The mask didn’t make a sound.

  Not when Kazeem unwrapped it under moonlight. Not when he turned it over in his hands and traced the ridges with his thumb. And yet, it breathed.

  Each time he held it too long, his lungs tightened. Not with fear…something else. Like being submerged. As if the air between him and the world thinned.

  He had hidden it under his mat, wrapped in cloth and leather, but it didn’t help. That night, he dreamed in salt.

  He was dancing. Mask on his face, body moving to rhythms he’d never learned. The sand burned under his heels. But he couldn’t stop

  His feet started to bleed. But he couldn’t stop.

  The salt started to slip inside his wound making his face grimace inside the mask … But it would not let him stop.

  He eventually woke up with blood on his feet .

  But he wasn’t wounded.

  —

  Morning arrived sluggish, its heat too heavy for dawn. The 10th, the calendar would say. But Kazeem no longer trusted dates.

  He stepped outside, blinking at the hard sun. The square was quieter than usual. Not empty but subdued. Fewer voices, fewer traders. A whisper had spread. Something had been taken from the trench.

  But it is still the same … the same … the same… the … the same

  The dream of today was too weird and too blurry now that he woke up .

  And the blood…

  too many things happened. He has too much things to think about , so much happened, that he didn’t want to think of anything.

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  So he kept walking.

  “Boy.”

  The voice froze him mid-step.

  An old woman sat at the edge of a shaded stall, wrapped in ochre and barkcloth, bones sharp beneath her skin. One eye was milk-white, the other a flicker of purple . Her walking stick was carved with old symbols, ones Kazeem vaguely remembered from the walls of the barracks, half-erased by time.

  He didn’t recognize her name, but her face was familiar in the way a warning sign was. People called her Old Meza, though no one knew if that was her name or just a title. She was one of the last spirit-watchers, rarely seen, rarely spoken to. The kind who muttered to herself during funerals and laid salt in places it didn’t belong.

  “You smell like the trench,” she said, her voice dry as ash.

  Kazeem said nothing.

  She smiled with cracked lips. “It breathes through you now. The mask doesn’t forget its bearer.”

  “!”

  He stepped back, throat dry.

  “How does she know?” he thought, feeling the cold run down his spine.

  He considered lying, but the moment he opened his mouth, the air grew colder…unnaturally so.

  All his instincts screamed at him: Don’t lie.

  “… I didn’t wear it.”

  “Yet.”

  She leaned forward, and for a moment, the shade behind her seemed to flicker. “Keep it hidden. Keep it silent. Or the dust will dance again, and not for your sake.”

  Without another word, she stood, slow and creaking, and disappeared into the narrow path behind the market stalls.

  Kazeem stood there for a long time, the heat pressing on his back like a threat.

  He didn’t tell Toma, he didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t mention the woman, or the dreams, or the blood.

  But the silence pressed harder now.

  —

  By midday, he was assigned to the trenches again. This time, well like all the 9th , he went farther west, past the salt-stained hillocks and dried river bones. The air tasted wrong there. Birds didn’t circle above. Even the wind avoided the place.

  If the world don’t want to change maybe I should he thought . It was one of the rare rational thought he had since the start of the loop.

  He worked quickly. Eyes down. Satchel close.

  And yet, again, the feeling crept in.

  He had been here before.

  And then he saw it again.

  A shallow pit just beyond a crumbled ridge. A glint of metal. The edge of a rusted blade poking from the salt.

  He could feel the world bending around him, the curse sharpening. The hunger beginning.

  Not a hunger for food.

  A hunger for something deeper. Something older. But what ?

  He remembered this exact moment.

  He remembered not reaching for the blade. He remembered Toma calling him away.

  But this time, he went there quicker and Toma was farther back.

  This time, he had a choice.

  He moved toward the weapon, boots cracking salt beneath him. As he touched the hilt, a sound burst behind his ears, like a bone snapping inside his skull.

  He dropped the blade. Stumbled back.

  The air was colder now.

  He then sense some kind of strange fullness … too big to ignore but also too small to make the hunger disappear.

  “Kazeem?” Toma’s voice. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” He swallowed. “Thought I saw something useful.”

  “You okay?”

  “Fine.”

  But he wasn’t.

  He turned his eyes back to the pit, now empty. The blade gone. The salt clean.

  He was alone again.

  And something inside him whispered:

  “GB?”

  So the elders are extremely important. They accumulate knowledge and history then transmit it to the younger generation.

  See u on the next one !