You leave the creature

You leave it.

Not with a word, not even with a backward glance at first—just the slow, dragging retreat of your feet as you peel yourself from its side like old bark tearing free from a trunk. You think it will stop you. It doesn’t. You think it will reach for you, the way its surface used to pulse and lean toward you in the dark. It doesn’t.

When you finally turn your head, it’s still there. Watching. Or whatever passes for watching in a thing without eyes. Its facelessness is somehow worse now—like a mask left on a corpse. Its whole mass trembles once, rippling from its center outward. Then it opens its faceless mouth—no, not a mouth, just a new seam tearing across its front—and a sound spills out.

It’s not a scream. It’s not a roar. It’s a sound you’ve heard before, in dreams you couldn’t remember when you woke—a low, resonant mourning, like an ocean’s undertow dragged through iron bells. It’s the sound of something vast collapsing inward.

You run.

You don’t know why. It didn’t chase you. It just stood there, sound pouring out of it, heavy enough to make the dirt quiver under your feet. But you run anyway. You run because you’re afraid if you don’t, you’ll turn around, and if you turn around, you’ll go back. And if you go back—

You don’t finish the thought.

The ground under you shifts from packed ash to something softer, damp, pocked with the same mounded shapes you crossed earlier. Only now, as you pass them, they react. They pulse—not violently, but with a sluggish rhythm, like hearts too large for their bodies. Some tremble as you draw near, seams in their surfaces twitching open and shut. One splits just enough for a thin tendril to slide free, groping blindly toward your ankle.

You stumble sideways, nearly falling, and scramble over another mound. They shift under your weight, flexing with a sensation that makes your stomach lurch. The smell rises—sweet, coppery rot—and you gag, pressing a hand to your mouth as you run harder, weaving through them.

The tether follows you.

You can’t see it, but you can feel it—a cord sunk somewhere behind your sternum, pulled taut as you flee. With every step, it drags against you like a hook under your ribs. It doesn’t yank; it just exists, a constant pressure reminding you of what you’re leaving. You imagine it snapping back into the creature’s body, some part of you still in its grasp.

Your breath comes in wet gasps now, your lungs clawing for air. The mounds grow denser, pressing closer together until you’re forced to vault them, scrape past them, their slick seams opening just enough to brush your palms. Each touch feels like a tiny mouth against your skin.

“Someone,” you rasp aloud, though you don’t know who you’re calling to. “Please—someone else. Anyone. Anyone but it.”

Your voice sounds thin and brittle. It vanishes into the trees. Nothing answers.

You break free of the mounds and charge into the forest beyond. It’s thicker here, the trees tall and straight, their trunks lined with something like veins—dark threads pulsing faintly under their bark. The undergrowth claws at your legs as you shove through it, tearing open fresh cuts to mix with the old.

The tether burns now, a thread of ice and heat twisted together under your skin. You clutch at your chest as you run, nails digging into your shirt, as though you could rip it out. You can’t.

The forest lightens ahead. Sunlight—or something like it—spills through, gold and glaring. You throw yourself toward it.

Then you’re out.

The shift is so abrupt you almost fall. The trees end. The smell ends. The pulsing under your feet ends.

You burst out of the undergrowth and stumble onto asphalt, black and cracked with age but still whole enough to sting your knees when you collapse. The heat of it rushes up into you, baking the sweat on your face, searing through the damp in your clothes. For a moment you think it’s burning you alive.

You roll onto your back, panting, staring up at a sky too blue and too ordinary. No ash light. No silver haze. Just a sky like any other sky you’ve seen before—if you even remember what that means anymore.

You close your eyes.

The tether is still there. You feel it pulling faintly, not enough to drag you back but enough to remind you what waits if you turned around. It feels like a phantom limb. Like a promise you tore from yourself.

For a moment you imagine staying here, on this hot road under the bland sky, and never moving again. Just letting the heat bake away whatever is left of you until you’re nothing but dust.

But that isn’t death. That’s ruin.

The realization slides under your ribs like a knife: you’ve done this to yourself. Your fear, your refusal, your endless recoil from the thing that offered you belonging—even if it was monstrous—has left you here, empty and untethered. You thought you were escaping, but all you’ve done is strip yourself of the only thing that wanted you.

Inside, something cracks. Not a dramatic shatter, just a slow crumbling. You feel it peeling away in layers—the anger, the fear, the scraps of hope—until there’s nothing but a thin hollow left, echoing with the memory of its mourning cry.

You press your palms against the asphalt and push yourself upright. Your arms shake, your knees wobble, but you stand.

You turn.

There’s no forest.

Just a line of ordinary pines marching along the roadside, their trunks rough and familiar, their needles sighing in a wind that smells of damp earth. No pulsing seams, no whispering branches. No creature waiting in the shadows.

You stare for a long time, throat tight.

You take a step toward them. Another. But the tether doesn’t respond. There’s nothing on the other end now.

The heat presses in. The pines stand indifferent.

You turn back to the road and start walking.

Your shadow stretches long before you, the sun behind your back, and for a heartbeat you swear it flickers—just once—like something else walks beside you still. But when you glance down, it’s gone.

You stumble forward, your legs heavy, your chest aching with emptiness. The world is too bright. Too dry.

You feel more lost than when you entered the forest.

But you keep walking.