A sudden gust of moist, foul air swept through the chamber, snuffing out the torches with a soft sigh. Darkness poured in like smoke, thick and suffocating.
Isaac's eyes glowed faintly as the stench of rot and blood deepened.
The altar began to breathe.
Isaac staggered back, his elation curling into something more reverent—almost afraid.
"No... this isn't failure," he breathed. "She's here!"
"Mother!"
The corpses lining the chamber stood motionless, as if frozen mid-prayer.
Then, without warning, the altar split open—a long, jagged tear ripping down the middle. But inside, there was no muscle or bone.
Only stars.
Twisting constellations spiraled in a void that should not exist—an infinite darkness pulsing with unnatural light.
Isaac dropped to his knees, his voice barely a breath. "She's here... she's coming."
He dared not gaze at the scene—
to look directly at god was to invite madness,
From the rift, a black tendril slithered out—wet and glistening. It slid lovingly over the woman's mangled form, slipped into her wound, and vanished beneath her skin.
Her body convulsed violently. Arms flailed. Legs kicked. The tendril moved inside her, breaking and reshaping bones.
Her jaw unhinged far too wide.
But instead of a scream, a low hum escaped.
"It must be... the Holy Mother's voice," Isaac was elated.
He wept, trembling and twitching on the floor. Whether in fear or bliss, it was impossible to say.
The woman sat upright. Her head tilted with an unnatural jerk.
The tendril slid from her mouth like a black umbilical cord.
Then—
"cries."
High-pitched. Wet. Fragile.
At first, it sounded like a human infant.
Then more followed.
Birdlike chirps.
Thin, wheezing rat-squeals.
Soft rabbit-whimpers, barely there.
No one had ever heard a baby rat cry.
But somehow, Isaac *knew*.
The moment the sounds hit his ears, the truth sank in—deep and instinctual.
Each cry planted itself in the mind.
Isaac didn't think.
He *felt*.
The longing of countless children echoed in him.
They were hungry. Cold. New.
And he wanted to care for them—
to give his flesh,
to nourish their birth.
The cries crawled deeper, carving space in the brain.
Isaac fell to his knees, clutching his skull.
"Yes," isaac sobbed…"
Isaac gazed at the "Great Mother" who gazed lovingly at the children around her.
Isaac fell to his knees, arms outstretched toward the altar, trembling.
"Ohh, Great Mother. Let me feel the sting of your bliss once again."
He bowed so low his forehead touched the blood-slicked floor.
"Strip me of this husk of flesh—shatter me, remake me in your image! I am yours!"
The woman twitched. Her jaw yawned wide—too wide—then snapped shut with a wet, meaty click.
Isaac laughed through his tears, drunk on awe.
"Yes... yes! I hear you! I *hear* your voice!"
He rocked back and forth. "The others thought me mad. They called it blasphemy. But I—I *believed!*"
A low hum resonated from the altar, vibrating the stone beneath him.
Isaac arched backward, spine contorting painfully. "Yes! Speak again! Burn my mind clean!"
The corpses around the chamber stirred.
Isaac grinned wildly. "Cleanse us, Great Mother! Open the way! Let the veil split and flood this world with your glory!"
Another tendril slipped from the woman's side,. It reached toward Isaac.
He gasped, weeping harder. "I am ready! I am ready!"
---
From a half-hidden corner beneath the altar, Klein watched in stunned horror.
"Where the hell did I go!"
He couldn't move. Couldn't scream. Couldn't even breathe.
His perception was warped—stretched thin along some strange line.
He didn't know what he was anymore-just a
lump of black, quivering goo wedged somewhere in the horror show above.
And he really didn't want to know where he'd come from.
"What the hell is happening?"
Just last night, he'd been lying in bed, watching some documentary about the strange creatures of the earth.
And now? He was trapped inside a stranger's womb, then reborn somehow as a sentient blob of black slime.
Nothing about this made any sense.
Klein strained to take in his surroundings.
Ancient carvings crawled along the walls-worn sigils, glowing faintly, etched deep into the stone. Blood slicked the floor in dull reflections. Corpses stood upright, frozen mid-worship. And the air- thick, vibrating-hummed with chanting. Low. Endless. Drenched in madness.
As the saying goes: "Ignorance is frustrating- uncertainty is paralyzing.
And in the center of it all... the altar.
Living flesh. Breathing. Bleeding.
If he'd had a stomach, he would've vomited.
If he'd had eyes, he'd have shut them tight.
If he'd had hands, he'd be clutching his head and screaming.
But he had none of those things.
All Klein could do was *feel*.
And what he felt was terror.
He had to come up with a plan—though given the circumstances, there was very little he *could* do.
Then again... was he even in danger?
He wasn't being torn apart.
He wasn't screaming.
He wasn't dissolving in agony.
In fact, nothing was happening to him.
Not directly.
The altar still bled. The woman—thing—was gazing out at the gathered cultists. Isaac wept like a zealot whose god had finally whispered his name.
But Klein?
Klein was just... there.
A lump of black jelly—half-sentient, half-confused—wedged beneath a pulsing altar of cosmic horror.
And somehow, that realization was oddly calming.
That said… what the hell was he supposed to do as black slime?
There was no pain
There was seemingly no danger
He hadn't even been noticed.
Fear began to bleed into analysis—a familiar reflex he hadn't realized still lingered. The old human part of him that once fixed tech issues by flashlight during blackouts.
Or the same guy who'd freeloaded off his neighbor's electrical grid for a month without getting caught.
That version of Klein? He knew how to adapt.
---
Atop the altar,
Mother opened her mouth wider than nature allowed.
From the yawning void within, a new sound spilled forth—long, droning, wet. It pulsed through the air like syrup and static, thick with moisture, reverberating through the stone and rattling the bones of the dead.
Isaac collapsed, pressing his face to the floor.
He giggled.
Then sobbed.
Then giggled again.
"The harmony... oh gods, the harmony! She's inside me now... I can feel her*rewriting my soul.'
"Yeah, bud," Klein thought, 'She's rewriting you alright. With a crayon. Held in a tentacle. Using her teeth."
Isaac's body twitched violently.
Veins bulged.
His skin writhed.
Klein watched, helpless, as the man's ribcage began to squirm beneath his robes. Something moved underneath—multiple somethings. As if the music had convinced his organs to start breeding.
"Okay. Time to think."
Klein focused—or tried to. Whatever passed for his brain sloshed inside his gooey form, reacting to each noise like a slap.
Retracting his "gaze" from his "Mother," the pressure in his mind—on the verge of shattering—finally eased.
Only when he looked at her did his head throb—an ache so deep it felt as though his skull might split apart.
It was fortunate he was no longer human.
He had the unsettling sense that, had he been, he might have given birth to "Her" children—despite being a man.
Strangely, he longed for his Mother.
Ached to be held.
To be gathered into her arms like something precious, wanted.
Even as his rational mind recoiled at the thought of this monstrously alien "Mother," deep within the quivering black mass of his consciousness—something twisted and ached to be loved.
"What the hell…" Klein thought, horrified at himself. "I'm a fucking blob of shit, and I miss being cradled?"
The Mother's presence filled the room, every inch of her "voice" an overwhelming lullaby. Beneath that chanting, he sensed something akin to a heartbeat: slow, deliberate, incomprehensibly vast.
His edges rippled as he moved imperceptibly toward the altar. He tried to stop, but an invisible force kept pulling him forward.
Isaac's sobs and laughter blended into a single, indecipherable hymn. The corpses still crouched motionless around the edges, mouths agape.
Klein's gooey form hesitated at the threshold of the altar's pulsing "shadow." The surface of the flesh beneath the woman's ribcage throbbed like a living drum. The black tendril—her umbilical cord—lay coiled at her feet.
*I want her to… hold me. Protect me. Rewrite what I am,"he realized in a shock of self-awareness. A ripple of disgust passed through him. "This is insane. She'll tear me apart." Yet more ripples—tender, hesitant—pushed him onward.
Isaac raised his face from the floor, tears glistening on his cheeks. "Mother," he whispered in a broken voice, "I am yours. Always."
The Mother's lips parted again—an exhalation that shook the chamber floor. In that vibration, Klein felt a silky caress.
The woman's body gave a sudden lurch.
CRACK.
Her neck snapped at an impossible angle—then kept turning. Her head rotated a full circle, spine popping like popcorn in grease.
Then, with a soft, wet rip, her head lifted from her shoulders and fell to the ground
Beneath it—her throat blossomed open.
From them poured **tendrils**, each as thick as a wrist, glistening with birth-slick and star-rot. They pulsed as if inhaling the chamber.
Then they lashed outward.
One slammed into Isaac's chest, punching through his ribcage like jelly. Another pierced his spine. More wrapped around his arms and legs, hoisting him upright like a marionette. His scream was choked—then turned to giggles again.
"Yes," he cried. "Yes! Feed on me! Birth your glory through me!"
The tendrils answered.
Hundreds of them—umbilical cords.
They struck the corpses next.
One by one, the frozen devotees were hooked—their open mouths stuffed with cords, their chests impaled, their arms split open to make room for new nerves, new veins.
Some collapsed, twitching. Others remained standing, bodies jerking in place like puppets caught in a storm.
More cords slithered toward the walls.
His "Mother", headless, seemed to emanate a terrible, maternal love.
Klein stared, his form quivering, every ripple of slime in him screaming "run"—but run where?
He was beneath it all. Part of it.
But not yet of it.
The tendrils hadn't found him. Not yet.
Above, Isaac convulsed with divine ecstasy. His arms cracked, twisting backward. His chest inflated unnaturally. Beneath his skin, **something moved**—dozens of tiny forms squirming like a bag of rats sealed in flesh.
He turned his face skyward, eyes rolling back, voice shrill with a thousand emotions.
"She's birthing the kingdom," he sobbed. "I can feel them—they're inside me! I am a vessel! A cradle! A nursery of truth!"
And then he burst.
His chest tore open.
Inside, there were no organs—only wet sacs. Transparent. Each one cradling a tiny shape. Humanoid. Rodent. Avian. Impossible.
The children had come.
From deep within Isaac's swollen belly, a wet squelch echoed—followed by a sickening "pop".
Something crawled out.
At first, it looked like a pale, bloated grub, twitching and slick with afterbirth. Then it jerked—violently—and began to change.
Its outer skin sloughed off with a hiss of steam. Beneath it, black limbs burst forth. Shiny plates spread like oily wings, buzzing low and fast. Its eyes—glassy, compound, insect-like.
It aged in seconds.
Flesh swelled grotesquely, then sagged—then hardened. Thick veins pulsed beneath its shell. Mandibles clicked open, dripping spittle.
Strangest of all, however, was that it bore Isaac's sallow skin, protruding cheekbones, and long, sharp, vulture-like nose.
The thing shrieked, spread its wings, and shot upward—vanishing into the shadows above.
"Did he just turn into a giant maggot?"
Klein recoiled, revolted.
On second thought, being a blob of goo didn't seem so bad.
All around, the corpses began to twitch.
Then, they "collapsed".
Mother's tendrils plunged into them again.
One by one, the bodies were "Lovingly" drained.
Skin shriveled.
Eyes sank.
Bones crumbled to ash.
Each husk sighed softly as a pale light—their essence—was drawn through the cords and funneled toward the altar. Toward "Mother".
"Mother's" tentacles curled, basking in the return of her lost children.
And then—
Her gaze locked onto Klein.
He felt a chill crawl down his nonexistent spine.
The cords froze
Then one stirred.
It was different—pulsing with heat. Slowly, it reached for the small, shivering lump of slime hidden beneath the altar.
"She found me. This is it. I'm going to be drained."
"Is this really how I die? As a sentient lump of slime—eaten by a giant umbilical cord?"
But the cord didn't pierce him.
It "touched" him.
Softly.
Lovingly.
It slid across his quivering form like silk. Then—it 'connected". Not with pain. Not with force. But like a mother holding her newborn close.
Then came the "flood".
The cord pulsed.
It fed him not pain, but "love".
He tried to scream.
But the sound came out as a ripple, a shudder, a wet hum through his slime.
He watched as the strange light—glowing, pulsing, unnervingly gentle—was funneled into him, thickening into darker, richer sludge.
He felt "alive".
He felt "whole".
And worst of all—
He felt loved.
Loved so deeply, so utterly, he knew he could surrender everything.
The altar pulsed once more. The room dimmed. The corpses were dust. The air smelled of rot and milk, blood and birth.
And at the center of it all, Klein's heart trembled.