Chapter 9 The Thirteenth Vein

The streets of Black Vale burned with crimson flame.

Not from fire but from vines igniting spontaneously, spewing spores that caught in the air like sparks from hell's forge. As Vex and Lana escaped the collapsing school, Shu'kalith's influence spread faster than any fire.

They barely made it to the old train station before collapsing. Blood streamed from Vex's nose. The roots within him were no longer just dormant passengers, they were waking, responding to their queen.

Lana looked at him as if seeing something else.

"Your eyes," she whispered.

He turned to a broken window. His reflection was cracked.

His pupils were gone.

In their place, spirals of red bark and tiny buds, just beginning to bloom.

UNDERGROUND RAIL

Beneath the station, Lana revealed the last part of her plan. A hidden route, abandoned subway tunnels meant for a Cold War shelter. She believed they led to the Thirteenth Vein, a myth within the cult's doctrine: a root system buried before Black Vale was ever founded.

"It predates language," she said. "Buried with it, the last remnant of whatever this world tried to forget."

They traveled for hours beneath the town. As they went deeper, the tunnels shifted, brick walls becoming carved stone, then petrified wood.

Flesh.

They were no longer in tunnels.

They were inside something alive.

Veins pulsed along the walls. Amber sap dripped from the ceiling like sweat. Insects the size of rats skittered across the floor, their bodies translucent, pulsing with red light.

And all around them, whispers. Hundreds of voices. Some ancient. Some recent.

They reached a chamber so vast it could not be natural.

A black pit of roots spiralled down into the dark. Hovering above it: a massive cocoon, red, wet, humming with the sound of breath.

Inside it... was a copy of Vex.

Perfect. Naked. Sleeping.

Lana vomited in the corner.

"They're growing you," she said. "Preparing."

"For what?"

The answer came from behind them.

The congregation.

Dozens of cultists, now fully transformed. Twisted. Bark growing from their spines. Their mouths split open like seed pods, showing rows of rose-thorn teeth.

Their leader approached. Not Father Lang. Not even the figure from the chapel.

This was worse.

A woman with no eyes, no mouth, no nose, only slits along her throat that sang in unison.

She held up a dagger made of bone and vine.

"It must be completed," she hissed. "The god's eye needs a vessel."

THE BAPTISM

Vex was pulled forward. The roots did not resist him. They welcomed him.

Lana screamed and opened fire. Her bullets tore through the cultists, but more kept coming, sprouting from the floor like weeds.

The copy of Vex in the cocoon stirred.

It opened its eyes.

They were pure red. Glowing.

The pit opened beneath them. Not a hole. A mouth.

Fanged. Breathing. Ancient.

Lana leapt across the chasm, slashing at the cocoon with a fire axe she'd carried from the tunnels. The flesh burst, black blood sprayed the walls.

The cult screamed.

The god screamed back.

Vex's body convulsed. His mind filled with images not his own, planets devoured, oceans drained, forests used as veins. Shu'kalith wasn't just a god. She was a memory. A seed of war left behind by something older than Earth.

And now, she was using Vex as a vessel to grow again.

Lana placed the barrel of her pistol against Vex's temple.

"I'm sorry."

He looked at her, pleading.

But something else inside him smiled.

Then, a shot.

Darkness.