The ship was breathing.
Not with the hum of engines or pressurized vents—but a slow, wet inhale that rippled through the corridor walls. They weren't metal anymore. Not quite. Kiran pressed his gloved hand to the nearest panel. It gave under his touch—fleshy, warm. Something pulsed beneath. A vein?
He recoiled.
The overhead light stuttered, not electrically—but as if something unseen had blinked. The air smelled faintly of copper and something sweeter, rotting beneath. A humidity had crept in, slicking every surface with condensation that collected in the grooves like sweat in skinfolds.
"Deck four," he whispered into the comm. "There's... something wrong with the hull. It's soft."
But nothing came back. Not even static. Just the low thrum of the ship's breath, in and out, in and out, like waves breaking against the walls of a ribcage.
He moved forward.
The passageway narrowed—just slightly—but enough to make his shoulders graze the sides. He passed what used to be a viewport, now sealed over by a thin translucent membrane that twitched when he drew near, like a stitched eyelid trying not to open.
The wall shuddered beside him. A ripple. Like something inside had shifted its weight.
He kept walking.
Around the next bend, the floor changed. It was no longer the textured alloy tiling laid down by engineers on Earth, but something soft and fibrous. It gave beneath his boots with a sound like damp paper tearing.
There were no lights now—just bioluminescence. Threadlike growths curled from the corners, glowing faintly in pale blues and sickly yellows. They waved without wind.
Something dripped ahead.
He moved toward it, crouching. The fluid was warm. It stuck to his gloves like yolk.
Then a noise behind him—quiet, but deliberate. Not footsteps. A drag. Something being pulled.
He turned.
There was nothing there.
But the corridor was shorter than before.
And narrower.
Kiran turned back the way he came. Took two steps.
The corridor twisted—visibly, like muscle flexing beneath skin—and now the way he'd come was gone.
The walls around him pulsed. The ceiling arched down, breathing with labored cadence.
"Kiran," said a voice behind him.
He spun.
A woman stood there—barefoot, skin pale, hair damp with sweat or seawater. Her eyes glinted green, too green, unnatural, but not synthetic. Animal. She was barefoot, but made no sound when she walked.
"You shouldn't be here," she said softly, not in warning, but in disappointment.
"Who are you?" Kiran asked.
She tilted her head, eyes moving across him like a predator sizing up a wound.
"This place… it doesn't like you yet," she said, almost sadly.
"What is this place?" he asked.
She didn't answer. Just turned and walked deeper into the corridor. He didn't know why he followed, only that the ship would punish him if he didn't. The walls were listening. He could feel them shifting behind his back.
The woman moved like she knew every pulse and rhythm of this place. Her hands touched the walls like old friends, and they pulsed back in acknowledgment.
"I came aboard a vessel. I didn't sign up to walk through someone's lungs," Kiran muttered.
She stopped. Turned. Her eyes now black, reflecting only the movement of the walls.
"This isn't a ship," she said.
He stared at her.
"Then what is it?"
She didn't respond.
Behind them, the corridor groaned—sagged—as if something vast had rolled over in its sleep. They both turned.
A low rumble built in the walls. Not a sound, exactly. More like pressure. A presence swelling in the bones of the structure. The floor beneath them grew wet. A trail of fluid leaked in a serpentine path behind them.
"We have to move," she said.
"Back the way we came—"
"There is no back."
She grabbed his hand, her fingers ice-cold, and they ran.
The corridor contracted behind them, swallowing space. Ahead, the air shimmered—thicker now, like breathing underwater. The walls bent, tilted, became ribbed and warped and biological. Every surface seemed alert.
Then—a chamber. Wide, circular, beating faintly like the inside of a womb.
A dead end.
"We're trapped."
"No," she said. "It's just waiting."
He turned toward her. "You still haven't told me your name."
She smiled—thin, knowing.
"You wouldn't believe it."
The chamber darkened. A hole opened in the wall—not a door, a wound. A gash peeled open, wet and glistening, the edges quivering.
Beyond: snowfall.
They stared.
Kiran took a step forward. The chill bit through his suit.
"What is this?" he asked.
Her voice was steady. "Somewhere else."
He looked back. The chamber was pulsing faster now. The corridor behind it collapsing, consumed by the ship's own closing throat.
They had no choice.
"Together," she said, holding out her hand again.
And as he took it, stepping into the snowfall beyond the wound, the ship gave one last, shuddering breath.
And then closed its eyes.
--
The snow fell sideways.
Not blown by wind—there was no wind—but drifting with the soft, deliberate motion of ash. Each flake landed without melting, clinging to his suit in fractal filaments. Too intricate. Too symmetrical. Not natural.
Kiran blinked.
The wound in the wall behind him had closed. Seamless now. Gone. As if the ship had never been there. As if it had exhaled them from its lungs like phlegm it no longer needed.
He turned to the woman. Her bare feet pressed into the white crust without leaving prints.
"Where are we?" he asked.
She didn't look at him. Her gaze was fixed on the horizon—if it could be called that. It bent. Folded. Like distance had been warped by something too large to see directly.
"This place doesn't have a name," she said at last. "Not one you'd survive hearing."
He studied her. Pale. Unaged. Hair stiff with frozen salt. Her eyes weren't human. They only wore the idea of being human. The same way parasites wear their hosts.
Kiran swallowed the rising panic in his throat.
"Is it alive?"
The land stretched out into ridges, soft dunes of snow and bone. Great spine-like protrusions arced from the ground in slow, looping curves, half-buried. Some hummed—low vibrations that vibrated the enamel of his teeth.
The woman turned.
"You ask the wrong questions."
"Then tell me what the right ones are."
She didn't.
She began walking.
Kiran followed, his boots crunching where her feet didn't. The light—if there was a source—was constant, directionless, a silver haze that made it impossible to tell if it was morning or midnight. The sky was the color of molted skin.
Up ahead, a structure—if it could be called that. Not built. Not engineered. Grown.
It rose from the snow like the stump of a great molar, roots still raw with sinew. A cathedral made of cartilage. Pulsing slightly.
The woman approached and laid her palm on its surface. The walls responded, parting not like doors but like eyelids.
Inside: warmth. Moisture. The smell of old teeth.
Kiran hesitated.
She was already stepping inside.
"What is this?" he asked, wiping snow from his visor.
She looked back. Her face unreadable.
"Shelter," she said. "Or a mouth. Depending how long we stay."
No choice.
He stepped in.
The walls closed behind them—wet, fibrous, sealing with a sigh. The air tasted metallic, and thick veins climbed the interior walls like ivy. In the center, a pit. Wide. Circular. Shaped exactly like the memory of a scream.
"Rest," she said, settling by the edge of the pit. "You'll need it."
"I don't need—"
But he did. His limbs were beginning to shake. Not from cold. From something deeper. A weight. Like the gravity here was heavier, but only on his thoughts.
He sat.
The silence was alive.
Then: a noise.
From inside the pit.
It was not a roar. It was not a voice. It was the sound of remembering—something old and buried trying to scratch its way out of the folds of his mind.
Kiran leaned forward.
"You hear it too?" he asked.
She nodded. "It knows we're here."
"What does?"
"This land. It has no god. It is god."
Kiran stared down into the pit.
Shapes moved there—softly, writhing under a film of translucent membrane. Limbs half-formed. Eyes without sockets. Teeth with no mouths to belong to.
"Why bring me here?" he asked.
She was quiet.
Then, "Because it called you."
He met her eyes.
"That's not an answer."
Her gaze was calm. Like she was waiting for a storm she knew couldn't be stopped.
"No," she said. "It's a beginning."
Then the walls began to throb.
And the pit opened its eye.
A wet, blinking thing with a slit pupil that mirrored the silver sky.
It had seen him.
All of him.
Kiran froze.
The snow outside began to fall upward.
He didn't know it yet—but the land had accepted him.
And that was far, far worse than being rejected.
--
The pit pulsed. Not like a wound. Not like a mouth.
Like desire.
Its eye—a fleshy, lidless thing—glistened in the chamber's core, its gaze fixed on Kiran as though it had known his shape long before he'd fallen into this place.
The woman sat motionless beside him. Steam curled from her skin, like the land was warming her in ways the air couldn't. The space around them vibrated with something unspoken, something that made Kiran's throat tighten and his heartbeat sync to the throb of the walls.
A whisper. Not through sound—but through heat. Through skin. A sensation in the base of his spine.
You are mine.
Kiran staggered to his feet.
"What is this?" he rasped.
The woman turned slowly. "It likes you."
Her lips were too red. Her teeth too white. Her voice sounded as though it came from behind her skin, not her throat.
The walls closed tighter. Moist. Supple. Hungry.
"Why me?"
The pit blinked.
A pressure ran down his chest like fingers, ghosting over the fabric of his suit. His body betrayed him, arcing toward sensation. Responding.
"You're not the first," she said, "but you're the first it's wanted."
Kiran backed away. The veins on the walls bulged, pulsing in time with the pit's stare. His breath misted the air.
"You're part of it," he said. "You brought me here."
She tilted her head. "I didn't bring you. It summoned you. I'm just the bait."
A pause.
"And the reward."
She rose, bare feet silent on the pulsing floor. The flesh beneath her curled slightly, like it recognized her.
Kiran's heart pounded in his ears. "What are you?"
"I don't remember my name. Not the real one," she said softly. "It keeps parts of us. When it loves us."
She took a step toward him. Her hair swayed like it was underwater. "It loved me, once."
Her fingertips grazed his chest. Heat surged. Electric. He didn't pull away.
"I came here on a ship like yours. Years ago. Maybe centuries. There's no time here. It watches. It chooses. Sometimes it loves. Sometimes it devours."
"And you stayed?"
Her laugh was not entirely human. "There is no staying. You become part of it. Or it becomes part of you."
The pit's eye dilated.
The walls began to quiver with want.
Kiran clenched his jaw. "And now?"
Her eyes gleamed. "Now it wants to become you."
The chamber shifted.
Veins snaked across the floor, wrapping his ankles—not tightly, not to restrain. But like caresses. Like longing. Like worship.
The membrane of the ceiling peeled open, revealing rows of bioluminescent nodules that dripped glowing liquid, slow and warm, over his shoulders. Every nerve in his body lit up. The land was feeling him—through him.
"Don't fight it," she whispered. Her breath brushed his ear. "It doesn't like rejection."
"Why me?"
"Because you still believe there's a way out," she said. "You resist. And that makes it want you more."
She placed a hand on his chest—his heart shuddered.
"But you won't want to leave soon."
He stared at her, breath ragged.
"Who are you?"
She smiled, and it was the first time her expression fractured. Something behind it broke free.
"I was the first."
A silence fell that wasn't empty.
The eye blinked again—and she changed.
Not violently. Not grotesquely. But intimately. The skin of her back rippled, and something unfolded—appendages that pulsed with bioluminescence, veined like petals, but moving like breath.
"I was the land's first lover."
Kiran's knees buckled.
"I tore open the sky to reach it," she said, her voice both her own and not. "I fed it my name, and it gave me this form. I kept waiting for someone else who might understand."
"Understand what?"
"That love is not soft. Not sweet. It's teeth. It's hunger. It's devotion."
Kiran's mind felt carved open. The pit's stare never left him.
And slowly, agonizingly, he realized he wasn't being watched.
He was being studied.
Weighed.
Worshipped.
Chosen.
The woman knelt before him, pressing her forehead to his stomach.
"If you say yes," she murmured, "you'll never be alone again. Not in any sense of the word."
The walls sighed.
The snow outside thickened.
And inside him, something began to change. Not pain. Not pleasure.
A blending.
A becoming.
Kiran stood very still as the land slid deeper into his bones.
And somewhere beneath all that flesh and snow and wanting…
The world began to whisper his name.
--
The walls convulsed as if they'd tasted him and found the flavor addictive. The woman—no longer fully woman—stood too close, her breath dragging cold ribbons against his cheek.
"Don't pretend you don't feel it," she hissed, lips curling. "You've already started changing."
Kiran's fists clenched. The land's heat pressed against his skin like a second atmosphere, probing for weakness, for surrender. He staggered backward and it followed, breathing in rhythm with him. The eye of the pit pulsed, dilated, a sick anticipation humming in the air.
"I didn't ask for this," he said, voice raw. "I didn't come here to be taken."
"But you were taken," she purred, swaying with unnatural grace. "And now it's only polite to give something back."
He turned from her, every nerve in his spine screaming. The walls bulged, flesh creaking inward as if preparing to seal. Behind him, the snow-land called—white dunes folding over like slow tidal waves, a silence that pulsed louder than any scream. He didn't trust the outside either, but this…this was infestation disguised as seduction.
"You want to survive?" she said, voice tightening, no longer sultry but brittle with insult. "Then stop fighting and become what the land desires."
He turned to her fully now. Saw her clearly. Her beauty had ripened into something rotten. Skin too perfect, stretched over a face that no longer moved quite right. Her eyes didn't blink—they twitched, as if on a delay. When she smiled, the flesh at her jaw fluttered, barely held together.
"You're not alive," Kiran said. "You're just a mouthpiece. An extension. You're its tongue."
She laughed, low and sharp like broken glass dragged through velvet. "Is that what scares you, Kiran? That I'm just a part of it? Or is it that part of you wants to be, too?"
He lunged. Not toward her, but toward the slick wall, where a lattice of tendons flexed, sensing his intention. A soft hiss rippled through the chamber. The land recoiled—just slightly—surprised.
Kiran pressed his hand into the pulsing wall. "You don't get to have me," he growled. "You don't get to own me."
The chamber vibrated. The eye narrowed.
Then screamed.
Not sound, but pressure. It squeezed around him, visceral and wet. The woman—thing—howled, clutching her head, as if the rejection tore at her, too.
"You fool!" she shrieked. "You don't deny it! It's chosen you!"
"I'm not here to be chosen," he snarled. "I'm here to escape."
The land shrieked again, walls trembling, retracting. Tendrils struck out, wild and uncoordinated, but Kiran moved fast—leapt toward the pit's edge, avoiding the flailing limbs. The chamber convulsed, no longer a place of seduction, but of wrath. The eye rolled in its socket, black blood welling at its rim.
She came for him then, fingers clawing, mouth open too wide. Her scream didn't come from her throat—it came from the chamber itself.
"You're mine! You don't get to leave—"
He slammed his fist into her chest.
She staggered back. Not hurt. Offended.
"Do you think you can survive out there?" she spat, jerking her chin toward the snowlands. "You'll be nothing. The land will keep reaching for you. It remembers every cell that touches it."
He didn't respond. He didn't have to.
The only way was forward.
He turned and hurled himself through the membrane tunnel leading away from the pit. It closed behind him with a sickening wet snap. The world beyond was snow again—only now, the flakes burned. They landed on his skin and sizzled, each one a stinging memory of the pit's rejection.
The land watched through the cold. He could feel it—its longing mutating into fury.
Every step he took bled. Every breath summoned echoes of her voice: Kiran, come back. Kiran, we were beautiful. Kiran, I'll forgive you if you just—
He kept walking.
The whiteness ahead thickened into something skeletal—ice structures shaped like spires, ribs of ancient beasts frozen mid-prayer. A place where the land could not reach. Maybe.
He limped toward it, jaw set, lungs burning.
Behind him, something whimpered—not human. Not anymore.
And though the land shrieked in hunger, in rage, it would not follow.
Because it had been denied.
And Kiran—cold, alone, bleeding—was free.
For now.