Even in death, the forest remembers.
The forest pulsed with life beneath Elias's feet, but it was no longer a passive presence. It recognized him now—not merely as a wanderer, not as an invader, but as one of its own. A vessel. A voice.
Since the revelation of his bloodline, Elias had felt the creeping change in every inch of his body. His skin bore the patterns of bark beneath the surface, the veins in his arms glowing faintly green when he was close to the roots. His senses had heightened—he could smell rot and rain from miles away, hear the sap flow inside trees, and feel the pain when branches were broken. At night, he didn't dream anymore. He listened.
To the roots. To the soil. To the things moving beneath.
He could command plant life with thought alone—call vines to lift him, roots to tear apart stone, leaves to silence the wind. His breath calmed the forest; his rage awakened it. He was no longer just Elias. He was the forest's heir.
But something trembled below the roots. Something the trees feared.
It started with the ground weeping black sap—cold and thick like tar, bubbling through cracks that hadn't been there days before. The scent was wrong. Not earthy, not fungal. Sulfurous. Alien.
And when Elias reached into the soil to speak with the forest, he felt a different current—hot, biting, ancient.
It whispered a name.
Makehsm.
The hell of mycobionts.
A dimension buried deep beneath the physical world, hidden in the hollows of rotting worlds and dead spores. A place older than humanity. Older than the forest. A realm where life festered in its most grotesque and parasitic forms. There, decay was not an end—it was worship. Fungi grew into beasts the size of mountains, eyes blooming in the dark. The air was thick with spore clouds, and every breath could turn lungs into gardens of screaming mold.
The denizens of Makehsm were not merely fungal—they were sentient. Malicious. Driven by a hunger to consume and colonize. They had no eyes, yet saw through vibration. No mouths, yet screamed with spores. They traveled through rootways, spore-veins, and the cracks between dimensions.
At the center of this infernal realm sat King Vrath'kul, Sovereign of Rot, crowned with antlers of bone-white hyphae, his body an amalgamation of flesh, fungus, and ash. Where he stepped, reality wilted. He wore a cloak of lichen that fed on the light around him. His throne was a mound of consumed gods, and from his pores flowed the language of infestation.
Vrath'kul ruled with an absolute hierarchy:
Sporeshapers – Priests of decay who sculpt life into abominations.
Myceliar Sentinels – Warriors armored in chitin and moss, blind and ruthless.
Hollow Mothers – Breeders of spore-blood beasts, swollen with corrupted life.
Grave Choir – Undead that sang spores into dimensions, soft and maddening.
The spores of Makehsm had begun to seep into Elias's world.
And Elias, though bonded with the forest, felt their influence pressing inward.
He stood at the edge of a crater in the forest—newly formed. The trees bent away from it. No birds sang near it. The roots around it twisted in pain. The air felt pressurized, like before a thunderstorm, but colder, deeper, and foul with decay.
He knelt and pressed his palm to the dirt.
The voices came in waves.
—He rises.
—The roots cannot hold forever.
—You are not strong enough yet.
Elias gritted his teeth. He was stronger than he had ever been, but the forest was right—he wasn't ready. Not for this. Not for what was clawing its way up from Makehsm.
A tremor rocked the ground. From the center of the crater, a black vine burst from the soil. It didn't grow—it stabbed upward, slick with mucus and spore-dust. Elias stumbled back as the vine uncoiled, revealing a pale, fleshy bulb at its tip. The bulb split open with a wet, sucking noise, and from it spilled a scream that had no sound—only pressure.
His ears bled. The trees cracked.
Then silence.
Elias stared at the thing. It pulsed, looking more like an infected organ than a plant. Inside, shapes moved. Not creatures. Eyes. Too many. Staring out.
He summoned roots from the surrounding trees to crush it—but they recoiled, hissing as if burned. The thing from Makehsm rejected the forest.
He stepped closer. Against the forest's warnings.
The ground beneath the crater collapsed.
Elias fell with it.
He tumbled into darkness, roots lashing out to catch him. The pit was deeper than he expected—like falling into the throat of a dying god. He landed hard, breath knocked from him. His glowing veins lit the cavern in dim green.
He was in a tunnel. No—a burrow. Dug by something massive.
The walls pulsed. They were alive.
Fungus blanketed every surface, twitching, breathing, growing even as he watched. Strange spores floated in the air like fireflies, but each was shaped like a tiny mouth, open and whispering.
Elias stood, trembling. Ahead, something glowed—a rift.
Through it, he glimpsed Makehsm.
The vision stole the breath from his lungs. Skies black with rot. Towers of mushroom-flesh twisting toward a red sun that never moved. Beasts writhed in pits of decay, consumed by larger things that pulsed and grew and split in endless birthing. Sounds crawled across his skin—wet, scraping, gnashing.
He turned away. And saw them.
Figures watching him. Not of this world. Not quite flesh, not quite fungus. They wore skins like robes, and their heads were crowned with flaring spore fans. Their mouths gaped but didn't move. Yet Elias heard them.
"You do not belong," they said. "Yet you are one of us."
"I'm not," Elias hissed.
"You are the seed. The inheritor. Your roots are deeper than your mind."
They stepped forward. Spore dust trailing.
"You are of two realms. You must choose."
Elias raised his hand. The forest responded. A burst of emerald light surged through his veins, and with a roar, he struck the tunnel wall. Vines exploded from the roots above, dragging him upward.
The figures hissed, dissolving into clouds of spores.
He burst out of the pit, gasping.
But something had come back with him.
Something small. Buried deep in his chest.
A seed.
Of Makehsm.
[To be continued…]