Deep in the Amazon, beyond the reach of satellites and the passage of time, a jungle is breathing in rhythms that predate human civilization. Mist clings to trees like ancestral ghosts, and the canopy roars with the sound of birdsong and beast growls. Human life is a myth in this vast emerald realm where rivers coil like serpents and thunder speaks before rain.
There are tribes here that no map has ever marked. Tribes so secluded, their language is spoken only in dreams and drumming. The Juruva paint their bodies in molten clay and worship the Great Root, a god that sleeps beneath the forest floor. The K'Tai do not speak at all, communicating only through song and tattoo. But it is the Taaroa, the blood-tribe, that has begun to change.
Their shamans have spoken of the Black Awakening. Their fires burn longer. Their children are born with black eyes. Their gods demand more, and their totems contort into strange shapes. A ritual takes place tonight close to the infamous clearing called Verde-Morta, in the deepest section of the jungle. With their bodies covered in ash and crushed beetle ink, dozens of masked figures chant in a language that has been forgotten. At the center, a young boy kneels—unblinking, willing. He is not afraid. He has been told his soul will nourish the god.
Drums beat more quickly. Shivering leaves. The elder comes forward with a blade made from a jaguar's jawbone and tipped with obsidian.
The elder murmurs, "Zar'kutu—ek'sava." He lifts the blade— —but the earth trembles before it can fall.
The trees flinch.
Something observes.
Something old.
The ceremony comes to an end.
And eyes shine softly in the moonlight in the trees.
---
The morning after the failed Taaroa ritual began with a silence far too deep for the jungle.
No insects chittered. No birds called. The trees themselves stood still, their leaves trembling as if in reverence or fear. A thick, golden mist hung over the clearing, and the fire pit where the sacrifice had nearly occurred was now a crater—charred, blackened, and humming softly with some unnatural energy.
In place of the child's body was something the Taaroa had no name for. Something no tribe in the Amazon, not even the oldest bloodlines, had ever dared carve.
A totem.
It stood four feet high, fashioned from pale bone that shimmered like polished ivory but pulsed like something alive. Its surface bore glyphs not etched, but grown. Thorny tendrils of fungus and root coiled around it like living veins. At the top, a sculpted face stared skyward in agony. Its hollow eyes leaked a thick, black sap that stained the ground below.
Qor'Maal, the Taaroa's revered shaman, approached in ceremonial silence. His painted robes fluttered in the ghost-wind, his body trembling with reverence. He had seen things. Visions. Storms of memory that did not belong to him. He knelt before the totem, pressing his aged palm against the glyphs.
A scream erupted—not from the totem, not from the forest, but within his mind. A cry so deep it shattered thought.
Endless oceans turning red. Cities buried beneath ash. Skies stitched with lightning. And above it all… a god with seven mouths and eyes that bled stars.
Qor'Maal fell backward, blood streaming from his ears. His breath came ragged. The tribe ran to him, holding him down, chanting words of healing. The children began to cry.
The totem kept weeping.
When he finally rose, his voice was not his own.
"This is no god of the forest," he said. "This… is a memory carved from the bones of the world."
The elders gathered. Warriors drew their sacred blades. They whispered of Y'tarka—a name erased from their stories for fear of speaking it aloud. A god cast down by time itself.
That night, Qor'Maal lit the Signal Pyres.
He called for the other tribes—the silent K'Tai, the rootbound Juruva, even the exiled bone-witches of Uru-Nox. Old alliances would have to be reforged. War-blood buried for centuries would rise again.
"The forest must speak as one," he declared. "Or it will be the last time it speaks at all."
Deep in the underbrush, the trees twisted away from something moving beneath the soil. Something slithering toward the surface.
And far, far away, in the direction of the Andes, a mountain-shaped statue opened its eyes for the first time in over 12,000 years.
---
Pyres blazed in unison across the shivering expanse of the jungle—signals etched in fire for those who remembered how to read the ancient tongues of smoke. They arrived by the second night. Silent as a myth, the K'Tai arrived first. Their faces concealed by featureless wooden masks, they were dressed in robes of black vine and obsidian leaves. Mantras inked on their skin flowed over their arms like water, shifting in the moonlight. Although the K'Tai never spoke, their ancient, unintelligible, and menacing presence was felt like a thundercloud. The Juruva—nomads of the canopy, clad in feathers and wearing bone necklaces that clattered with each step—came next. Elder Kumana, their shaman, carried a spear that pulsed with druidic energy and wore a headdress made of albino anaconda scales.
They carried tales of vines choking the sky itself, birds going silent, and trees shedding blood. However, even the jungle flinched when the Uru-Nox appeared.
Their leader, Vatra, was known as the Bone-Witch. Tall and emaciated, her body was wrapped in ceremonial bindings soaked in sacrificial ichor. Her voice carried like a blade wrapped in silk.
"The seal has cracked," she said. "The gate opens from beneath."
They assembled at Verde-Morta—the forbidden clearing once thought cursed, now clearly chosen. Totems lined its perimeter, all weeping the same dark sap. Shamans lit the Ash Circle, the most sacred rite of tribal unity, used only once every thousand years.
Qor'Maal addressed the gathered crowd of hundreds:
"The jungle remembers things we have forgotten. Gods that were buried, not vanquished. This totem… is not a message. It is a warning."
Kumana nodded gravely. "We dreamed of this day. But in dreams, we always died."
Vatra turned to the weeping totem. "This… is not made by man, beast, or spirit. It was left behind. From a war we did not win."
The K'Tai produced something none had seen in centuries—a sealed skull wrapped in prayer-cloth, vibrating with heat. They placed it before the weeping totem.
The totem's sap stopped.
And the jungle exhaled.
Just for a moment.
Then thunder cracked above.
Not from the sky.
From beneath the earth.
---
Silence descended upon Verde-Morta as the earth rumbled beneath their feet. Children hid behind shamans, and warriors gripped their weapons. Long shadows danced like resurrected ancient spirits as the firelight flickered violently.
Near the gathering's edge, the cracked earth started to split. Moss peeled away. Roots hissed like serpents pulling free from centuries of entanglement. A shape emerged—not rising, but unfolding. A shrine made from petrified bark and blackened stone, etched in glyphs older than language.
"The Gate of Koru'Zhal," Vatra whispered. "It feeds on memory."
None had spoken that name aloud in over a millennium.
From within the shrine, a wind began to howl. But it carried no scent—no warmth or chill. It was the wind of forgotten things. Of prayers unsaid. Of gods unburied.
Qor'Maal stepped forward. His staff pulsed in warning, but he did not falter. He knelt before the shrine and pressed a ceremonial dagger into the earth.
"We do not come to awaken," he chanted. "We come to understand."
Suddenly, the ground collapsed.
A great chasm tore open beneath them, swallowing the shrine, the roots, and half the circle of totems. Shamans scrambled to pull survivors from the brink. The weeping skull of the K'Tai rolled into the abyss, vanishing into darkness.
Then the voice came.
Low. Deep. Echoing through every mind in the gathering.
"We are not forgotten. We are buried. And the jungle no longer remembers how to hide us."
Men screamed. Women wept. Elders fell to their knees, murmuring prayers in every dialect.
Vatra stood unmoved. "It has begun," she said. "The Curse Root has cracked."
From within the chasm, something vast began to stir. A heartbeat—slow, but growing.
The jungle would never sleep again.
---
With the Gate of Koru'Zhal stirring beneath them and the jungle alive with whispered warnings, the allied tribes knew that mere prayers would not stop what was coming. They needed a weapon. Not of steel or bone—but of soul, sacrifice, and binding magic older than even the gods they feared.
Under the direction of the K'Tai, whose inked skin sang to the winds, and the guidance of Vatra, the Bone-Witch, the shamans began the Ritual of the Root-Fire. Deep in the sacred forge of Qoll'Zem—hidden beneath the roots of a thousand-year ceiba tree—they crafted a dagger from three rare components:
A fang from the last living death jaguar
A sliver of obsidian soaked in black sap from the weeping totem
And the soul-ash of a shaman who willingly gave himself to the flames
The process took three nights and three heart-blood sacrifices.
When it was done, the dagger shimmered with a life of its own—its blade curved like a serpent's fang, veins of gold and black running through it, and its hilt wrapped in blood-stained vine. Its name was Vell'Zharr, which in the old tongue meant "The Thorn That Cuts Time."
The tribes agreed: it would be kept hidden, buried within the sacred heart of the jungle until needed. But one man disagreed.
Kael, a young warrior from the Juruva, believed the blade was salvation. He believed it could make him a god.
One storm-lit night, Kael stole into the shrine and took the blade.
The jungle watched.
As Kael fled toward the great river, thunder cracked and beasts howled. The dagger pulsed in his hand—growing heavier, colder. He reached the riverbank just as the skies tore open.
Then it happened.
A scream. A surge of water. And Kael was gone.
His body was never found.
But the dagger? It floated.
Across the river.
Down the tributaries.
Into the Amazon.
Then out to sea.
And one year later, during the height of a Victorian winter, it washed up on the frozen shores of East London.
Where a man in a dark coat found it glinting in the moonlight.
And smiled.