The pit pulsed. Not like a wound, not like a mouth, but something else.
Desire.
Its eye—if it could even be called such—glistened in the chamber's core, its sightless gaze droned on Kiran as though it had known his shape long before he'd fallen into this place.
The woman sat motionless beside him. Steam curled from her skin, like the land was warming her in ways the air couldn't. The space around them vibrated with something unspoken, something that made Kiran's throat tighten and his heartbeat sync to the throb of the walls.
A whisper. Not through sound—but through heat. Through skin. A sensation in the base of his spine.
You are mine.
Kiran staggered to his feet.
"What is this?" he rasped.
The woman turned slowly. "It likes you."
Her lips were too red. Her teeth too white. Her voice sounded as though it came from behind her skin, not her throat.
The walls closed tighter. Moist. Supple. Hungry.
"Why me?"
The pit blinked.
A pressure ran down his chest like fingers, ghosting over the fabric of his suit. His body betrayed him, arcing toward sensation. Responding.
"You're not the first," she said, "but you're the first it's wanted."
Kiran backed away. The veins on the walls bulged, pulsing in time with the pit's stare. His breath misted the air.
"You're part of it," he said. "You brought me here."
She tilted her head. "I didn't bring you. It summoned you. I'm just the bait."
A pause.
"And the reward."
She rose, bare feet silent on the pulsing floor. The flesh beneath her curled slightly, like it recognized her.
Kiran's heart pounded in his ears. "What are you?"
"I don't remember my name. Not the real one," she said softly. "It keeps parts of us. When it loves us."
She took a step toward him. Her hair swayed like it was underwater. "It loved me, once."
Her fingertips grazed his chest. Heat surged. Electric. He didn't pull away.
"I came here on a ship like yours. Years ago. Maybe centuries. There's no time here. It watches. It chooses. Sometimes it loves. Sometimes it devours."
"And you stayed?"
Her laugh was not entirely human. "There is no staying. You become part of it. Or it becomes part of you."
The pit's eye dilated.
The walls began to quiver with want.
Kiran clenched his jaw. "And now?"
Her eyes gleamed. "Now it wants to become you."
The chamber shifted.
Veins snaked across the floor, wrapping his ankles—not tightly, not to restrain. But like caresses. Like longing. Like worship.
The membrane of the ceiling peeled open, revealing rows of bioluminescent nodules that dripped glowing liquid, slow and warm, over his shoulders. Every nerve in his body lit up. The land was feeling him—through him.
"Don't fight it," she whispered. Her breath brushed his ear. "It doesn't like rejection."
"Why me?"
"Because you still believe there's a way out," she said. "You resist. And that makes it want you more."
She placed a hand on his chest—his heart shuddered.
"But you won't want to leave soon."
He stared at her, breath ragged.
"Who are you?"
She smiled, and it was the first time her expression fractured. Something behind it broke free.
"I was the first."
A silence fell that wasn't empty.
The eye blinked again—and she changed.
Not violently. Not grotesquely. But intimately. The skin of her back rippled, and something unfolded—appendages that pulsed with bioluminescence, veined like petals, but moving like breath.
"I was the land's first lover."
Kiran's knees buckled.
"I tore open the sky to reach it," she said, her voice both her own and not. "I fed it my name, and it gave me this form. I kept waiting for someone else who might understand."
"Understand what?"
"That love is not soft. Not sweet. It's teeth. It's hunger. It's devotion."
Kiran's mind felt carved open. The pit's stare never left him.
And slowly, agonizingly, he realized he wasn't being watched.
He was being studied.
Weighed.
Worshipped.
Chosen.
The woman knelt before him, pressing her forehead to his stomach.
"If you say yes," she murmured, "you'll never be alone again. Not in any sense of the word."
The walls sighed.
The snow outside thickened.
And inside him, something began to change. Not pain. Not pleasure.
A blending.
A becoming.
Kiran stood very still as the land slid deeper into his bones.
And somewhere beneath all that flesh and snow and wanting…
The world began to whisper his name.
--
The walls convulsed as if they'd tasted him and found the flavor addictive. The woman—no longer fully woman—stood too close, her breath dragging cold ribbons against his cheek.
"Don't pretend you don't feel it," she hissed, lips curling. "You've already started changing."
Kiran's fists clenched. The land's heat pressed against his skin like a second atmosphere, probing for weakness, for surrender. He staggered backward and it followed, breathing in rhythm with him. The eye of the pit pulsed, dilated, a sick anticipation humming in the air.
"I didn't ask for this," he said, voice raw. "I didn't come here to be taken."
"But you were taken," she purred, swaying with unnatural grace. "And now it's only polite to give something back."
He turned from her, every nerve in his spine screaming. The walls bulged, flesh creaking inward as if preparing to seal. Behind him, the snow-land called—white dunes folding over like slow tidal waves, a silence that pulsed louder than any scream. He didn't trust the outside either, but this…this was infestation disguised as seduction.
"You want to survive?" she said, voice tightening, no longer sultry but brittle with insult. "Then stop fighting and become what the land desires."
He turned to her fully now. Saw her clearly. Her beauty had ripened into something rotten. Skin too perfect, stretched over a face that no longer moved quite right. Her eyes didn't blink—they twitched, as if on a delay. When she smiled, the flesh at her jaw fluttered, barely held together.
"You're not alive," Kiran said. "You're just a mouthpiece. An extension. You're its tongue."
She laughed, low and sharp like broken glass dragged through velvet. "Is that what scares you, Kiran? That I'm just a part of it? Or is it that part of you wants to be, too?"
He lunged. Not toward her, but toward the slick wall, where a lattice of tendons flexed, sensing his intention. A soft hiss rippled through the chamber. The land recoiled—just slightly—surprised.
Kiran pressed his hand into the pulsing wall. "You don't get to have me," he growled. "You don't get to own me."
The chamber vibrated. The eye narrowed.
Then screamed.
Not sound, but pressure. It squeezed around him, visceral and wet. The woman—thing—howled, clutching her head, as if the rejection tore at her, too.
"You fool!" she shrieked. "You don't deny it! It's chosen you!"
"I'm not here to be chosen," he snarled. "I'm here to escape."
The land shrieked again, walls trembling, retracting. Tendrils struck out, wild and uncoordinated, but Kiran moved fast—leapt toward the pit's edge, avoiding the flailing limbs. The chamber convulsed, no longer a place of seduction, but of wrath. The eye rolled in its socket, black blood welling at its rim.
She came for him then, fingers clawing, mouth open too wide. Her scream didn't come from her throat—it came from the chamber itself.
"You're mine! You don't get to leave—"
He slammed his fist into her chest.
She staggered back. Not hurt. Offended.
"Do you think you can survive out there?" she spat, jerking her chin toward the snowlands. "You'll be nothing. The land will keep reaching for you. It remembers every cell that touches it."
He didn't respond. He didn't have to.
The only way was forward.
He turned and hurled himself through the membrane tunnel leading away from the pit. It closed behind him with a sickening wet snap. The world beyond was snow again—only now, the flakes burned. They landed on his skin and sizzled, each one a stinging memory of the pit's rejection.
The land watched through the cold. He could feel it—its longing mutating into fury.
Every step he took bled. Every breath summoned echoes of her voice: Kiran, come back. Kiran, we were beautiful. Kiran, I'll forgive you if you just—
He kept walking.
The whiteness ahead thickened into something skeletal—ice structures shaped like spires, ribs of ancient beasts frozen mid-prayer. A place where the land could not reach. Maybe.
He limped toward it, jaw set, lungs burning.
Behind him, something whimpered—not human. Not anymore.
And though the land shrieked in hunger, in rage, it would not follow.
Because it had been denied.
And Kiran—cold, alone, bleeding—was free.
For now.