The rattling woke him.

A wet, wheezing rattle, like someone breathing through a mouthful of broken glass. Star sat up too fast, a wave of nausea tilting the room sideways. The lights were off. The other beds were empty.

“...what the hell...?”

His body felt heavy—like soup. Every movement was syrupy and slow, like he was wading through warm water. He swung his legs off the bed and stood, blinking hard to clear the haze.

But the room was gone.

So was the bed.

He stood barefoot on soil, damp and soft beneath him. Trees towered around him—gnarled, black-barked things dripping with moss and vines. A foul fog clung to the ground, thick and choking. The air reeked of rot and the metal tang of blood.

Star’s heartbeat began to race.

In the distance, he heard something—an animal, maybe. Crying. Strangled and pained.

He walked toward the sound.

With every step, the branches clawed at him, sticky sap clinging to his arms and legs. Even the grass was wrong—clingy, web-like, sticking to the soles of his feet like it was trying to hold him in place.

The noise grew louder.

It didn’t sound like an animal anymore. Not exactly. More like a person trying to sound like one—snarling and bleating; a cruel pantomime. Then another voice joined in. Then more. A dozen voices layered over one another, groaning and howling, turning into something akin to chanting.

Star stumbled forward, his stomach turning with each breath of the pungent air. The fog pulsed with warmth, like breath.

And then—light.

A flicker of flame, far ahead between the trees. It beckoned him.

The forest parted for him. Trees curling back unnaturally. The ground sloped down into a clearing.

And they were waiting for him.

Workers. Dozens of them. Faces he recognized from the facility—clean white uniforms now smeared with moss and rot, skin glistening with sweat and sap. They stood in a circle around a large pit, chanting.

Their words were garbled, just on the edge of a language that tingled something in the back of Star’s mind.
The animal noises continued—bleats, howls, groans of unformed throats.

Star found himself continuing to walk. Past the workers, past the tree’s even tho every cell in him was telling him to stop, he couldn't. 

His legs moved without him. He stumbled forward, dread collecting in the pit of his stomach like stones. His skin itched, prickled, as if something inside was waking up. Squirming.

The closer he got to the pit, the louder the noise became—until it was all around him, inside him, crawling under his skin and rattling in his teeth.

He reached the edge.

The stench hit him like a wall—putrid, chemical, earthy. The smell of things long dead and kept wet. For what purpose he couldn't even begin to fathom.

He collapsed to his knees.

Every inch of his body was wrong. His guts turned over themselves, nausea boiling up through his throat. Pain bloomed in his stomach like a knife twisting deep.

And then—silence.

The workers stopped.

The animal noises stopped.

Only Star remained, kneeling in the mud, gasping.

It began with a tightness.

Not just a sore throat or nausea—this was deeper. A low, growing pressure, like something had lodged itself just behind the breastbone and was slowly pushing upward. Star’s gag reflex triggered on instinct, but it didn’t help. No amount of coughing or dry heaving could move it.

Then came the squirming.

Like a snake writhing beneath the skin. A slick, pulsing movement in his esophagus. Muscle and flesh stretching, distending, trying to accommodate something that should never be there. He tried to scream, but only a high, choking wheeze came out—his windpipe blocked by the living mass trying to climb its way out.

His mouth filled with bitter mucus, thick as glue, tasting like metal and rot. Saliva and bile flooded in as his body spasmed—he could feel the shape of it now, pressing against his trachea, crawling with impossible urgency. The sensation was both cold and burning, like something wet and alive was dragging barbs down his throat, hooking into the meat of him as it clawed upward.

And then it moved.

Hard, jerking inside him, a spasm of foreign muscle. It bulged in his neck, warping the skin like a parasite ready to split him open. His eyes rolled back as he retched violently—his entire body convulsing—every nerve screaming in panic and violation.

Finally, it breached.

His jaw cracked open wider than it should, the corners of his lips splitting as something slick and raw forced its way between his teeth. It was covered in blood and bile, strands of dark fluid snapping between his lips as the thing slipped free—wet, writhing, and wrong.

The relief was worse than the pain.

His throat was left ravaged and torn, coated in a film of blood and rot. Every breath he took afterward burned like acid, and he could still feel the ghost of movement along the inside of his esophagus—like some trace of it had been left behind.

And there it lay, twitching on the ground.

Born of his body.
A part of him—but not human.
Not anymore.

Tiny horns curved from the top of its malformed skull. Its mouth opened and let out a warbling cry, like a baby goat trying to scream.

The thing rolled, twitched—then slid into the pit.

Star screamed again.

His vision was going black at the edges. He collapsed, more of the thick bile pouring from his mouth, unable to move as the last of his strength fled.

Then he heard the voice.

Not from outside.
From within.

“Mother’s milk from the roots, we drink.
Sweet is the sap, and thick as ink.”

The words pulsed in his skull. A broken chant, looping, getting louder with each repetition.

“Mother’s milk... from the roots...
Sweet is... sweet is the sap...
Thick... as ink...”

Star’s fingers twitched once.

And then nothing.