Chuka remained still for a long time, kneeling before the cracked slab, his breath ragged.
The echo of the voice lingered in his skull — not as words anymore, but as feeling. Ancient grief. Endless memory. The hum of a thousand lifetimes compressed into his pulse.
He closed his eyes and let the warmth settle in his chest.
It wasn't only power he felt — it was weight.
A flood of sensations followed: the rhythm of roots beneath the soil, the faint tremor of rivers under rock, the slow heartbeat of the plateau itself.
He could sense everything.
Every stone. Every whisper of wind. Every vibration was a word in a language his mind shouldn't have understood — but his blood did.
> You hear it now, the voice murmured. The song of the sealed ones.
"I don't want this," he whispered. "I never asked for it."
> No one ever asks to remember what the earth forgot.
The glow on his skin dimmed slightly, replaced by fine golden lines — not scars, but scripts.
Symbols drifted faintly under the surface of his skin, moving as if alive. He stared at them, breath shallow. Every heartbeat rearranged them, forming shifting patterns he could almost read.
A memory surfaced — a conversation long buried.
His mother's voice, soft and musical, telling him as a boy:
> "Clay holds the memory of hands, Chuka. When you touch the earth, it remembers you too."
He hadn't understood then.
Now, he did.
He pressed a hand to the cave floor, and the rock rippled faintly under his palm, like liquid.
Startled, he pulled back — but the movement left an imprint, a glowing mark that shimmered before fading.
He could shape it.
The Maker's gift.
But there was danger in that thought. He felt it — a subtle pull, like gravity drawing him inward. The more he accepted the hum, the stronger it became, as if the power itself wanted him to surrender.
His reflection in a nearby puddle caught his eye.
It wasn't his face anymore — not completely. His pupils were ringed with gold, his veins faintly luminescent beneath the skin. The sight filled him with awe… and fear.
"What are you turning me into?" he whispered.
> Into what you were always meant to be.
"No. I'm not a god. I'm not one of you."
> All creation begins with denial, the voice said, its tone almost gentle. Even the first Maker trembled when he shaped the world.
Chuka clenched his fists. The markings on his arms flared in response.
A deep crack echoed through the chamber as one of the runes on the slab split open — and a column of dust rose like a ghost from within.
Inside it, faint silhouettes shimmered — humanoid forms, their features indistinct. They circled him slowly, whispering in forgotten tongues. The air grew colder, charged with ancient energy.
He stumbled backward, his breath quickening. "Stay back—!"
But the figures didn't move closer. They hovered — guardians, not aggressors. And when they spoke, their voices overlapped with his own heartbeat.
> The Seal is not your enemy. It is your inheritance.
Do not fear what answers your call.
Fear only forgetting who you are.
The forms dissolved into light and rejoined the walls, their whispers fading into the hum.
Chuka fell to his knees, shaking, his mind caught between terror and revelation.
He was no longer sure where his thoughts ended and theirs began.
He touched his chest again. The rhythm was steady now, his pulse and the relic's perfectly aligned. The cave no longer felt hostile — it recognized him, and in some strange, terrible way, it was glad.
A faint wind passed through the cavern, though there was no opening for it to enter.
It carried a final whisper, one that chilled him:
> The others will feel you now.
He froze. "What others?"
> The Amours that sleep beneath the continents. They will stir when you do.
The glow dimmed. Silence returned.
For a long moment, Chuka didn't move. The words echoed in his head like thunder rolling through mountains.
If there were other Amours — other relics — then Chief Roman wasn't chasing superstition. He was chasing a network of buried gods.
And Chuka's blood had just woken them.
He rose slowly, gripping the Heart of the Plateau. Its pulse was no longer frantic — it matched his perfectly.
He understood now: he couldn't destroy the Amour. He had to balance it — seal it again before Roman found the others.
He looked around the chamber one last time.
The light from the sigils cast faint shadows of his outline against the rock, forming something larger, older — a shape not entirely human.
He turned away before he could study it too long.
When he stepped out of the cave, dawn had broken.
The Jos plateau stretched before him, bathed in the pale light of morning.
But something had changed. The air thrummed faintly around him, birds circling higher, animals scattering in instinctive silence.
He felt it too — the world adjusting to his awakening.
He took a deep breath, closing his eyes.
For the first time, he wasn't running from who he was. He was running toward it.
> "If this is what I've inherited," he murmured, "then I'll use it to end what Roman started."
The hum within him answered — low, resonant, and endless.
He started walking, the sun rising at his back, and for a moment, it seemed as though the earth itself moved with him.
---