The sun had begun to lower, casting long, golden slants of light across the rising bones of the new Kinamis road. It had been three weeks since the groundbreaking ceremony, and progress was swift. Andar Holdings had proved efficient, if also demanding. The site buzzed with machinery and manpower, a coordinated orchestra of steel, sweat, and cement.
Keyslar, the foreman, moved across the yard with his usual unhurried gait, though his eyes saw everything. From the reckless way Grat hoisted the concrete mix too close to the edge, to Mayo's sneaky half-minute breaks behind the generator house, nothing escaped him. Today, however, his focus wasn't on the crew. Today, something was off.
Earlier that morning, as he made a routine inspection along the eastern edge of the site, Keyslar had noticed a cluster of birds circling the same spot in the sky. Not just any birds, black hawks, rarely seen in Kinamis, hovering low and restless above an untouched stretch of earth. Then there was the smell. Not rot, not chemicals. It was sharp, metallic, and cold. It seemed to come and go in waves, like breath exhaled from the soil itself. He squatted near the marked trench and touched the earth, cooler than the rest, damp but not with moisture. It felt wrong.
He didn't say anything at first. He just marked the spot with chalk and made a mental note to revisit
Another worker named Emral stumbled upon something odd. He was adjusting the alignment of the concrete slab molds when he tripped over a root that shouldn't have been there, because it wasn't a root. It was smooth, unnaturally so, and dark like the inside of a charcoal kiln. He crouched, brushed it clean with his gloves, and saw a shape that curved inward, not out, almost like the edge of a shell. He called out, but no one paid much attention. So he flagged down Keyslar, who walked over silently.
Together they knelt, and as Keyslar brushed more soil away, the sheen became clearer. "Go get Kizito," Keyslar muttered.
It was Kizito who first raised a brow. He had been charting the soil texture in a newly marked trench, one that stretched wider and deeper than the others. The topography of the land here had an oddness to it, more resistant in places, unusually soft in others. That morning, when the CAT excavator roared into life and dug through the lower levels, it hit something.
Not rock. Not metal. Not earth.
The operator, a young man named Dumbero, jumped out of the cabin after the jarring clunk rattled his machine. He waved over Keyslar, who called for Kizito. Together, they knelt by the pit.
What they found was a surface smoother than any stone, black as burnt coal but with a curious sheen. It wasn't shaped by nature, no, it had edges. Curved, yet deliberate. Geometric. Like it had been placed there, not grown by the land.
"What is this?" Dumbero asked, rubbing the back of his neck.
Kizito squinted, then pulled out his tape and measured the visible portion. About two feet wide. The rest disappeared into the soil.
"It's not natural," he muttered. "And it's not in the survey records."
"Maybe a burial vault?" Grat offered, leaning over with a curious dirty face.
"No grave gets sealed with this kind of stone," Keyslar said. "Get ropes. We're bringing it out."
It took six men, a pulley, and two hours to hoist the full object out of the ground. When it finally emerged, coated in clay and centuries of sleep, silence fell on the site.
It was shaped like an egg, only thicker, more massive. Symbols circled its midriff, grooves that glowed faintly in the waning sunlight. It pulsed once. Faint, like a breath held and released.
Elinz arrived just then, summoned by a puzzled call from Emral. As the safety officer, she was more concerned with exposed pipes and power line hazards than buried mysteries, but one look at the black stone and she felt it: a drop in temperature, a pressure in her ears. "What the hell is that?" she whispered.
Kento shrugged. "We dug it. Deep."
Stephen Brandt was called over. He was in his trailer, updating progress reports and finalizing shipment requests. When he saw the stone, he didn't speak. Just stared. Then said, "Keep this quiet."
"Sir?" Kizito asked.
Stephen nodded slowly. "Don't alert local authorities yet. We'll keep it in storage until we know what it is. Might be worth something."
It was Mayo who voiced what a few were already thinking. "Are you sure we should be keeping it?"
Stephen turned. "You're paid to build, not ask questions."
Keyslar didn't speak. But the line of his jaw hardened.
The stone was stored in the shed behind the toolhouse, wrapped in tarpaulin and rope. That night, no one wanted to walk by it. The generator hummed like a warning. Damitz didn't include it in his story that evening, though the campfire was unusually quiet.
Only the wind dared speak, and it whispered in a tongue long forgotten.
Something else happened that night. At exactly 2:13 a.m., the camp's dog, a ragged, loyal stray that had taken to sleeping outside the mess hall, let out a growl so deep it woke Grat and Kento from their bunks. The dog stood, fur bristled, staring toward the shed. He growled again, then whimpered, tail tucked, and fled under the deck.
At 2:20 a.m., the lights around the toolhouse flickered. Not just dimmed, flickered violently, then went off completely. When the backup generator kicked in, everything came back except the floodlight closest to the shed. It remained dead.
Dumbero, who had been on night watch rotation, later swore he saw a shadow slip past the glass of the storage window. He went to check but found nothing, just the tarpaulin covering the stone shifting, slightly, as if moved by a breath from within.
Long after the last echoes of diesel engines had died down, the night settled uneasily over Kinamis. The camp, usually lulled into silence by the chirping of crickets and the rustling wind, was heavy with an unnatural stillness. Just outside the mess hall, hackles raised, eyes fixed toward the shed behind the toolhouse. Its growl was low, rumbling from deep in its chest like a warning not meant for humans. The workers who hadn't yet drifted into sleep might have heard it, but none came out. The growl persisted, deepened, then broke into a single bark, sharp, loud, almost frantic. Then the dog whimpered, turned, and scurried under the wooden porch, tail tucked tightly between its legs.
Farther out, beyond the fenced perimeter of the site, other dogs in the village began to respond.
From the rooftops of Kinamis to the edge of the stream that snaked behind the hills, dogs howled. Not the social yipping of strays or the angry barking at a distant intruder. These howls were long and mournful, like dirges sent to the sky. The sound traveled in waves across the valley, one dog picking up where another left off, until it felt like the entire community was wailing in shared grief or fear.
At the old carpenter's compound, three dogs paced in circles restlessly, sniffing the wind and snapping at shadows. In another yard, an aging shepherd who hadn't barked in days suddenly stood rigid, nose to the air, and let out a prolonged, heart-piercing howl that startled even the house cats into hiding. A new mother's puppy, still in its infancy, squealed nonstop until the woman of the house had to bring it indoors and rock it like a crying child.
Back at the construction site, no one paid attention to the canine chorus, no one except Keyslar, who, from his cabin window, watched the camp dog disappear beneath the steps like it was fleeing something it couldn't see. He didn't need an explanation. He'd grown up in places where animals sensed things long before men did. He knew the difference between noise and warning.
By morning, it was all quiet again. The dogs in the town returned to their corners and the camp dog emerged with cautious steps, sniffing the air nervously before trotting off to find food. But their behavior left a mark, an invisible ripple of tension that moved through the men as they gathered for morning duties. No one spoke of the howling, but many had heard it. Some muttered prayers under their breath, others avoided looking toward the toolhouse altogether.
Only Keyslar kept watching. Watching the shed. Watching the dog. And remembering that animals don't lie. Especially not when they fear something deeper than noise, something ancient, buried, and now awake.
Elinz found the shed door ajar. No signs of forced entry. No sign of human disturbance. But the rope, which had tied down the stone tightly the night before, was lying uncoiled on the ground.
No one spoke about it. Not that day. Only Keyslar lingered near the shed, staring at the footprints in the dust. None matched their boots. Something had been inside.
Kinamis didn't sleep well that night. Dogs howled longer. Infants cried harder. And deep in the heart of the bush beyond the site, something stirred, blinking for the first time in centuries.
Osungho had been touched.