The elders called it an omen when it began: a low, harmonized hum beneath the earth, a vibration that rose through roots and rock. Hunters felt it in their teeth. Birds paused mid-flight and hung like punctuation marks in the air. The sound did not belong to any drum, not to any wind—it was a keyed cadence, a sequence of tones so precise that some said the jungle itself had learned to whisper numbers. It ran through the valley like an electric fever and settled on the tree where he now sat.