The Lonely Planet Claire - Chapter 5: The Hollow Colony

The lullaby faded as Brian’s eyes adjusted to the darkness of the valley. The moons had shifted, casting elongated shadows over the jagged landscape. Something was wrong. Too quiet. Too… still.

He moved cautiously, each step crunching on the glassy dust. Then he saw them—shapes scattered across the valley floor. At first, he thought they were people, sleeping. Then he realized they weren’t moving.

Not at all.

Bodies. Or something like them. Twisted, pale, frozen mid-motion, eyes wide open and mouths stretched into silent screams. The longer he looked, the more he noticed details: their skin was stretched too tightly over bones, veins pulsing faintly with blue light—the same that coursed through the child and the crater.

The valley wasn’t abandoned. It was a gallery.

A whisper came from behind him, soft and deliberate.

Brian… come closer…

He spun around. Nothing. Just the wind—or maybe not. The wind had a texture now, like it was crawling over his skin. He shivered.

Then he heard it again, louder, layered with dozens of voices:

They left us alone… but you didn’t.

His stomach twisted. He looked down. The dust beneath his feet was moving. Tiny shapes wriggled, crawling toward him like insects. As they reached the surface, they began forming hands. Small, thin, pale hands—reaching, grasping, scratching the ground.

Brian ran. He ran past the frozen figures, past the crawling hands that multiplied behind him, past the shadows that seemed to lengthen unnaturally with every step. The ground began to tremble, and a low moan rose from beneath the valley like the planet itself was awakening.

The light-child appeared again, flickering and unstable. “You can’t stop it! They want you!”

Brian stumbled, falling to his knees. The valley around him began to shift—the frozen bodies rising slowly, their limbs jerking in impossible angles. Their faces… oh God, their faces… they weren’t human anymore. Their eyes were black hollows, empty yet glowing faintly with blue veins. Their mouths moved, forming words that no tongue could speak.

Join us…

Become one with Claire…

Brian scrambled to his feet, terror clawing at his chest. He realized the valley wasn’t just alive—it was hungry. Every inch of the planet wanted him, and it had already claimed so much of everything else he loved.

From behind, the hands reached higher now, pulling themselves up from the ground, forming skeletal bodies out of dust and shadow. The wind carried their whispers, twisting them into words of promise and threat:

We are your parents… we are not… we are waiting…

Brian didn’t stop. He ran toward the cliffs at the edge of the valley, the moons casting his shadow so long it seemed to trail behind him like another creature, separate from himself but alive, whispering secrets in a language he almost understood.

And as he reached the cliff, he realized he wasn’t running away anymore. He was running into the mouth of Claire itself.

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model