Chapter Nineteen: Feast of Forgotten Bones

The further they walked, the thinner the air became — not with altitude, but with silence. Even the wind seemed afraid to follow them, like the land itself had learned to hold its breath.

They didn't speak much.

There was no banter, no arguments, not even Tafara's usual complaints. Something had shifted. They all felt it, but it was Ranga who carried it, his steps heavier, his laugh missing, replaced by that tight, thin smile.

The Hyena Totem was awake now — not just awake, but wide-eyed and trembling.

The forest path narrowed, the trees growing too close together, their bark scarred with deep grooves, as if giant jaws had gnawed at them. No leaves stirred, and the underbrush had been trampled down to bare earth — no, not trampled.

Stripped.

Nyeredzi walked slower now, her silver eye shimmering brighter with each step. "We're walking into it," she said softly.

"Into what?" Kael asked.

She didn't answer. Not right away.

Because the first skull was waiting just ahead.

It sat half-buried in the dirt, the bone polished clean, perfectly clean, no trace of rot or weathering — just a hollow-eyed grin staring up at them from the earth.

"Human?" Dendera asked, his shield already sliding off his back.

Nyeredzi shook her head. "Totem."

Ranga didn't step closer. He didn't need to.

He knew that skull.

It wasn't just any Totem bearer — it was a Hyena Totem bearer, from generations past, but still marked with the same jagged spirals and toothlike carvings Ranga's own ancestors had worn.

Kael stepped between Ranga and the skull, his presence a silent barrier. "How long has it been here?"

Nyeredzi knelt beside it, her fingertips brushing the polished bone. A whisper of silver light flickered, and for a moment, the skull laughed — a thin, empty echo of what it once was.

"Time doesn't mean anything here," she said. "It's not buried. It's preserved. Like it's waiting."

Ranga's throat was dry. His Totem stirred uneasily, shivering along his spine, but there was something else — something even older moving inside him, a memory that wasn't his, but belonged to every Hyena Totem before him.

He remembered running.

Not just fleeing a fight — running for survival, through forests stripped bare, past shrines gnawed down to dust, chased by something that laughed as it hunted, that never got tired, that remembered exactly how their bones cracked between its teeth.

Mukonori.

Kael's hand landed on his shoulder. "What do you see?"

Ranga's voice was quieter than any of them had ever heard. "He was the first."

"The first what?" Tafara asked.

Ranga's tongue felt thick. "The first Hyena Totem." His fingers twitched around his spears. "Before the clans, before the pacts — there was just him."

"And what is he now?" Dendera's voice was low, careful.

Ranga's laugh finally came, but it was a sharp, humorless thing. "Hungry."

Nyeredzi stood slowly, her silver light outlining the whole clearing now, showing them more skulls, half-buried and smiling, all of them marked with faded Totem lines — not just Hyena, but Lion, Owl, Crocodile, even Elephant.

Kael's jaw clenched. "He doesn't just hunt Hyenas."

"No," Nyeredzi said softly. "He eats Totems."

Tafara swore under his breath. "That's not a thing. That can't be a thing."

But it was.

The ground beneath their feet shifted slightly — not an earthquake, not even a tremor. More like something large breathing beneath the soil, stirring awake.

Ranga stepped forward, one spear planting into the earth. "He doesn't want all of you."

They turned to him.

Ranga's grin was wide now, too wide. His eyes shone with something caught halfway between terror and exhilaration. "He wants me."

The laughter rose again — not from the ground this time, but from the air, the trees, the stones, the very bones beneath their feet.

Mukonori was awake.

And he was already here.

—

The forest cleared suddenly, like they'd stepped through a curtain into a place outside time.

There was no sky, only swirling gray above, and the earth beneath their feet shifted — bones just barely covered in dust, a sea of Totem-bearer skeletons, some with weapons still clenched in skeletal hands, others twisted into shapes that defied death itself.

And in the center, sitting atop a throne made from the fused skulls of Totem Chiefs, was Mukonori.

He didn't look like a god.

He looked like a Hyena that had outgrown its own skin, half-rotted but still laughing, jaws too wide, eyes too bright, body stretched thin and wrong, as if the bones underneath were constantly shifting, always making room for more.

More prey.

More Totems.

More Ranga.

"Hello, little cousin," Mukonori's voice was not sound — it was teeth and hunger, wet laughter dripping from his jaws. "Did you come to run?"

Ranga's spears shivered in his hands, but he didn't step back.

He stepped forward.

"Not today," Ranga said, his voice steady now. "Today you choke."

Mukonori's laugh filled the world, and the bones at his feet began to move, old skeletons rising, spirit-markings flickering, once-proud Totem warriors now nothing but echoes forced to hunt again.

Nyeredzi's silver eye blazed. "He's using them."

Kael's sword flared to life, Lion Totem roaring in his chest. "Then we break them."

The Bloodbound Circle stood together, but this wasn't their fight.

This was Ranga's story.

Hyena against Hyena.

Ancestor against curse.

Laughter against laughter.

The bones charged.

Ranga bared his teeth — and laughed louder.

End Chapter Nineteen