Chukwuemeka woke up to pain.
Not the sharp kind.
The deep kind.
The kind that tells you that you are still alive, even when you wish you weren't.
His eyes opened slowly.
The sky above him was pale, almost white. Morning was trying to come, but the sun looked weak, like it had seen too much during the night and was afraid to shine fully. He lay on cold ground, naked except for torn cloth stuck to his skin with dried blood.
His blood.
He tried to move.
His body answered, but slowly. Every bone ached. Every breath felt borrowed. He touched his chest, afraid of what he would feel.
Skin.
Just skin.
No bark.
No roots.
No movement beneath.
He started crying before he realized it.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just quiet tears that fell into the dirt.
The forest was different.
It was still there, but it felt empty. Trees stood apart now, giving space. The air no longer pressed against him. Birds hesitated, then sang once, softly, as if testing whether it was safe.
Chukwuemeka stood.
As he walked, memories came back—not as visions forced into him, but as pain inside his head. He remembered the faces. The screams. The village being swallowed. He remembered his hands dripping sap.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, again and again, though no one was there to hear.
He reached the place where Ụmụọkụ village used to be.
Nothing remained.
No houses.
No paths.
No square.
Only uneven land and young trees growing too fast, their roots still red underneath. The earth smelled fresh, like something new trying to cover something rotten.
Chukwuemeka fell to his knees.
Everyone was gone.
Not hidden.
Not sleeping.
Gone.
He stayed there until the sun climbed higher. Hunger came, sharp and sudden. He realized how weak he was. How small he felt without the thing that once filled him.
For the first time in days—maybe weeks—he was just a child.
He began to walk.
He did not know where he was going. He only knew he could not stay.
By evening, he reached the edge of the forest. The trees stopped suddenly, like they were afraid to cross into the open land beyond. A narrow road cut through the grass, old but real.
He collapsed beside it.
That was how they found him.
Two traders, passing through before nightfall. They saw a thin boy covered in scars, staring at nothing. When they asked his name, it took a long time before he answered.
"Chukwuemeka," he said.
They took him with them.
They never asked what happened in the forest. And he never told.
---
Years passed.
People spoke of Ụmụọkụ like a rumor. Some said the village relocated after a sickness. Some said bandits wiped it out. Others said it never existed at all.
But elders in nearby towns warned their children never to enter that forest.
"Some places remember blood," they said.
Chukwuemeka grew.
Not normally.
He rarely smiled. He woke screaming some nights, clutching his chest. He hated forests. He hated trees with deep roots. But plants grew well wherever he stayed. Crops flourished without reason. Wood rotted quickly around him.
Sometimes, when he was very tired, he heard a sound.
Deep. Far away.
Like something breathing underground.
He ignored it.
He had learned how dangerous listening could be.
When he became a man, he left. Moved far from the land. Changed his name. Lived quietly. He married. Had no children.
He was afraid of what might pass through blood.
On his left palm, a scar never healed. A dark mark shaped like a root. It burned sometimes, especially when the earth shook or when storms came without warning.
One night, many years later, he dreamed.
He stood in the old clearing. The stone was cracked but still standing. The forest was smaller now, weaker.
And beneath it—
Something shifted.
You sealed me, the voice whispered.
But seals decay.
Chukwuemeka woke up shaking.
He knew then what the truth was.
The Demonic Tree was not destroyed.
It was never meant to be destroyed.
It was buried.
Starved.
Waiting.
Not for him.
For someone else.
Somewhere, someday, another child would hear whispers no one else could hear. Another village would choose comfort over truth. Another covenant would be forgotten.
Chukwuemeka stood at his window, staring at the sleeping world.
"I won't let it happen again," he said.
He did not know how.
But he knew it would start with listening.
And with believing children when they say something is wrong.
Far beneath the earth, roots twitched.
And then—
Stillness.
For now.