Hunger in the Hollow

Sound. Motion. Pressure. Heat.

It surges through the tunnel, feet pounding stone, each stride jarring through joints not built for such speed. Bones crackle. Muscles groan. The parasite urges the host forward regardless—relentless, driven by a need it doesn't understand.

Up ahead, the echo of frantic footfalls ricochets off the tunnel walls—the prey's scent still thick in the air, raw and sharp with fear. The parasite latches onto it, not with thought but with pattern. The blood-smell is fading. The prey is pulling away.

The host's body falters.

A dragging limb—rear left—torn tendon, half-healed, fails to lift. The foot catches on loose stone. Momentum hurls the creature forward, and the host crashes shoulder-first into the cavern wall with a bone-jarring crack.

Pain floods through borrowed nerves. Blunt. Radiating. The parasite recoils inside the host's body as a cascade of internal alarms blur together—tearing, breaking, heat, heat, heat—

But there is no pause. No hesitation.

It shifts weight to the other limbs and lunges again, scrambling after the fading scent. The prey is distant now, the echoes scattered, the tunnel twisting. The path ahead splits into three jagged corridors.

The parasite stumbles to a stop, sides heaving. Saliva and blood drip from the host's slack jaws, splattering the stone floor.

Its grip on direction is slipping.

In that stillness, something new happens.

The parasite—merged so tightly to nerve and muscle—notices. Not just the pain. Not just the hunger.

But the difference.

Left limb: reduced force output. Drag. Prior injury re-opened.

Right limb: stable. Responsive. Reliable.

The host's body is communicating. The parasite parses it instinctively, then begins—for the first time—to categorize. Not with words, not yet. But with… structure.

Data. Input. Correlation.

It reroutes pressure away from the failing limb. Muscle fibers shift—subtle, unseen. Tension redistributes. The creature limps forward, steadier. Movement restored.

This is not healing. Not instinct.

It is adjustment.

Another moment passes. Then another. The parasite does not move.

The prey is gone. The scent is vanishing.

But in its place… focus.

The tunnels narrow.

The creature stalks now—not with purpose, but with strange grace. Its breathing slows. The ragged hitch in its stride has smoothed. Not perfectly, but functionally. What was broken is now re-engineered, crude but efficient.

It does not understand what it's doing. But it feels it working.

The air here is different. Stagnant. Metallic. The tunnel angles downward, walls slick with condensation and streaks of dark mineral ooze. Faint pulses of bioluminescent fungi beat along the edges, dull orange and pale green—pulses in rhythm with something deep below.

With each step, the parasite feels more.

A subtle twitch of muscle here. A pressure differential there. The host's tongue flicks out, scenting without command. Its ears pivot, catching the vibration of water dripping three chambers away.

The parasite notes it all.

A system is forming—raw, internal, skeletal. A framework of input and response. It doesn't think. But it calculates.

The body is no longer a vessel. It is becoming a machine.

Then, something shifts.

Ahead, the tunnel widens into a cavern. Large. High ceiling. Jagged stone columns like broken fangs encircle the edges. Pools of thick, dark water dot the floor, rimmed with fungal mats that hiss faintly when disturbed.

The parasite slows.

There is no prey scent here. No sound. But a pressure builds in the air—static, heavy, like the moment before a quake.

It steps forward.

And the world reacts.

A tremor rolls through the cavern floor. Dust sifts from the ceiling. One of the stone columns—tall, thin, brittle—cracks and collapses, crashing into a fungal pool. The hiss turns into a shriek.

Spores erupt, glowing orange, swarming the air like burning ash. The parasite flinches, lunges back into the tunnel.

But too late.

The spores cling to the host's skin, seeping into wounds, into pores. They burn—not with heat, but disruption. The host's muscles seize. A violent tremor rolls through its form. Eyes twitch. Jaws snap involuntarily.

And then—

Something splits.

Not outside.

Inside.

The parasite convulses. Its grip on the host shatters for a heartbeat, its awareness fracturing. Information floods in—too much, all at once:

Heat signatures—every crack in the walls, every creature in the stone.

Pressure waves from echo-chambers below.

The host's organs, mapped in real-time.

And itself—its form inside the host, its tendrils, its mass.

The parasite sees itself.

The moment is brief. Then gone.

The body collapses.

Darkness. Stillness.

Long minutes pass.

Then the host stirs.

One claw twitches. Then another. The creature pushes itself upright, legs shaking but functional. The parasite settles into the spine again, its tendrils flexing with alien precision.

It remembers the collapse. The overload. The flash of data.

It doesn't panic.

It rebuilds.

Its grip strengthens. Tendrils retract from damaged nerves and reattach. Old injuries are sealed more efficiently. It reinforces muscle groups and reroutes stress loads. The host body improves.

And something else… grows.

A bulge near the base of the host's throat. A cluster of cells—foreign, flexible—begin dividing, threading into the nervous system. A new organ. Purpose unknown.

But the parasite knows it is necessary.

It no longer consumes the host.

It transforms it.

-PART 2

The parasite stands in the quiet.

No prey. No threat. No motion except the drip of mineral-heavy water from stalactites above. The cavern lies still—but not empty.

In the aftershock of the spore-triggered collapse, the parasite feels a deeper vibration through the stone beneath its feet. A pulsing resonance. Not movement, exactly. Not sound. More like… a presence.

It has no thoughts. But it pauses.

Sifts through sensation.

Holds still.

And the resonance grows clearer.

A second ago, the parasite understood only hunger, pain, and speed. But now—after exposure, after collapse, after mutation—patterns begin to emerge in its world.

The air here breathes. It moves in cycles. Exhales from fissures. Whispers from cracks.

The parasite flexes its limbs experimentally. Where pain once stiffened the host's joints, new tissue moves with fluid strength. Scarred muscles have been laced with parasitic thread—woven, reinforced.

It is learning.

And not just from itself.

A memory flares—raw, instinctual. Not from the parasite, but from the host. A flicker of experience, long buried:

—Warmth, then pain.

—A smaller creature, screaming beneath its jaws.

—Blood that tasted wrong. Sharp. Metallic.

—A nest. Eggs crushed under claw.

The parasite shudders. The image flickers and fades. It does not understand it.

But it knows it did not originate from within.

It leaves the cavern.

The tunnels beyond twist and splinter like broken roots—some leading upward, others spiraling deep into the crust of the world. The parasite chooses without knowing why, veering toward the tunnel where the resonance is loudest.

As it moves, the new organ at its throat pulses faintly.

Like a tuning fork. Or an antenna.

It begins to register interference—warped pulses in the space around it. Places where the stone feels soft, where echoes scatter wrong, where the air vibrates with something deeper than sound.

The parasite follows.

Hours pass. Or minutes. Time bends strangely underground.

The passage descends steeply now. The air thickens. Faint light gives way to absolute black. The parasite doesn't care. Sight was never its primary sense.

Here, in the dark, it begins to experience a new type of perception.

A field. A distortion. A deviation.

Where the host's flesh meets the walls, it feels slippery resistance. Not physical. Not tangible. But real. Like moving through jelly-thick atmosphere. The parasite's new organ pulses in time with these anomalies.

It does not know it, but this is Nys—the world's hidden truth.

And it has begun to sense it.

Then, another sound.

Distant. Subtle.

Not prey. Not natural. Rhythmic. Mechanical.

Thump. Pause. Thump. Pause.

The parasite halts. Ears pivot. Limbs still.

From far ahead, the darkness responds.

Not with sound. But with awareness.

A mind—not like the watcher. Not animal.

Something old.

Something aware.

And it has felt the parasite's presence.

The host body tenses. Jaw clenches involuntarily. The parasite begins to retreat back up the tunnel—but the air itself thickens.

It has triggered something.

From the far end of the descent, a glow stirs.

It is not light.

It is memory.

Stone begins to shift. The tunnel breathes, exhaling dust and the scent of long-dead things. The parasite senses motion in every direction. Not fast. Not violent. Just… rising.

A sound echoes through the rock. Low. Resounding.

Not words. Not a roar.

A summons.

The parasite takes one step back.

And then it screams.

Not aloud. But inside its own stolen flesh, the host's lungs seize as if yanked by a hook. Its throat convulses—and the new organ clenches.

A pulse of force ripples outward.

The tunnel walls waver, ever so slightly. Dust lifts. Fungi wilt.

The air vibrates. The scream was not sound. It was distortion. A crude, embryonic exertion of Nys—the parasite's first, instinctual bending of reality.

The pulse silences everything. Even the faraway thumping stops.

For a moment, there is only stillness.

And then, from the deep… something moves.

It rises slowly, scraping against stone. A pressure, like weight without form. A presence of heat and will and age.

The parasite does not understand.

But it recognizes one thing:

It is not alone