The villagers said no living soul should climb the Hill of Bones after dark.
But Adamma wasn't just a soul. She was something older. Something echoing.
Mma Oluchi stood barefoot at the base of the hill, her arms outstretched, chanting in a tongue even the elders no longer understood. Her voice broke with each verse, but she did not stop. She couldn't. If her daughter failed the rite, the spirits wouldn't just take her—they'd take the village too.
Adamma began her climb.
The red clay of the hill stained her feet. Cracked bones poked through the earth, some brittle and ancient, some disturbingly fresh. No birds sang. No insects stirred. Only wind—and the sound of her name being whispered again and again by unseen mouths.
*"Adamma…"*
With each step, visions flickered.
A girl in white running through fire. A boy nailed to a tree, his mouth sewn shut. Women standing in a circle, humming as they bled into a calabash.
Adamma gritted her teeth and climbed.
At the top of the hill, the shrine waited. A jagged stone altar, blackened by years of offerings—blood, hair, ash. Behind it loomed the sacred mask of *Ala-Nnukwu*, the forgotten earth goddess, carved with six empty eyeholes.
Dibia Ofo waited beside it, staff in hand.
"Lay down," he said.
Adamma obeyed.
The old man placed a kola nut in her mouth. "Do not chew unless your spirit is called."
He painted a red line from her forehead to her chin, whispering prayers. The moon glowed blood-red above them.
Then the wind stilled.
And the ground opened.
From beneath the altar, a hollow groan escaped—as if the hill itself exhaled. Bones shifted. Dust rose. And a voice—ancient, feminine, and furious—filled the sky.
*"Why have you summoned us?"*
Dibia Ofo fell to his knees. "The bloodline calls to you. The Seventh Daughter returns."
Adamma's chest burned. Something inside her stirred, ancient and cold.
*"She bears the mark,"* the voice hissed. *"But does she remember the pain?"*
Suddenly, Adamma's back arched.
Flashes of lives not hers flooded in—women burned as witches, girls drowned in rivers for birthing twins, mothers buried alive beneath cursed trees.
*She was all of them.*
Adamma screamed.
The kola nut cracked in her mouth.
Lightning split the sky.
When the dust cleared, Adamma lay still, her eyes open—glowing faintly gold.
"She remembers," the voice said, quiet now. *"Then let the path begin."*
From that moment, the girl was no longer just Adamma.
She was *thevessel*.
And the earth would begin to shake.
—