You Step Into the Circle and Rest

You sink into the moss like it’s been waiting for you all along—soft, damp, almost warm in places, and smelling faintly of earth after rain. The quiet here is heavy, as though the air itself has thickened. A strange, faint pressure hums against your skin, like being underwater without the burn in your lungs.

You tell yourself it’s nothing. Just exhaustion. Just the way sleep sometimes swallows you whole when you’ve gone too far, for too long, with too little. You close your eyes, the mushroom circle pressing coolness into your spine, and the forest outside is a vague blur in your thoughts.

And then you sleep.

When you open your eyes again, you are not alone.

They are small—no taller than your knee—and pale as moonlight, their bodies shaped like delicate, crooked sculptures of flesh and fungus. Their heads are capped with wide, soft domes the color of bone, frilled at the edges. Thin stalk-like arms and legs bend at angles that feel wrong, yet their movements are careful, deliberate. Their eyes—if they can be called that—are black pits sunken deep into the white softness of their faces.

They stand in a ring around you, perfectly spaced, perfectly still. The only movement comes from the faint, trembling shift of their frilled caps in the nonexistent wind.

One of them steps closer. Its voice is not a sound, but a damp, fungal whisper inside your head: We can fix you.

You try to sit up, to speak, but your limbs don’t respond. It’s not paralysis in the ordinary sense—it feels more like your body simply doesn’t belong to you anymore. The moss beneath you seems to have grown over your arms and legs, holding you in place.

Another of them kneels at your side. Its hands—or what pass for hands—are small, rounded things, the tips soft and rubbery. When they press against the wound on your chest, they leave behind a slick residue that sinks into your skin like warm oil. You feel it moving under the surface, numbing you, making your heartbeat sound distant and muffled in your ears.

They begin their work.

Thin strands—fibrous, almost root-like—are pulled from beneath their caps, trailing in damp curls. They thread them through you with bone needles, pushing through the torn flesh in slow, patient movements. You feel the tug each time they pull a stitch closed, the flesh puckering under their careful hands.

At first, you think they are only repairing you. But then you notice the way their movements change—slowing, lingering—and the sensation shifts from stitching to something else entirely.

One of them leans down and bites.

It isn’t like an animal bite—there’s no tearing, no sudden violence. Their mouths open impossibly wide, folding back like soft petals, and they press themselves against your skin. The pressure builds until you feel them sink inward. Not teeth, not exactly—something else, softer, yet strong—presses through you, pulling away tiny fragments of muscle, of fat. They consume without haste, chewing slowly, their black eyes unblinking as they swallow pieces of you.

You try to scream, but your voice is caught somewhere deep in your throat.

Another steps forward, holding something in its little hands. It’s not human. You can’t tell if it’s organic or crafted—it’s black and shining in places, fibrous and spongy in others, and it pulses faintly, like it’s breathing. They push it into the wound before sewing the flesh closed over it. You feel the thing move inside you, shifting in time with your slowed, sluggish heartbeat.

Your chest burns.

They work in silence, save for the wet sound of needle piercing flesh, the faint squelch as they press more strange things into you. Not all of them are solid—some are viscous, cool fluids that bubble faintly as they spread through your veins. The world around you tilts, edges bending, colors deepening into shades you didn’t know existed.

One of the mushroom people crawls up onto your chest. Its frilled cap brushes your chin, spilling spores that drift like pale snow over your face. They settle into your eyes, your mouth, and you feel them root—tiny filaments burrowing in, blooming behind your eyelids.

Your vision shifts. The others aren’t pale anymore—they glow faintly from within, their forms traced with a network of thin, golden threads that hum faintly like the inside of a seashell. You can see their work now, every stitch binding not just flesh to flesh, but you to them.

You will heal, the voice in your head murmurs again. You will grow.

Something brushes against your spine from the inside, curling upward like a vine. You can feel it threading itself through you, weaving around bone, binding muscle. Your lungs feel heavier, as if each breath carries the weight of damp earth. The pulse in your chest changes rhythm—slower, deeper, almost in sync with the pulse you see glowing inside the mushroom people.

They aren’t just repairing you. They are changing you.

The numbness begins to fade, replaced by a slow, throbbing ache that spreads through every nerve. The moss around you loosens, but your body no longer feels entirely like your own. Your limbs are heavier, your hands softer, fingertips damp. When you try to lift them, they tremble with a strange new strength.

The mushroom people step back, their work done. Your chest is stitched shut with white fibers that twitch faintly as if alive. Beneath them, the black, pulsing thing shifts in time with your breath.

They stare at you in perfect silence, and for a moment you think they might speak again. Instead, they simply turn and walk away into the forest, their pale caps bobbing gently until they vanish between the trees.

You are left lying in the moss, the fungal circle cold against your back. The air smells richer now, full of decay and rain. Somewhere deep inside, the thing they sewed into you moves again—and this time, it feels like it’s listening.