Story Quote: "When the earth begins to breathe, you stop knowing where the soil ends and the flesh begins."
-Lower Forest-
The forest thickened as Rumi and Mira pushed deeper into Veridia's undergrowth. The air here was heavy—moist, warm, and humming with unseen life. Every step sank into moss that pulsed faintly beneath their boots, like veins under skin.
A low, rhythmic sound echoed in the distance. It wasn't wind. It wasn't water. It was a heartbeat.
"This place… it's alive," Mira whispered. "Not alive," Rumi muttered, eyes scanning the flora. "Possessed."
She crouched beside a vine and nicked it with her knife. Thick, crimson sap oozed out. It smelled metallic.
Rumi wiped it onto a vial. "Blood composition. Iron traces. Protein chains…" she murmured, her mind already dissecting. "This isn't plant sap—it's hemoglobin."
Mira's skin crawled. "You're saying the plants bleed?"
"I'm saying they eat," Rumi replied.
The path widened into a clearing—a ring of petrified trees with hollowed centers. From those hollows hung husks—humanoid, shriveled, their skin fused with vines, their faces twisted into silent screams.
Mira gagged. "Spirits help us…"Rumi approached one. Its chest cavity was split open, and from inside grew a thick stalk with budding pods. The buds pulsed faintly, whispering as they swayed.
…hungry… hungry…
She cut one open. Inside was a small black seed, slick and pulsing faintly.
"They're seeding," Rumi breathed. "The bodies become incubators."
The vines rustled, reacting to her voice. Some of the husks stirred, joints cracking like dead wood snapping. The pods opened one by one—revealing empty eye sockets that now glowed with faint green light.
"Rumi…" Mira warned. "Don't move," Rumi whispered. "They're sensing vibration."
But one of the husks screamed. The sound wasn't human—it was wet, sharp, and hollow, like air being forced through a lung made of bark.
Then they moved.
The husks descended. Some crawled on all fours, their limbs twisted backward; others dragged themselves with vine-limbs that burst from their torsos. Each step left behind roots that spread like veins across the dirt.
Rumi hurled a vial to the ground—an orange explosion of acidic mist. Several husks shrieked and fell apart, their bark-skin sizzling.
"Keep them away from the pods!" Rumi shouted. "If they seed again, we'll never stop them!"
Mira slashed her cleavers in twin arcs, cutting through vines and bone alike. The creatures' fluids splattered across her arms—sticky, greenish-red, burning faintly.
"They just keep coming!" Mira shouted. "Then we burn the nursery!" Rumi snapped.
She pulled three vials from her belt—one blue, one yellow, one black—and threw them in sequence. The resulting explosion painted the forest in liquid fire. The husks screamed, flailing as the vines ignited.
The entire grove shuddered. The ground swelled. Beneath the flames, something vast moved.
The fire cleared the underbrush, revealing a massive hollow beneath the clearing—a pit of writhing roots, all converging on a central heart-like core pulsing with red light.
Rumi stared, speechless for the first time.
"It's alive… and it's centralizing all organic matter through those roots."
Mira's jaw tightened. "Meaning?"
"Meaning this isn't a parasite," Rumi said slowly. "It's a symbiote. It's merged with the entire island. It doesn't just live off blood—it circulates it. Every death feeds it. Every birth owes it life."
The heart pulsed again, stronger this time. From its base, tendrils shot upward, forming humanoid figures out of vines and bone fragments—half-plant, half-corpse.
"New hosts," Rumi whispered. "It's adapting."
Mira stepped forward, but Rumi grabbed her wrist.
"Wait. Don't kill them yet." "You've lost your mind!" "No," Rumi said sharply. "I've found purpose."
She knelt, pulling fragments of seed husks into vials. "If I can stabilize their chemical matrix, I can weaponize it. Controlled reanimation—directed growth. The same parasitic system that consumes life could be turned against the Marines."
"You're going to make weapons out of this?" Mira asked, horrified. "I'm going to make justice," Rumi replied, eyes gleaming.
Before Mira could argue, another pulse erupted from the pit. Dozens of new husks rose at once, shrieking. The ground split open, forcing the two to flee.
Rumi tossed a final vial behind her—a dark crimson one. The explosion that followed wasn't fire. It was growth. Vines exploded outward, impaling the husks and rooting them permanently into the soil.
"You used their own biology…" Mira realized. "And turned it against them," Rumi said, panting. "We're not leaving empty-handed."
By the time they reached the upper canopy, the forest behind them was aflame, yet eerily healing itself. Burned vines regrew in seconds, sealing over the blackened ground like flesh scarring over a wound.
Rumi looked back only once.
"This island doesn't want to die," she murmured. "It's not just feeding—it's breeding."
Mira glanced at her companion, noticing the faint green light reflecting in Rumi's goggles.
"You're changing," she said quietly. Rumi smiled faintly, tired but resolute. "No. I'm evolving."