The forest changed the moment he ran.
Branches moved aside, clearing a path with unnatural courtesy. The fog thinned in front of him, thickened behind him. Even the earth cushioned his steps as though afraid to let him fall too soon.
The half-transformed survivor crashed through the brush behind him, screaming without sound. Not chasing him. Not trying to kill him. Herding him.
He stumbled into a set of ruins where the trees bent inward, their trunks forming rib-like arches over a pit of tangled roots. Stone littered the floor, engravings etched into them with a luminescent green light. The air smelled of copper and sap. Something thrummed below, like a heartbeat buried under the soil.
He skidded to a stop.
The half-transformed survivor staggered into view behind him and froze—eyes rolling toward the ground, terror etched across the human half of their face.
"No," the half-transformed survivor whispered with what little voice they had left. "Not here. Not here."
The ground pulsed.
A single beat.
He felt it in his teeth.
The roots in the soil quivered like the skin of something enormous breathing just below him. The hollow's center sagged in a slow inhale, then pushed back up in a trembling exhale.
The half-transformed survivor began to convulse, their bark-covered arm stretching upward like a limb pulled by the unseen.
"It hears you," the half-transformed survivor shrieked, voice cracking. "It's in your blood already!"
He stumbled back from the pit, but the moment he lifted his wounded leg, agony exploded through it—white, electric, immediate. He collapsed.
The wood embedded in his flesh vibrated. Humming. Answering something beneath the earth.
He clawed at his leg, trying to yank the shard free, but roots coiled around it beneath the skin, tightening, refusing. His fingers slipped on his own blood.
Then—A voice. Not spoken aloud. But inside of his head.
YOU CAME TO ME.
He froze.
The words weren't human. They weren't even language. They were an impression, a shape of intent pressed directly into his mind like a thumbprint into clay.
THEY ALWAYS LEAVE. THEY LEAVE. BUT YOU CAME TO ME.
He shook his head violently. "I don't… I don't understand!"
The hollow pulsed again.
He gagged as the wood in his leg twitched like a living thing.
The voice sharpened.
YOU WILL.
The survivor screamed suddenly—so shrill it was almost avian—and collapsed to their knees. Their shadow stretched unnaturally as roots erupted around them, snaring their limbs.
They sobbed. "Run…"The last sliver of their humanity flickered in their voice."Please. Run. Before it—"
Their torso snapped backward with a sickening crack. A massive root erupted from the earth beneath them, spearing through their spine, lifting them into the air. Their scream cut off instantly. The body dangled, twitching—then went still.
The root curled upward, presenting the corpse like an offering. Then the vines wrapped gently around the skull.
And crushed it. He crawled backward, breath ragged, vision tunneling. The voice whispered again, softer now, almost affectionate.
DON'T BE AFRAID. YOU ARE NOT PREY. YOU ARE SEED.
His blood ran cold. He stumbled to his feet, forcing weight onto his injured leg. And ran.
The forest didn't guide him this time. It merely watched.
As he fled, the heartbeat faded behind him—but the rhythm remained inside his chest, stubborn, parasitic, tapping along with his terrified pulse.
He didn't remember how long he ran. The forest blurred around him, fog curling in through the cracks of his senses. It made the world feel like a room he had once lived in but no longer recognized.
At some point, the trees parted into a clearing of cold earth and dying grass. Shapes moved within the haze—shuffling, hesitant, human.
He froze.
A voice called out: "Someone new. Hey—hey! Over here!"
A figure stepped into view, waving both arms. They were filthy, exhausted, clothes torn, face carved with sleepless weeks. But human. Entirely human.
Another emerged behind them. Then another.
Three.
Eight.
Fourteen.
He realized, with an almost nauseating rush of hope and dread, that he was looking at a camp. If it could be called that.
A ring of stones for a fire that had long since died. A few makeshift shelters leaning sideways. Several people sitting in a circle, staring blankly at the ground.
Every single one of them had the same look: Confusion. Fear.
One of the men stepped forward, squinting. "How long have you been here?"
"I—I don't know," he said.
The man nodded slowly. "None of us do."
A woman with tangled hair approached and touched his forehead as though checking for fever. Her eyes were bloodshot, pupils too wide.
"It doesn't seem like the fog has severely affected your mind yet," she murmured.
He stiffened. "What does that mean?"
"It's in all of us," she whispered. "The memory-loss is the fog's doing."
Another woman—older, shaking—looked up from the fire pit.
"I used to remember my daughter's face."Her voice cracked."Now I only remember that I had a daughter."
A chill crawled up his spine.
Another man muttered to himself, rocking gently back and forth."They whisper at night. In the roots. In the ground. Faces that aren't there. Hands in the corners of my eyes."
Hallucinations.
Every one of them showed signs: Staring too long at nothing. Flinching at sounds he couldn't hear Whispering back to voices that weren't present. Trembling hands, unfocused expressions. But none had the thing lodged in his leg. None were transforming.
The first man—broad-shouldered, gaunt—gestured for him to sit by the dead fire.
"Tell us," he said."How did you get here?"
He hesitated. He didn't know these people yet they seemed welcoming, too welcoming.
"I… found someone, He was changing" he lied. "And I ran. I couldn't get far this wound has been impeding me"
He lifted his pant leg showing the piece of wood that sat embedded deep in the muscle, darkened with dried blood, flesh swollen angrily around it.
The older woman's eyes went wide. She recoiled from him as if burned. "No," she whispered, voice trembling. Others pulled back as well, shrinking from him. A ripple of horror swept through the camp.
A man with broken fingernails backed away, shaking violently."The fog eats the mind, but that—" He pointed at the wood. "—that's something else. We all know what will become of you with that."
He felt the pulse in the shard again.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The same rhythm from the hollow. The same second heartbeat. The broad-shouldered man stepped closer, inspecting the wound with dread fascination. "There was another once," he murmured. "A man with a wound like yours."
His blood turned to ice.
"What happened to him?"
The man didn't answer at first. He just stared into the fog as if reliving a nightmare. After a moment, he spoke—quietly.
"He stopped forgetting. And started remembering things that weren't his."
Another voice cut in:
"That's when it came for him." The clearing fell silent.
He swallowed, throat dry. "What came?"
The older woman shuddered violently, eyes darting to the tree line.
"It," she whispered."The thing the fog belongs to. The thing the roots serve."
She began hysterically laughing. "The thing that torments us all"
A few of the survivors began crying softly. Others covered their ears, as if trying to block out a voice he couldn't hear.
The broad-shouldered man leaned in close, breath shaking.
"When I woke up this place felt like a dream." He gestured fumblingly to the wound. "We all see the hallucinations, hear the voices."
Before he could speak, the older woman suddenly screamed—hysterical, raw:
"IT'S LISTENING! RIGHT NOW—it's listening through him!"
The others scrambled back.
But he didn't move. He couldn't. Because the heartbeat in his leg—sped up. And for a fraction of a second, the fog around him whispered in a voice he had heard once before:
YOU ARE MINE.