. His boots sank into the red mud still drying from the night dew as he crossed the yard. He paused by the shed door, staring at it without touching the latch. Something about the rope lying slack on the ground from the night before hadn't left him. But he didn't say a word.
He wasn't the only one thinking about the stone.
At midmorning, while the concrete mixers turned and drills coughed against the hard Kinamis soil, a group of workers gathered behind the generator shed, away from prying eyes. Grat was already there, cigarette in hand, puffing with the air of someone ready to say something dangerous.
"It's not just any stone," he said, watching the smoke spiral upward. "You all saw it. You felt it."
Kento spat beside him. "I felt cold. Like ice on my back. That's not normal, man."
"Exactly," Grat said, lowering his voice. "Things like that? They're never just rocks."
Mayo, who had just joined them, looked around before speaking. "I heard Brandt wants to keep it hidden. Said not to inform the king or local authorities."
"Why would he say that?" Emral asked, arms folded. "Why hide it?"
Grat grinned. "Because he knows what I know, it's valuable. Rare. Maybe ancient. That glow around the middle? I bet some museum in Europe would pay millions for it. Or a private collector. They like weird things."
Kento frowned. "That thing didn't look safe."
"Dangerous things are the most expensive," Grat replied.
Mayo shook his head. "You want to sell it? Without telling the company or the king? That's madness. What if it's sacred? What if it belongs to the town?"
Grat's tone sharpened. "Does it look like the town's been using it? No one knew it was there. We found it. Or rather, it found us. Why should we leave it for some fat politician or sorcerers to claim?"
There was a pause. No one liked how easily he'd said sorcerers. But no one countered, either.
Grat pressed on, voice lower now. "We wrap it again. Wait till we finish the project. Then we take it with us. Quietly. No fuss. Nobody talks. Not to the supervisors, not to the king. Especially not the king."
Kento's eyes narrowed. "What about Keyslar? He'll never agree."
Grat exhaled, lips tight. "We don't tell him either. Let him think it'll stay here, buried again. We move it when he's not looking. Or we offer him a cut."
Behind them, someone cleared their throat.
They turned fast, hands twitching toward tools, only to see Damitz, camp cook, face unreadable, apron dusted with flour.
"You all should be careful what you discuss near an old man's ears," he said slowly, looking from one to the other. "Some stones bury themselves for a reason." He walked away without waiting for a reply.
That night stretched long and uneasy in Kinamis. In three separate homes across the town, men who had lived through wars, famines, and plagues stirred from sleep with sweat-drenched brows.
Gafan, the king's oldest adviser, sat upright on his bed, hand trembling as he reached for the gourd of water beside his bed. He had dreamt of birds, hundreds of them, falling from the sky into a bottomless pit that breathed like a mouth. He could still hear the hiss of the wind in his ears, whispering a name he hadn't heard in decades: Osungho.
Elsewhere, a retired principal awoke gasping. His sleep had been blank and dark, dreamless yet suffocating, like he'd been held beneath still water. He sat up slowly, the whisper of his late wife's name still on his lips, though he hadn't heard her voice in years.
In a narrow compound at the town's edge, an old woman with no family name still remembered sat weeping into her wrapper. Her vision had shown fire sprouting from the earth like a living thing, licking upward into the sky, yet leaving no smoke, no trace. Her dog had refused to enter the house afterward.
Farther west, a goat circled its pen, bleating toward the east, refusing to go inside. And in three different homes, oil lamps flickered violently just before dawn, though there was no wind.
By morning, the council members in town began whispering to each other, on porches, over steaming cups of bitter root tea, beneath the shadows of old trees. Each of them remembered that name. Osungho. None of them said it out loud.
Back at the camp, something had shifted. Keyslar noticed it first. The morning fog, which usually burned off by eight, clung low to the ground like breath on glass. The birds that once nested along the power lines were gone. The clanging of hammers and roar of machines felt dulled, as though the soil itself were listening.
Elinz reported her watch had stopped at exactly 2:14 a.m., the same time the camp dog had started whimpering again. Kizito found two of the site's solar-powered surveying drones completely drained, though they hadn't been used since the previous week. They couldn't explain it.
And behind the shed, where the stone lay wrapped in silence, bare footprints had appeared in the mud. No prints led away. Just a trail that started and stopped like something had risen briefly from the ground.
At lunch, Damitz served the workers quietly, without the usual jokes. No stories, no riddles, not even a greeting. The men noticed. A few muttered under their breath. Some avoided his eyes. Even the air in the canteen felt heavier than usual, like it had thickened into something that could carry secrets.
Later that afternoon, Brandt gathered Keyslar, Elinz, Kizito, and Grat into his trailer. The blinds were drawn. A small portable fan hummed uselessly in the corner.
"I've decided to keep the stone secured until I hear from headquarters," Brandt announced. "It could be geological, archaeological, maybe even mythological. Whatever it is, we need time to assess it properly."
Keyslar raised an eyebrow. "With respect, sir, the town should know. The king invited this project. Hiding discoveries doesn't sit well with them."
"We don't even know what it is," Brandt countered. "And until we do, this is internal company matter."
Kizito spoke for the first time. "It wasn't in the topographical layout. It's not a rock. It's something else."
"Exactly why it stays where it is," Brandt snapped. "End of discussion."
Elinz leaned forward. "You realize the workers are talking, right? Something happened last night. The dogs, the lights, this isn't coincidence. We should call experts. Or at least, local authorities."
Brandt's face hardened. "We are the experts here. No one says a word until I say so."
Grat said nothing. Just listened. Quiet. Calculating.
By nightfall, the mood at the camp had gone from tense to brittle. Meals were eaten in silence. No laughter from the laundry hut. Even the foremen who usually barked orders did so in subdued tones.
That evening, Grat slipped into the shed with Mayo and Emral. They peeled back a flap of the tarpaulin.
The stone hadn't moved. But something else had.
The tools they'd left near it had shifted, unnaturally arranged, as though pushed by unseen hands. Ropes that were tightly coiled the night before now hung slack. A faint hum filled the shed like a mosquito's whine, low, steady, impossible to locate.
"We need to move this soon," Grat whispered. "Before someone changes their mind."
Emral looked at him, unease deepening. "Are you sure this isn't more than just a stone?"
Grat didn't reply. He just covered the stone again, slower this time. He wasn't sure anymore, but certainty no longer mattered.
At the far end of the mechanic bay, Mayo and Grat met again the next day. Grat had pulled out a worn map of the region from the company archive and spread it across an empty crate.
"Brandt's watching too closely," Mayo whispered. "We'll never move it when he's awake."
"We don't have to," Grat said, tapping a point on the map. "We wait till they shift the crew to the bridge site. Night after tomorrow. Half the camp will be there. That's our window."
Mayo hesitated. "This thing, it's not just a stone, Grat. I can feel it."
"It's not just ours, either," Grat replied, rolling up the map. "But we found it. And we either make something of it, or it makes something of us."
They clasped hands in silent agreement.
Outside, the wind picked up suddenly, rattling the tool house windows. Keyslar, standing on the porch, glanced toward the shed. For a second, he thought he heard something from within. Like breathing. Or waiting.
He stepped off the porch, unaware he was walking into the middle of a storm older than the project itself.
And in the heart of Kinamis, King Marcus woke from a dream he couldn't remember. His chest was tight. His breathing shallow.
He called for Gafan.
"I dreamt of black water," he murmured. "And voices under it."
Gafan was quiet for a long time. Then said, "We must visit the old shrine."
The king nodded slowly, troubled. His pulse echoed in his ears like distant thunder.
Something was stirring.
And the king, though unaware of the details, felt the first tug of a god's forgotten anger.
Back at the site, Grat lay awake in his bunk, eyes open to the dark. The wind had stopped. The night was too still.
In the pit of his mind, a thought grew, thick and rooted like a weed. The king must never know. Not until it was far too late.