AYÉRÙN: The Land That Heaven Forgot

CHAPTER ONETHE NIGHT THE RAIN TURNED BLACK

The rain began at midnight.

It came without warning, sweeping across the ancient Yoruba kingdom of Irè with a violence that shook the roofs of houses and bent the branches of old trees. Thunder rolled above the village, but the lightning that followed was strange. Instead of illuminating the sky in white, it flashed a deep, unnatural blue.

The villagers knew that colour.

And they knew what it meant.

Behind tightly closed doors, mothers pulled their children away from the windows. Fathers lowered their voices. Even the dogs stopped barking, retreating beneath wooden beds and into the darkest corners of their owners’ homes.

Nobody stepped outside.

Nobody called a neighbour.

And above all, nobody cried.

For in Irè, there was an old warning passed from one generation to the next.

When the rain falls at midnight and the sky turns blue, lock your doors, silence your children, and keep your tears inside.

Because if tears touch the ground on that night, something beneath the earth will remember.

And when it remembers, AYÉRÙN will awaken.

At the far end of the village, six men carried a body through the rain.

They moved slowly along the narrow path, their feet sinking into the wet earth. A white cloth covered the dead person from head to toe, but the cloth had already become soaked and heavy.

Nobody asked who had died.

Nobody wanted to know.

The oldest man among them, a thin elder named Babalọlá, held a lantern in one hand and a walking stick in the other. His face was pale, and his lips moved silently as he whispered words of protection.

Suddenly, one of the carriers stopped.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

The others continued walking for two steps before realizing he was no longer beside them.

“See what?” another man demanded.

The carrier pointed at the body.

Something dark was dripping from beneath the white cloth.

At first, it looked like ordinary rainwater. But when the lantern light touched it, the liquid shone thick and black.

Blood.

Black blood.

The men dropped the body.

One screamed. Another stumbled backward, falling into the mud. Babalọlá stood frozen, staring at the spreading stain beneath the dead person’s head.

“No,” he whispered.

The rain struck the ground harder.

“No, no, no…”

A sound came from beneath the cloth.

Three soft knocks.

Tok.

Tok.

Tok.

The men ran.

They abandoned the lantern, the walking stick, and the body. Within seconds, their frightened cries disappeared into the darkness.

Babalọlá was the only one who remained.

He knew the warning. He knew the old stories. And he knew that the dead were not supposed to knock.

Slowly, he approached the body.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

The cloth moved.

Not because of the wind.

Something underneath it had taken a breath.

Babalọlá’s knees weakened.

Then a small voice spoke from beneath the covering.

“Why did you bury us?”

The elder stumbled backward.

Before he could answer, every lantern in the village went out.

The rain stopped.

Not gradually.

Not slowly.

It stopped all at once, leaving the entire kingdom trapped in a silence so complete that Babalọlá could hear his own heartbeat.

Then, from somewhere beyond the village walls, a child laughed.

The sound was soft, innocent, and completely wrong.

Babalọlá turned toward the darkness.

“Who is there?” he called.

Nobody answered.

The laughter came again.

This time, it sounded closer.

Babalọlá raised his trembling hands and began to pray.

But the words would not come.

Something had taken them from his mouth.

Something older than the kingdom.

Older than its kings.

Older than the names carved into the stones beneath the palace.

From deep beneath the earth came a low, distant sound.

A drum.

One beat.

Then another.

The ground trembled beneath Babalọlá’s feet.

He fell to his knees.

“No,” he whispered. “We buried it. We buried everything.”

A shadow stretched across the muddy path.

There was no moonlight to create it.

No fire.

No lantern.

Yet the shadow grew longer, moving toward the abandoned body.

And then a voice rose from the darkness.

It did not sound like a man.

It did not sound like a woman.

It sounded like hundreds of people speaking through the same mouth.

“YOU HAVE REMEMBERED.”

Babalọlá covered his ears.

The voice continued.

“AND NOW, WE REMEMBER YOU.”

The earth split.

A thin crack appeared beneath the body, spreading across the path like a black vein. From inside it came a cold wind carrying whispers, sobs, laughter, and the distant cries of people who had been dead for generations.

Babalọlá stared into the opening.

For one brief moment, he saw faces moving beneath the earth.

Hundreds of faces.

Some were crying.

Some were smiling.

Some were screaming without making a sound.

And all of them were looking at him.

Then the crack closed.

The rain returned.

When morning came, the village would find the body gone, the muddy path empty, and six men who could not remember what they had seen.

But far beyond the village, deep inside a forest where no bird dared sing, a young man suddenly opened his eyes.

His hand tightened around the handle of his bow.

He had seen the black rain before.

He had heard the voice beneath the earth.

And although he could not explain how, he knew that somewhere in Irè, something terrible had begun.

Arolákẹjì rose slowly from the ground.

He looked toward the distant village.

Then he whispered a name he had not spoken since childhood.

“AYÉRÙN.”

The forest fell silent.

And something in the darkness whispered his name in return.