The crater was impossibly smooth—like glass poured and frozen mid-wave. The moons’ pale light slid over its curved surface, pooling in the centre where something pulsed faintly, slow and steady.Brian approached with cautious steps, the ground still warm beneath his feet. Each breath came out white, frosting the air. The warmth didn’t come from heat—it came from something alive.
As he neared the centre, he saw it clearly: a black shape half-buried in the crater floor. It wasn’t metal or stone—it was flesh, smooth and dark, rising and falling like it was breathing. Veins of dim blue light ran across it, forming shapes that almost looked like letters before twisting away again.
He crouched. The surface reflected his face for an instant—then blinked.
Brian stumbled backward, almost falling, heart pounding. The crater’s surface began to shift, cracks spreading like spiderwebs. From within, a voice emerged, soft and low, echoing through the ground rather than the air.
You belong to Claire now.
The light-child appeared beside him again, flickering weakly. “Don’t listen. It remembers every word spoken on this planet—it uses voices to trick you.”
The black mass shuddered. A shape began to rise from it—a tall, twisted figure that glowed faintly with the same eerie blue light as the child. Only this thing was solid. Too solid.
Its surface was like molten glass, dripping and reforming, its face a smooth mirror reflecting Brian’s terrified expression. When it spoke, its mouth didn’t move—the words came from everywhere.
Your parents wanted to leave.
They saw what we were. They were going to tell.
Brian shook his head, trembling. “You killed them!”
We freed them.
The thing reached out, its hand stretching longer and longer until it brushed against his arm. Cold shot through him like lightning. Images flashed in his mind—his mother screaming, his father trying to drag her away, their faces melting into pale light. Then nothing.
He tore away, falling to the ground. “What are you?”
Claire’s memory.
The light-child screamed again, its glow flaring. “Run, Brian! It feeds on what’s left of us!”
The ground cracked open, revealing veins of light beneath the surface. The air buzzed like static. Brian turned and bolted toward the hills, the creature’s voice echoing in his head.
You can’t leave. You breathe our air. You drink our blood.
You are already one of us.
He didn’t stop until the crater was gone from sight. When he collapsed on the rocky ridge, gasping for breath, the wind had returned—but it wasn’t whispering his name anymore.
It was humming.
A lullaby. The same one his mother used to sing.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
No comments:
Post a Comment