The first thing she noticed was the smell.
Rot. Old bark. Wet iron.
When Asami returned to the mountain village of Kinabusa after ten years, it looked abandoned. The snow was silent, the trees leafless and pale like bone. Her mother had died days earlier—alone. But the body was never found. Only a trail of blood that led to the old family shrine, sunken into the mountain's edge like a wound.
The villagers, what few remained, whispered through locked doors:
"She heard the Root whispering again."
"She fed it like her husband did."
"She became soil."
That night, Asami dreamed of her mother crawling from the shrine, her spine twisted like a tree branch, teeth full of dirt, nails broken from digging. She was whispering:
"It's growing… inside us now."
Asami woke with mud between her fingers. Her skin itched. Her veins felt like vines. That's when she saw it: something bulging beneath her skin, crawling slowly through her arm like a worm made of roots.
She tried to cut it out. It screamed.
Not in pain—but in song.
A bell-like, wet sound… like the heartbeat of something buried alive.
The shrine's door stood open now. The roots had spread. The walls pulsed like lungs. Inside, flesh hung like tapestries, and bones grew like branches. There were no corpses—just people stitched to the walls, mouths open in silent worship.
She found her mother's face there. Eyes still blinking.
The Root was real.
A god of burial and birth, sealed long ago when the mountain first bled. Now awakened by bloodline, by grief, by her presence. It whispered to Asami, not in words—but in tendons and dreams.
"You are the last soil, child," it said from within her bones. "You are mine to sprout through."
Asami screamed as her ribs cracked outward. From her mouth spilled roots, teeth, and tendrils of hair. Her spine twisted into a throne of rot. She became its vessel—its bloom.
And far above, the snow turned red.
The villagers began to smile.
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Final Note to Readers:
If you've heard scratching inside your walls tonight, or if your skin feels tight and warm… it's just the Root reaching out. Welcome home.