The Lonely Planet Claire - Chapter 6: The Mouth of Claire

Brian reached the cliff’s edge, gasping. The valley behind him was alive with movement—limbs scraping the dust, hollow eyes following him, hands clawing toward the sky as if begging him to join. The moons cast three cold lights over the scene, making everything shimmer like wet glass.

Below the cliff, the terrain dropped into a cavernous abyss that seemed carved into the planet itself. The darkness there was thick, so dense it almost swallowed the light from the moons. And from deep within, he could hear it—a low, pulsing rhythm, like a heartbeat, enormous and ancient.

The light-child flickered beside him, trembling violently. “It’s… it’s calling you. If you go down… you won’t come back. Not as you.”

Brian’s legs moved without his mind’s permission. He stepped forward, toes scraping the edge of the cliff. The abyss seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting as though the planet itself had lungs. Whispers rose from below, hundreds of voices layered into a single, suffocating chant:

Brian… Brian… we are waiting…

The air grew thick and sticky, clinging to his skin. He looked down and realized the cliff itself was… moving. The stone wasn’t stone—it was part of the creature, the planet’s body. Veins pulsing with blue light snaked over the walls and into the depths, writhing like worms in a nightmare.

From the darkness, shapes began to rise—dozens, then hundreds. They crawled upward along the cliff face, pale and thin, faces stretched impossibly, mouths opening and closing in silent screaming. Brian could hear them now, their whispers blending with the wind:

You are ours. You always were.

We are your parents… we are your friends… we are your prison.

The light-child screamed, its glow flaring. “They’ll consume you! They’ll rewrite you! They’ll—”

But Brian didn’t stop. Something deeper than fear drove him downward. He leapt, tumbling into the abyss.

The fall should have killed him. It did not. The darkness swallowed him whole, but it was alive. The walls pulsed against him, squeezing, caressing, dragging him. Shapes pressed against his body, whispering promises of power, of reunion, of home. He could feel them in his mind, in his bones, in the very marrow of his being.

And then he saw them—his parents. Their faces stretched impossibly, bodies warped, veins glowing faintly blue. They reached for him with long, thin arms.

We were waiting…

Brian screamed, but his voice was no longer his own. The shadows of the abyss poured into him, filling his ears, his eyes, his mind. The whispers became louder, the hands gripped tighter, and the hollow eyes stared into his soul.

Something broke inside him. The planet claimed him.

He was falling, yet he was flying. Screaming, yet he was laughing. Alive, yet… dead.

And in that final moment before the darkness consumed everything, he understood Claire’s truth:

The planet didn’t kill. It collected. And now… Brian was its newest memory.

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