03/02/2026
Chapter 3: The Forbidden Room
I tried to leave the house that morning.
After what happened in the night, I told myself no inheritance was worth this. No house, no land, no family name. I packed my small bag quickly, avoiding the altar, avoiding the courtyard, avoiding the baobab tree whose roots still looked disturbed, as if something had crawled in and out of the earth before sunrise.
But when I reached the front door, it would not open.
I pulled harder. Nothing.
The wooden door that had creaked so easily the day before now felt like stone. Panic rose in my chest. I stepped back, then tried again—still nothing. No lock. No bar. Yet the door refused me.
Behind me, the house groaned.
Not the normal sound of old wood settling. This was deeper. Like a warning.
I remembered the old woman’s words:
If you want to live, you must learn what your family did…
With shaking hands, I turned back inside.
That was when I noticed the door.
It was small, low to the ground, hidden behind a woven mat along the inner wall of the house. I was certain it had not been there before. Its surface was covered in carvings—symbols cut so deeply into the wood they looked like scars. Faces. Eyes. Hands raised in protest.
My stomach churned.
Every instinct told me not to touch it.
But the whispers returned, low and insistent.
“Open it…”
“You must see…”
“The truth is hungry…”
I knelt and pushed the mat aside.
The door was warm.
I pulled it open.
A rush of cold air spilled out, carrying a smell so old it felt ancient—dust, iron, and decay. Inside was a narrow room, no bigger than a grave. The walls were lined with shelves, and on those shelves were objects that made my breath catch.
Ritual masks—some cracked, some broken in half.
Calabashes sealed with blackened wax.
Bundles wrapped in animal skin and red thread.
And in the center of the room, resting on a low stool, was a carved wooden box.
It pulsed.
Not visibly—but I felt it. Like a heartbeat that wasn’t mine.
I reached for it, then froze.
On the wall behind the box were handprints.
Not painted.
Pressed.
As if someone had been pushed hard against the clay wall, struggling, begging.
Suddenly, the whispers stopped.
Silence rushed in, heavy and suffocating.
Then a voice spoke—not from the walls, not from the shadows—but from inside my head.
“He took what was not given.”
Images flooded my mind.
My uncle, younger, standing in this same room. A group of elders around him. An argument. Raised voices. Fear. Greed.
I saw him steal the box during a sacred ritual meant to protect the village. A ritual that bound restless spirits to the land, keeping them from wandering, keeping them calm.
He broke the seal.
And everything changed.
People began to fall sick. Children screamed at night. Shadows moved where they shouldn’t. The elders tried to fix it—but my uncle refused to return what he had taken.
“He wanted power,” the voice said.
“He wanted protection only for his bloodline.”
My legs buckled, and I collapsed onto the floor.
That was when I noticed the floor markings.
A ritual circle.
Scratched into the ground with desperation.
And drag marks leading out of the room.
Something had been pulled away.
Alive.
The wooden box trembled.
The carvings on its surface began to shift, faces twisting in silent agony. I scrambled backward, heart hammering, as the room grew darker.
From the corner, a shape began to form.
Tall. Thin. Wrong.
Its eyes opened last.
White. Empty. Furious.
“You carry his blood,” it hissed.
“So you will carry his debt.”
The house shook violently. I screamed as the door slammed shut on its own, plunging me into darkness—
—and then everything went silent.
When I woke up, I was lying outside the forbidden room. The door was gone. The mat lay flat against the wall as if nothing had ever been there.
But my hands were shaking.
And carved into my palm, burned deep into my skin, was a symbol I did not recognize.
Yet somehow…
I knew it meant payment.
゚
