The River’s Voice

The ground trembled beneath their feet low at first, like a distant warning. Then stronger, angrier, as if the earth itself recoiled from what approached. Leaves rustled violently in the trees overhead, not from wind, but from the unnatural pressure swelling through the night air.

The Nightborn had come.

They didn't descend like men. They flowed.

Shadows twisted between trees and across the damp earth limbs melting into smoke and reforming mid-stride, flickering like candlelight. Their eyes, if they could be called that, burned with faint silver hatred. Bodies sleek and sinewy, bone protruding in places where no anatomy should permit, they moved with terrible grace. Silent at first. Then a rising hiss like steam escaping from a dying world.

"Hold the line!" someone shouted.

It barely mattered.

Villagers stood with torches, spears, machetes, anything they could wield. They had trained for this. Prepared for it. But preparation was a fragile shield when fear slithered like a serpent through the soul.

One of the creatures darted through a crack in the defenses a small girl too slow to flee stood frozen, eyes wide, mouth open in a silent scream. The beast lunged, claws drawn back for a killing strike.

Then

BOOM.

The air cracked like thunder splitting stone. The creature shrieked, its body twisting mid-air, held aloft by some invisible force. It convulsed, limbs folding into itself, before bursting into a puff of black mist that scattered like ash in wind.

Ola stood just beyond the perimeter, breath sharp, hands pressed against the hide-drum slung around his neck. His arms trembled. His heart pounded like it was trying to keep time with the drum itself.

But this was not ordinary sound. It had weight shape will.

He hadn't just struck a rhythm.

He'd awakened something ancient.

He stared at his hands in disbelief. The drumskin still vibrated from the impact, but the energy came from somewhere deeper than leather and wood. Each beat he played rippled outward in the air carrying not just sound, but something older. Something deeper.

It was like the river was playing through him.

From across the chaos, Èkóyé rushed forward, her robes soaked with rain and blood. Her face was grim, but her eyes burned with something close to awe.

"You've awakened it," she said, voice sharp with urgency. "The Echo Pulse."

Ola's brows furrowed. "The what?"

"No time!" she barked. "Strike again! Keep the rhythm! You've synced with the river's memory. You're not just a drummer now you are its conduit."

Even as she spoke, more Nightborn surged from the tree line. Ola didn't need to be told twice.

He raised the drum again.

BOOM—BOOM—BOOM.

Three deliberate strikes, like war commands from another realm. The sound didn't travel it exploded.

Shockwaves of bluish light burst from his drum, rippling like waves across the soil. Where they struck the Nightborn, the creatures staggered howling in pain. They stumbled back, seared by invisible fire, limbs crackling with residual energy. One tried to lunge forward again, but was hurled backward into the trees as though struck by an unseen fist.

Ola stumbled slightly. His chest tightened. Sweat poured down his neck, and his arms shook violently.

The drum was drawing from him not just his muscle, but his essence. Each beat pulled threads of his spirit and offered them to the river's current.

And still, he beat.

All around him, villagers rallied. They fought with a rhythm they hadn't known they remembered axes moving in sync with drumbeats, feet shifting with ancestral precision. Even the wind seemed to obey, whistling in time.

But the Nightborn were relentless. Their bodies melted and reformed again and again, adapting, snarling, clawing forward with renewed ferocity. With each retreat, they came back stronger faster. As if learning.

One fell to the ground, screeching, as it collided with a woven talisman buried in the mud.

Others leapt clear of traps and torches, their awareness growing unnervingly sharp.

And then 

The ground beneath them all shuddered again.

But this was different.

This was heavier.

From the deepest part of the forest came a sound like the world exhaling its last breath. Trees bent inward, branches curling away like children flinching from an angry parent. Animals fled in droves, birds erupting from the canopy in black clouds.

The Nightborn paused.

And for the first time… they looked afraid.

Ola turned his head slowly. His fingers still hovered above the drum, but he couldn't bring himself to strike again not yet.

From the woods came a pulse. A presence.

Not a hunter.

A herald.

It wasn't just larger than the others it was older. The space around it bent, like a veil of reality being peeled back.

Its body towered above the trees, a column of shadow and bone, crowned with antlers woven from sorrow and silence. Its limbs dragged along the forest floor, carving grooves in the earth. Eyes like sunken wells glowed violet from deep within a jagged skull-mask. Every breath it took rattled like chains scraping stone.

It didn't run. It walked. Each step a declaration of inevitability.

Èkóyé's mouth fell open. "A Commander."

"No," whispered one of the elders nearby. "The Commander."

Legends called it Nghàrúm, the First One Turned. A spirit once tasked with guarding the river's sacred memory until corrupted by silence and sacrifice. Where it walked, sound died. Stories bled dry.

And it had come for the drum.

Ola's knees nearly buckled. His heartbeat was a stammering staccato. He gripped the drum tighter, forcing himself to breathe.

"No running," he whispered to himself. "Not now."

Èkóyé touched his shoulder. "You can't stop that thing alone."

"I'm not alone," he said hoarsely.

He looked around.

Villagers wounded, breathless, bloodied stood in a circle, weapons raised. Beside them, river-priests whispered forgotten chants, rekindling sigils in the mud with flame and salt. The children had been pulled to safety. The sky, though dark, echoed faintly with the rhythm of distant drums the old drums. Some deeper force was answering.

The river was not silent.

Ola stepped forward, past the line of torches.

He raised the drum once more.

His hands burned. His spirit flickered. But the Echo Pulse was awake now, and through it, the river saw.

BOOM.

The sound bent space.

BOOM.

Leaves ripped from branches.

BOOM.

And the Commander roared.

The battle had only just begun.