Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Mother who Fed the Dark : Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

When Thando passed away, the house went through changes.These changes were subtle at first since rot is typically not easy to detect; however, there was a lingering smell from the rot that never seemed to go away , no matter how often Amahle scrubbed the floors. On many occasions, Sipho would hear creaking noises from the floorboards and walls when nothing was happening in the house or no one was inside; he would feel a cool chill on his skin whenever he walked through that area of the home. Also, on several occasions, there had been an unusually long shadow cast against one of the walls, always having a very thick, heavy feel that seemed to be waiting for an instruction.Sipho understood this before he had any terminology to describe it.During the night, the house seemed to breathe.Sipho would lie awake listening to the sounds of the ceiling; there were times when he heard something moving just outside the realm of hearing. For a moment, it seemed as though fingers were reaching f

Amahle died on a Thursday. Villagers said everything was quiet. Way too quiet for a woman who had spent her life fighting something that didn't exist.They found her in bed early in the morning; she was staring blankly at the ceiling with her mouth open wide. It was not an expression of pain but rather an expression of recognition. At that moment, it seemed to him that she had finally seen all the things that had been waiting for her. When Sipho got the call, he didn't shed any tears.He was standing alone in a room he rented far from home. He held the phone to his ear, listening to a series of words that seemed like they had been written for him by fate. His heart tightened, not with sadness, but with what felt like emptiness. He had envisioned this moment many times in his mind over the past several years, yet the silence following this call was deafening.That night, it felt closer than it had ever been.He could feel it sit on the edge of his bed. He felt the bed dip under the

Chapter 6: The First Offering Sipho did not wake one morning and decided to become cruel. Cruelty implies pleasure. What he felt was a necessity. The darkness had grown quieter as his wealth grew — lower corrective, more observant. It no longer lashed out at every small defiance. Rather, it watched him nearly, the way a bloodsucker watches a commodity it intends to keep alive for a long time. That silence was not peace. It was an expectation. The pressure returned slowly, subtly, like a headache that no way fully announced itself. Sipho felt it when he stood in apartments full of people and realized he could see the weak bones incontinent. Not innocently weak — structurally. The bones whose lives were formerly cracking under strain. Illness. Debt. Despair. Violence is staying for a reason. The darkness showed him how to fête them. “Not all deaths are equal,” it murmured one night as Sipho lay awake, peering at the ceiling. “ Some leave no echo.” Sipho swallowed. “

Chapter 8: The Door OpensThe night Sipho stopped pretending was quiet.No storms. No omens. No blood on his hands.Just silence—thick and listening.He stood alone in the ritual room beneath his house, the air cool against his skin, the stone floor etched with lines he no longer remembered carving. The symbols did not glow. They did not move. They simply waited, the way the darkness always did.Sipho felt it then—the door.Not a literal thing. Not wood or iron. It was a sensation behind his sternum, a pressure that could either remain closed forever or be opened once and never shut again. He understood instinctively that this was the last moment of hesitation he would be allowed.Once opened, the darkness would no longer knock.It would enter.You know what this is, the darkness murmured, close enough to feel like breathing against his ear.This is consent without fear.Sipho’s hands trembled.“I’ve given you enough,” he said, voice hoarse. “My family. My sleep. My future.”The darkn

Chapter 10 The Mathematics of Sacrifice: Sipho stopped counting deaths the way people counted bodies.Numbers were cleaner.They didn’t scream. They didn’t beg. They didn’t leave blood under his fingernails.Numbers made sense of things.The darkness liked numbers too.One life can correct a moment, it taught him.Ten can correct a direction.A hundred can rewrite a future.Sipho listened.---It began with ratios.The darkness showed him patterns the way accountants showed balance sheets. If Sipho wanted stability in one sector, it required collapse in another. If he wanted growth, something had to shrink. Not metaphorically. Literally.Lives were variables.Sipho tested the theory cautiously at first.A mining deal stalled because of environmental resistance—activists, lawyers, and delays that brought money slowly. Sipho hesitated, feeling the old tightness in his chest. They were idealists. Annoying, but not cruel.The darkness responded by showing him timelines.In one, the mine