THE CURSE OF THE OSUN SHRINE EP10

 

Episode 10: “Oluronbi’s Lie”

Oluronbi’s Hut – Midday

Japhet stood frozen. The priestess’s words hung in the air like the scent of death. 

“There was no cure.” “Only delay.”

“Kazzy is not the end. He’s the signal.”

He paced, voice rising. “So all of us? We died, we suffered, and it didn’t mean anything?!”

Oluronbi’s eyes filled with something rare, guilt.

“It meant time,” she said softly. “Time I hoped would be enough to prepare a counter-curse. But the river is older than my power. Older than this shrine. It predates Osogbo.”

Japhet turned toward her. “So what is it?”

She hesitated.

Then walked to a wooden chest and drew out a scroll bound in faded red cloth.

She unrolled it slowly, revealing a map of the grove but beneath it, symbols. Dark ones. Etchings in a language carved rather than written.

“This was hidden by the first priestess,” she whispered. “It says the Osun shrine was built atop something. Not to honor it…”

She looked at Japhet.

“…but to contain it.”

Flashback  1400s, Pre-Colonial Osogbo

The grove is not a grove.

It is a prison.

Built over a well that holds a forgotten deity an offspring of chaos, bound in bone and earth. Neither man nor spirit. It thrived on devotion, on ritual, on fear.

Until the early priestesses sealed it using three relics made from human offerings: a mask of sacrifice, a comb of purity, a gourd of truth.

These relics were never meant to be touched.

Never meant to be moved. Because if they were…The deity would wake. And drink the river dry

Present – Osogbo

Ranti and Japhet gathered in the market square. They met under the fig tree where Sunkanmi once used to sell kola nuts.

Ranti’s face was pale.

“I saw it last night,” she said. “In the water. Something wearing Milly’s skin. But the eyes were wrong. Hollow. Like mirrors.”

Japhet rubbed his face. “We need to go back. Not just to the shrine but beneath it. There’s something there. The root of all of this.”

Ranti frowned. “You want to dig beneath a cursed grove?”

“I don’t want to,” Japhet said. “I have to.”

Meanwhile – At the Shrine

Kazzy no longer looked like himself. His body was shifting.

Skin turning bark-like. Fingers growing long, root-like.

He was merging with the shrine itself slowly becoming a vessel-tree, a permanent tether for what lay beneath.

From the ground, a voice bubbled up through his feet.

“Soon you will break, little vessel.”

“And I will wear your bones.”

Kazzy cried out silently. Then the ground cracked splitting near the idol.

And the mask rose up, grinning wider than ever.

Later That Night – Oluronbi’s Final Warning

Japhet and Ranti prepared torches, ropes, and a single goatskin satchel filled with salt, iron shavings, and red camwood.

“Take this too,” Oluronbi said, placing a bone whistle in Japhet’s hand.

“What’s it for?”

“If you see the deity,” she said quietly, “don’t run. Don’t scream. Don’t pray. Blow this. It’s the only thing it can’t stand.”

Japhet nodded. Then paused.

“What’s it called? The thing beneath the shrine?” Oluronbi looked at him for a long time.

And whispered: “Oṣúpá Tìkà.”
(The Moon That Devours)

The Shrine at Night

Japhet and Ranti enter the grove one final time. The air is wrong.

The trees lean inward. No stars above. Only cloud. Only silence.

They descend into a cracked hollow near the idol.

Deeper. Deeper still.

Until they reach the sealed chamber beneath the grove where the relics once lay.

And at the center?

A pit. Still. Breathing. Watching.

From the darkness, it spoke: “You’ve come to stop me.”

“But I’m already inside you.” The curse is not over. It’s just reaching the heart.