You Step into the Undergrowth

You slip from the road and into the undergrowth, the bramble arms of the forest clutching at you as if to pull you deeper. You move in uneven, crouched bursts, breathing through your teeth to keep the sound low. Your ears strain for any hint of pursuit. But the forest is a liar—it hides the truth in the sound of wind through dead leaves, in the clicking of unseen insects, in the faint groan of distant ice shifting in its thaw.

Somewhere behind you, the thing screams. It’s a sound without air, like stone cracking under pressure, but there’s rage in it—raw and bright. You know then that it has seen you step away from the road. It has chosen to follow.

Branches scrape against your face, opening tiny cuts. Moss-covered roots shift under your feet, slick with damp rot. The air feels tighter here, heavy in your lungs, thick with the taste of earth gone sour. You press on, convinced you can lose it in the dense tangle, but the forest seems to swell around you, slowing your steps.

Then you hear it—closer now—the rhythmic churn of something massive moving with purpose, snapping deadfall like brittle bone. You risk a glance over your shoulder. Through the weave of branches, you catch glimpses: pale limbs too long to belong to any man, a body that seems both swollen and starved, skin stretched so thin you can see the shapes beneath it writhing against the surface. Its face—if it has one—flickers in and out of sight like an image seen in a rippling pool, always shifting, always wrong.

You push faster, but the undergrowth rises against you, vines tightening around your ankles, brambles snagging your sleeves, drawing beadlets of blood that steam in the cold. The thing gains on you with ease, its movement unnatural, like it bends the space between you. Every step you take, it takes three, without ever seeming to hurry.

A shadow falls over you. You barely have time to scream before it hits. The impact sends you sprawling onto your back in the wet loam, the air ripped from your lungs. Its weight presses down, though not with the crushing finality you expect—it’s almost tender, its limbs folding around you in a way that pins without breaking.

The first touch is cold. Not winter-cold, but the clammy chill of something that has never known warmth. It brushes over your face, down your neck, across your ribs, and wherever it touches, your skin seems to thin, to soften, to give way. You can feel it working into you—not breaking skin, but sliding through it, as though your body has decided it no longer needs the barrier.

You gasp, but the air feels thick, sticky, filled with spores or dust. Your arms won’t move. The forest spins above you as its body melds into yours, its mass seeping into the hollows of your bones, filling you from the inside out. There’s a moment of panic, sharp and electric, where every instinct screams to fight, to tear free. But the harder you strain, the more it pulls you in, wrapping your mind in a strange, aching calm.

It’s in your chest now, wrapping itself around your heart. You expect pain, but instead there is only… welcome. A slow warmth blooms from the core of you, creeping through your veins, carrying whispers in a voice you’ve never heard but somehow remember. You are mine. You were always mine.

Your vision shifts. The forest doesn’t look like a collection of trees anymore—it’s veins, bones, and tissue, an endless body you now inhabit. Every root is a tendon. Every branch is a rib. The air tastes of your breath. The thing—no, we—move together now, one thought flowing between two bodies until you can’t tell where you end and it begins.

Your skin prickles as something writhes beneath it, shifting to fit the shape of your new self. You feel the slow stitching of bone to bone, sinew to sinew, an unmaking of who you were in favor of something more… complete. Your blood sings with the pulse of the creature. Every part of you that once felt hollow, unwanted, abandoned—it fills those places effortlessly, until there is no space left for doubt.

The thought of escape fades like an old dream. There is no leaving this, and no part of you wants to. You finally understand—you have been moving toward this moment for as long as you’ve been walking. You were never lost; you were being called.

And now, you are home.

The creature shifts, carrying you upright, its mass still inside yours. Your hands are not your own, but they are steady. You take a step, and the forest moves with you. The cold damp loam clings to your feet, as though even the earth recognizes you now.

Ahead, the road is gone. In its place, an opening between the trees—dark, deep, endless. The creature inside you hums with hunger and promise. Somewhere within, you can feel its joy, a low thrum of satisfaction in having you, keeping you, making you its forever.

You take a step toward the dark, and the forest seems to sigh.