The Roots That Remember

 
The mist grew thicker.

It clung to Gaius like a second skin, muting sound, swallowing detail.

Every step into Grief Hollow felt heavier, as if the very air resisted him.

The trees here were ancient—twisted spires of bone-pale wood, their bark peeling away like old flesh.

But it wasn’t just rot that shaped them.

At the base of the largest trunks, the earth had broken open.

Coils of blackened aug-wires slithered upward, fusing with living roots.

Scraps of shattered drone wings and synthetic veins coiled around them like strangling vines.

The machines weren't buried.

They had grown into the forest.

Or perhaps the forest had grown into them.

Gaius knelt near a tangle where metal and bark intertwined, studying the unnatural seams.

The aug-wires pulsed faintly—sickly green veins throbbing against the rotted wood.

He touched nothing.

Instinct warned him that whatever lived here was not asleep.

Up ahead, a fallen Codex crawler lay half-devoured by roots.

Its broken chassis groaned softly under unseen pressure, as if the Hollow itself was still swallowing it inch by inch.

And faintly, from deep within the trees...

came a whisper.

Not the voice of men.

Not even of machines.

A sound like old memories gnashing their teeth.

The Hollow Seed's influence was not content to corrupt technology.

It sought to rewrite life itself, until even memory, even nature, could no longer separate flesh from metal, death from decay.

Gaius rose, shotgun heavy in his hands.

The ground beneath him no longer felt like earth.

It felt like a wound.

And he was walking across its scarred, dreaming skin.

He pressed forward, each step pulling him closer to the black pulse that lurked deeper still.