CHAPTER NINE: HUNTERS OF ROT

The forest can only protect you for so long.

In the festering heart of Makehsm, the air shimmered with black spores, thick enough to drown light. Mold-cast towers sagged beneath the weight of eons, their surfaces alive with crawling hyphae and gnawing teeth. At the summit of a great throne mound, King Vrath'kul stirred.

The Sovereign of Rot sat slouched upon a throne of ossified gods, his massive form stitched together by the nightmares of spores. His eyes—clusters of mushroom caps—peeled open, twitching toward the rift Elias had seen.

He had felt it. The seed's return.

"The scion breathes..." Vrath'kul murmured, his voice a million cracking spores. "He walks the roots that once rejected him."

One of the Sporeshapers stepped forward, its robes stitched from living molds. It bowed low, its hands cupping a chalice of blooming decay.

"Shall we summon the hunters, my king?"

Vrath'kul raised one fungal finger, trailing smoke.

"Send the Hollow Stalkers. Send the Bonefruit Maw. Let him feel the hunger of his other half."

The chant began.

Back in the forest, Elias stood at the edge of the newly collapsed crater, hands shaking. The whisper of the seed in his chest had grown louder. Not words—pulls. Urges. Nightmares gnawing at the edge of waking thought.

He'd tried to burn it out.

He'd failed.

Now the trees wept red sap.

The wind didn't move the leaves. The air was still.

And then they came.

First, the Hollow Stalkers—six-limbed shadows shaped like deer stripped of flesh, eyes glowing with blue mold. They moved between trees with impossible silence. When Elias blinked, they moved twice as close.

Then the Bonefruit Maw arrived—a massive, tumorous creature with teeth instead of bark, dragging itself forward on a bed of squirming roots. Its breath turned leaves black.

Elias turned and ran.

The forest moved with him—barely. Vines reached to slow the beasts. Roots reshaped to form walls. But the creatures burned through bark and tore through stone.

He reached the ancient glade—where the forest was oldest.

Where his blood called loudest.

There, he turned.

And fought.

He summoned roots to pierce the Hollow Stalkers, but their bodies flowed around them like ink, reforming, twisting. The Bonefruit Maw opened its mouth and released a scream of spores—deadly, acidic.

Elias dropped to his knees and slammed his palms to the ground.

"Wake up," he whispered to the forest. "I need you."

The glade trembled.

A ring of ancient trees pulsed green. The roots rose, massive and gnarled, wrapping around Elias in a cocoon of bark and light. His body burned—spores within him reacting violently, painfully. His veins bulged, green and black.

And then he emerged—eyes glowing, skin hardened like bark, voice deeper and echoing with the forest's fury.

The Hollow Stalkers lunged—he caught one mid-air and drove it into the soil. The other lunged for his throat, but he caught its jaws and tore them apart, vines exploding from its skull.

The Bonefruit Maw hissed and reared.

Elias roared and charged.

The battle raged across the glade, each strike tearing up centuries-old trees, each roar shaking birds from the sky. Elias fought like the forest incarnate—relentless, ancient, wild. But the creatures of Makehsm weren't just beasts—they learned.

The Maw split its body open—releasing a swarm of sporewasps. Elias cried out, shielding his face as hundreds of tiny stingers pierced his arms and neck. He dropped to his knees.

But the glade responded.

A tree behind him bloomed red. Thorned branches lashed out and shredded the swarm. Flowers bloomed from Elias's wounds, absorbing the toxins.

He stood once more, gasping, blood mixing with sap.

He couldn't just fight.

He had to hunt them.

He leapt into the trees, moving like wind through branches. The Hollow Stalkers chased—but here, among the old branches, Elias had the advantage.

He set traps of snare-vines and fireflies that exploded with fungal light. One by one, the stalkers fell—snared, shredded, burned.

He landed behind the Maw and drove a root through its core. It howled, dissolving into black sludge that burned through the ground.

Silence.

Elias dropped to the earth, breathing heavy.

Then he felt it.

A presence.

Vrath'kul himself… watching.

Not through eyes.

But through the seed inside Elias's chest.

Elias collapsed, clutching his chest, coughing spores.

"You cannot run," the voice echoed inside him. "You are mine."

He screamed.

And the forest answered.

[To be continued…]