It began with silence.

  Not the kind that comes when the crickets sleep, or when old men finish stories.

  No.

  This was the silence of breath stolen. Of clocks broken. Of ancestors blinking mid-dream.

  Zuberi couldn’t move.

  Not because he didn’t want to.

  Because something beneath the world was watching.

  “You do not belong here.”

  That voice.

  It didn’t echo. It dug—through bones, across timelines, past reincarnations and false memories.

  And the trees… gods, the trees were bending backward. Like they were trying to avoid looking at something crawling through dimensions.

  Wanjira swore softly, eyes flicking between Zuberi, Wambui, and the ink-thick darkness oozing from the forest’s edge.

  “Shit. It’s early. They weren’t supposed to come for another—”

  “Another what?” Zuberi hissed.

  “Another generation.”

  Wambui grabbed his hand. She wasn’t wearing shoes. Her feet whispered prophecies into the dirt.

  Her eyes—white as ash, wide as moons—were glowing faintly. That meant one thing:

  She wasn’t fully here.

  “Run,” she said, like a mother telling her child to flee a burning hut. “Don’t ask. Don’t look. Don’t stop.”

  Behind them, the forest moaned.

  Branches twisted. Leaves browned and fell in reverse.

  And then—they stepped out.

  Not beasts. Not men.

  Shadows in human shape.

  Tall. Silent. Featureless. Their heads tilted like they were listening to the blood in your body. Like they knew your full name. The true one. The name your soul refused to speak.

  Wambui’s fingers tightened.

  “Run!”

  They sprinted through Kiambogo, the village now hushed like a breath caught in prayer.

  No one came out.

  No lights. No dogs barking. Not even chickens gossiping in their sleep.

  It was like the whole place had curled inward. Hiding.

  Zuberi glanced back.

  The shadows didn’t chase.

  They drifted.

  Like memory.

  Like regret.

  And wherever they passed, the world blurred. Grass aged. Walls cracked. Sky peeled. Like they were not walking in the world—but rewriting it.

  Wanjira kicked open the door to a little hut half-sunken into the hill.

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  “No time for introductions. In. Now.”

  Zuberi dove in. Wambui collapsed next to him.

  The door slammed.

  From the dark, a voice spoke. Croaky. Soft. Female.

  “You brought the child too early.”

  Wanjira lit a match.

  In the corner, seated on a carved stone that whispered names as it cooled, was a m?thoni wa ngoma—a drum-sorceress.

  Old. Hair like ghost threads. Eyes sunken like the graves of forgotten gods.

  She was sharpening a bone needle with her teeth.

  “This one’s not ready,” she murmured, nodding toward Zuberi.

  “I didn’t ask for your prophecy, G?kamb?ri,” Wanjira snapped. “He touched the Drum. That means he’s awakened.”

  “Awakened?” the old woman rasped, rising. “No, girl. He’s not awakened. He’s been remembered.”

  They sat. The old one fed the fire with banana bark and dreamdust. Smoke curled upward like serpents remembering their wings.

  “Five Pillars hold our world,” G?kamb?ri whispered. “Each bound to a rhythm. Earth. Sky. Water. Fire. Spirit.”

  Wambui finished: “The Fifth was lost.”

  “Not lost,” G?kamb?ri said. “Stolen. And locked inside a body born outside our stars.”

  Her eyes locked on Zuberi.

  “You are that body.”

  Silence again.

  Zuberi stood. “That’s impossible. I’m just some... some displaced—”

  “You are a Memory Vessel,” Wambui said. “A Mb?ri ya Muoyo. A living gourd filled with ancestral echoes.”

  “You’ve been carried through time. Through lives. Each time you forget, the Fifth sinks deeper. But this world? This village? It remembers.”

  Wanjira crossed her arms. “And now the Mb?rim? have smelt him.”

  Zuberi blinked. “The what-now?”

  “The Things That Remember Us,” G?kamb?ri said. “They were once our guardians. Then they became archivists. Then jailors. Now? Hunters.”

  “Of me?”

  “Of what’s inside you.”

  That night, sleep wasn’t mercy. It was invasion.

  Zuberi dreamt of a table.

  Circular. Infinite. Floating above galaxies.

  Seated at it were beings. Not men. Not gods. Not animals.

  Ideas.

  One looked like a laughing flame in a hood.

  Another, a broken mirror with eyes.

  Another, a hand of salt holding a quill made from regrets.

  They turned to him.

  The table shook.

  The flame spoke:

  “We remember what you forgot.”

  The mirror hissed:

  “And we kept your seat warm.”

  The hand pointed at him.

  “Return what was never meant to be carried.”

  And from the center of the table, rising like guilt from a grave—

  —a fifth pillar emerged.

  Not stone. Not gold.

  But skin.

  It pulsed.

  And whispered.

  “Come home.”

  Zuberi woke up screaming.

  The hut was filled with heat.

  His chest glowed—right where the broken necklace sat.

  Symbols burned on his skin. Spirals. Teeth. Stars.

  Outside, the Mb?rim? were closer.

  The door rattled.

  Wambui stood over him, eyes glowing again. “You have to choose.”

  “Choose what?!”

  She took his hand. Pressed it to the drum Wanjira had left beside the bed.

  “Choose to remember.”

  The drum beat once.

  Twice.

  Then his eyes rolled back.

  And in a voice not his own, he whispered:

  “I am the Fifth.”

  Author’s thoughts

  The reason I’m focusing on Africa is not because of favoritism. It’s just noone even knows it’s past history or anything related to it and from the many webnovels I have read, noone has written about them. Got me curious since I’m from the place yet even I don’t know jack. Most of my ideas came from some research on my part since I’m more used to writing stories involving other worlds which I will post when I have the time. And note to self, explaining to AI the meaning of humanity is more tedious that reading a whole library in one day. But at least now the damn thing is trying to write well.