Chukwuemeka collapsed.
Not from weakness—but from knowing.
The forest went quiet in a way that hurt the ears. No wind. No insects. Even the leaves froze. Darkness pressed down, thick like wet cloth over the world.
He lay on the ground near the old square, breathing slowly, his chest rising and falling like someone else was controlling it.
Then the ground beneath him opened.
Not violently.
Gently.
Roots slid apart, forming a hollow. The soil pulled him down like warm hands. He did not fight. He could not.
The earth closed above him.
There was no air.
But he did not suffocate.
Instead, he fell into something vast.
A space beneath the village. Wide. Endless. The walls were made of roots—thousands of them—twisting, pulsing, wet. Faces were trapped inside them. Human faces. Some screaming. Some sleeping. Some still whispering prayers that never ended.
Chukwuemeka stood.
His feet touched something soft.
It was flesh.
A mountain of bodies lay beneath the roots. Old ones. New ones. Some still breathing weakly, their chests barely moving. Their eyes rolled when they saw him.
"This is where they are kept," the tree spoke—not in his head now, but everywhere. "Nothing given is ever returned."
Chukwuemeka shook.
"What… are you?"
The roots moved.
They pulled apart to reveal the heart of it.
The Demonic Tree was not just a tree.
It was something buried.
Something ancient that fell from the sky long before villages had names. Something wounded, starving, trapped beneath the earth. The tree above was only its mouth. Its roots were its fingers.
And the village was built on its grave.
"They found me dying," it said. "They fed me to keep themselves alive."
Images flooded Chukwuemeka's mind.
The first elders. The first hunger. The first child dragged screaming into the forest. Blood poured into the soil. Rain falling the next day. Crops growing tall.
A deal made.
A deal broken.
"You were born from broken ground," the tree said. "Your mother died on soil soaked with debt. Your blood remembers."
Chukwuemeka screamed.
"I didn't choose this!"
The roots wrapped around his body, holding him upright like a puppet.
"You were chosen because you could hear," it replied. "Because you could carry me."
He saw the truth then.
The whispers.
The dreams.
The marks.
They were not possession.
They were growth.
"You are my legs," the tree said.
"My voice."
"My escape."
Above them, the village began to sink.
Houses cracked. The earth softened. The forest swallowed everything—walls, roofs, paths—dragging the remains down into the root-world.
Faces appeared in the soil above, pressed like drowned people under ice.
Chukwuemeka cried.
Tears fell—and turned into sap before they touched the ground.
"Please," he whispered. "Let it end."
The tree paused.
For the first time, it hesitated.
"You still feel," it said. "That is dangerous."
The roots tightened.
Pain unlike anything burned through him. His bones stretched. His skin hardened in places, cracking like bark. His scream shook the underground world.
When it stopped—
He was standing again.
Changed.
Not fully human.
Not fully tree.
Above, the forest exhaled.
The village of Ụmụọkụ was gone.
And something old had finally begun to rise.