The stone split with a grinding, bone-deep groan, the crack widening into a narrow passage that breathed warm air onto his face. It smelled of soil and rot and something sweet—sickeningly sweet, like fruit left too long in the heat.
The others hesitated. He didn't have the luxury.The first of the half-rotten figures barreled into the clearing, shrieking with shredded vocal cords.
He grabbed Kara's wrist. "Inside."
"But—"
"Inside!" he barked, pulling her in after him.
The broad-shouldered man covered their retreat, swinging his makeshift club at a staggering shape that had once been Jerren. The creature didn't dodge or defend—it just hurled itself forward, mindless and starving.
The blow landed with a sickening crack. Jerren didn't fall.
"MOVE!" the man howled, and the group surged into the stone passage.
He was the last one in. The moment he crossed the threshold, the fog surged like a wave against the opening—then balked, swirling violently but unable to enter.
The stone sealed behind them with a wet, grinding sound. Darkness swallowed the group. Someone whimpered. Someone else whispered a prayer they couldn't remember fully.
He pressed his palm against the wall. It pulsed faintly under his touch—like the heartbeat in his leg had spread into the stone itself.
"We're safe," he said.
But even he didn't believe it. A faint glow shimmered deeper down the tunnel—pale, blue-white, pulsing like veins under skin. The group gathered around him, terrified but dependent on him now more than ever.
"Where does this lead?" Kara whispered.
He swallowed. "To the thing beckoning for us."
As if on queue a voice echoed faintly—his own voice, from somewhere deeper inside.
"Come."
They all gasped.
He stiffened. "Did you hear that?"
"We heard... you," the broad-shouldered man said, inching away from him.
"That wasn't me," he said sharply. "It's using my voice."
The woman who'd first accused him covered her ears. "We shouldn't have come. This place is a death trap."
They moved deeper, the faint glow illuminating just enough to show damp stone and strange markings—circles, spirals, lines that almost writhed when stared at too long.
As they walked, the tunnel widened into a cavern. And at the center of it stood a man. Or what was left of one.
He was half-consumed—one arm bark-like and brittle, his ribs exposed and fused with roots that snaked into the floor. His skin shifted, rippling between human and something plantlike, pulsing in rhythm with the stone.
His head jerked toward them with a snapping crack. Eyes too bright. Too aware. Kara screamed and clung to him.
The half-transformed man rasped out a breath, a wet, cracking sound—like a tree bending under too much weight.
"You… came," the Transforming-man whispered, his voice layered—human pain buried under something ancient.
His other arm—still human—lifted weakly and pointed towards him.
"You feel it, don't you?"
"The root waking in your blood."
"The valley growing inside you."
He stumbled back, leg throbbing as if in answer.
The creature-man reached toward him, trembling. "They chose you."
"Who?" he whispered.
"The ones beneath," the creature-man breathed. "The ones that rot your dreams."
"They've been calling to you," the half-man whispered.
The pulse in his leg became almost unbearable—demanding.
"They didn't put that wood in you to kill you… they planted it in you."
"You are a chosen host."
Kara clutched him harder. "We shouldn't be here. We need to leave. Right now."
But the Transforming-man's warped body lifted its head again, eyes burning with a desperate, dying clarity.
"There is no leaving," he said.
His voice struck the cavern walls like a dull bell, vibrating through stone, through the roots, through them. The air changed.
The others felt it too—every breath suddenly tasted like wet soil and rot. The glow pulsing through the cavern veins brightened, like the valley itself had drawn a single, sharp breath.
The half-transformed man's body jerked as if pulled by strings.
"Once it marks you," he whispered, "the valley keeps you."
His eyes—one human, one a dark knot of bark—fixed on them with a trembling desperation.
The Transforming-man's warning hadn't even finished reverberating before the cavern shuddered—once, violently—like something massive had shifted beneath them.
The roots along the floor writhed. Kara gasped and stumbled back. The broad-shouldered man lifted his club again. The others clustered behind him, wide-eyed and shaking.
Then a roar came. Not sound but pressure, a pulse of force that cracked the floor and sent everyone sprawling. The roots surged upward as shapes burst from the walls—half-rotten figures, bodies twisted by wood and decay, rushing the group with clawed, splintered hands.
"FIGHT!" he yelled.
They did. Or at least they tried.
Kara swung a broken shard of stone, slashing into a creature's throat. Sap spilled like thick blood, but the thing kept coming. The broad-shouldered man grabbed one by the jaw and tore it aside, then drove his club into another until the wood snapped.
The others screamed, kicked, grappled. It was chaos—collapse, shrieks, snapping roots. But the cave wasn't attacking them. Not all of them.
It was attacking him. The half-rotten figures kept turning toward him, pulled by something invisible. Drawn to him. His leg pulsed—hard—as if screaming, Here. Here.
"Get back!" he shouted, though he didn't know if he meant them or the monsters.
One of the creatures lunged at him—he grabbed it, shoved it aside.
Another rushed.
Then another.
He staggered backward—and his hand struck something hot. A thrum. A pulse. He turned.
Behind the half-transformed man—behind the roots and glowing veins—was a wall that wasn't a wall at all:
A massive, half-exposed heart. Not human. Not animal. A cavern-sized knot of flesh and wood intertwined, pulsing like it was dreaming.
And the moment his hand touched it, a pulse shot from his leg to the heart. A shock wave surged through the chamber. Every creature froze. Even the companions he came with froze.
Kara's scream cut off mid-breath. The broad-shouldered man raised club halted inches from a creature's skull. Their expressions twisted in pain, then confusion, then—
Glass-like cracks spread across their bodies.
"Kara?" he whispered.
She turned her head toward him—but it was wrong. Her neck didn't bend so much as hinge, like bark splitting. Her eyes hollowed. devoid of any spark of life. Splintered. The broad-shouldered man's skin peeled in curling sheets, revealing wood grain beneath. His eyes just as lifeless and hollow as Kara's
The praying woman's hands fractured, fingers falling off like brittle twigs. They weren't breathing. They'd never been breathing.
One by one, their bodies collapsed—arms collapsing into heaps of bark, hair into vines, then into dust. The air filled with the sound of cracking wood and dying echoes.
The last fragments of the collapsing wood settled into silence, dust swirling around the piles of splintered husks. Only the half-transformed man remained—breathing raggedly, hanging half-fused to the roots like a condemned prophet nailed to a living wall.
He lifted his head with visible effort. His eyes carried a spark of life other then the monster controlling him.
"It fooled you well," he rasped. "It's had practice."
He stared at him, struggling to find words. "What… what was any of that?"
The half-man gave a wet, cracking chuckle. "Stories. Puppets. Faces stitched from memory and rot. They were never people. They never lived."
He tried to take a step back, but the cavern seemed to pull him inward instead—air thickening, floor subtly angling beneath his feet.
"Why?" he demanded. "Why show me any of that?"