They buried Oba Dike at dawn.
But the earth refused him.
Three times they dug, and three times the ground caved in, spitting up red soil like blood. His coffin cracked open by midday, and the elders declared it a sign. They blamed Adamma. Called her *nwaajọmmụọ*—child of an evil spirit.
But no one dared touch her.
She sat again beneath the baobab, hair wild, eyes glassed with visions. Smoke curled from her skin like incense. Her voice—when she spoke—sounded like three women speaking at once.
"You built shrines over bones. You danced on burial grounds. You took from the earth, and gave nothing back."
Mma Oluchi stood between her daughter and the angry mob. "This girl is not the curse," she shouted. "She is the warning."
That night, the winds screamed. The huts trembled. A storm unlike any seen before swept through the village—no rain, just dust. Thick, choking, ancient.
And in it—shadows walked.
Figures with bones exposed. Women with empty bellies and necks still marked with rope. Children missing limbs. The forgotten dead, once buried without rites, now rising in silence.
The next morning, the village was covered in fine red sand.
No birds. No goat bleats. Just silence.
The only hut untouched?
Mma Oluchi's.
Inside, Adamma stood at a fire.
"They want truth. They want *remembrance*," she whispered to the flame. "And they want blood."
A gathering was called. The remaining elders demanded a sacrifice.
"The girl," said Elder Obi. "Let her blood feed the land."
But Dibia Ofo raised a shaking hand. "No. If you kill the one who sees, you blind the whole village."
They argued. But in the distance, the river turned crimson. And when the villagers returned, they found Elder Obi drowned in his own compound—lungs full of sand.
Adamma came to the center square. Her voice echoed without effort.
"Your sins are not forgotten. Your daughters still cry from beneath your feet. Dig them up. Burn the false idols. Give names to the nameless. Or this dust will never leave."
One by one, secrets surfaced.
Unmarked graves were found behind the chief's hut.
Old chains buried in the yam fields.
A tree with names carved into it—girls taken, girls used, girls discarded.
And as the truth was unearthed, Adamma began to fade.
Each grave she touched returned a piece of her to the wind.
By the seventh day, only her footprints remained in the red dust.
But the village no longer slept.
Because in every mirror, at dusk, her eyes watched.
Waiting.
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