The wind in northern Siberia didn't howl tonight—
it vibrated.
A faint, low, thrumming pulse rolled across the tundra like an animal breathing beneath the snow. Dr. Akio Takahara stepped out of the field tent and felt it in the soles of his boots, a tremor too rhythmic to be seismic, too alive to be natural.
The aurora above wasn't green anymore.
It flickered between violet and black.
The same colors he saw in the cavern.
The same colors crawling across the roots.
Akio pulled his hood tight and followed the military-grade floodlights toward the excavation zone.
His assistant, Pavel, remained missing.
Gone since the moment he touched the root.
---
1. TRACKS INTO THE FROZEN WOODS
The snow was scored with deep prints—Pavel's boots, erratic, uneven, like a man staggering while half-conscious. But the strange part wasn't the tracks.
It was the other impressions following them.
Perfectly circular.
Evenly spaced.
Patterns like a living vine dragging itself across the snow.
Akio crouched, heart tightening.
The grooves weren't carved by weight.
They were burned in — melted snow, exposed soil, faint black residue.
His breath fogged the frozen air as he whispered:
"…He followed the root."
Or the root followed him.
He adjusted his thermal scanner. Instead of heat signatures, the device now showed a spreading lattice — glowing black on the digital feed, branching like veins beneath the ground.
A neural network.
Alive.
Moving.
And converging in one direction.
Pavel's direction.
Akio swallowed. "I'm coming, idiot. Don't be dead."
He stepped into the woods.
---
2. THE FOREST THAT BREATHED
The forest shouldn't have had sound in this temperature. Trees frozen solid don't creak or whisper.
But tonight—
They groaned.
Sap crackled. Ice dripped upward instead of down. Snow drifted sideways against no wind at all. The trunks themselves seemed to inhale, as if sharing breath with something beneath the permafrost.
Akio's hands trembled around the strap of his recorder pack.
His mind flashed back to the cavern:
The roots twitching.
The black veins—
like arteries.
like muscles.
like thoughts.
He stopped.
The ground under him pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Then he heard it:
"Akio."
A whisper.
Coming from the earth.
He spun around, flashlight slicing through the dark, breath ragged. "Pavel?!"
No response.
But the whisper came again—
"…Come deeper."
Not Pavel.
But familiar.
He froze. The voice was the same one the recorder picked up last night, the one that didn't belong to any human.
His magnetic-frequency device vibrated in his pocket.
Akio pressed a shaking hand over it.
He should turn back. The Russian military had already begun sealing the area, covering up everything, declaring the site a restricted hazard zone. They would arrest him if they caught him here.
But Pavel was out there.
And something else…
Something wanted Akio.
Calling him by name.
---
3. WHERE THE ICE SPLIT
He found the place at the center of the pulse.
A clearing.
Silent.
Too silent.
Branches around the clearing bent inward, forming a spiral shape — a vortex in the trees.
The snow beneath him cracked.
Large fractures split outward like spiderwebs.
Akio stepped back instinctively. "No, no—"
The ice below him rose.
Black.
Wet.
Pulsating.
A massive vine — thicker than a highway cable — tore upward from the frozen ground, flinging shards of ice like glass into the air. Akio shielded his face and stumbled backward, the roar of cracking earth drowning his thoughts.
The vine towered over him, trembling, shedding frost as if exhaling.
Black veins glowed under its surface.
Alive.
Intelligent.
Awake.
Akio whispered, voice barely a breath:
"…This is impossible."
The vine twisted, scanning the air like a snake sensing prey.
Then it snapped downward.
Toward him.
Akio dove aside, rolling through the snow as the vine struck the ground where he had stood, sending a shockwave through the clearing.
He scrambled to his feet, panting, and ran.
The forest lit up behind him, bark splitting as smaller roots erupted from the earth, chasing him like spreading wildfire.
He looked over his shoulder—
just as the massive vine slammed downward again, splintering a frozen pine in half.
He could hear his heartbeat over the roar.
He wasn't going to outrun it.
---
4. THE VOICE UNDER THE EARTH
Akio tripped, falling to his knees as the ground convulsed beneath him. He rolled onto his back, staring upward as the enormous vine hovered above him—
waiting.
studying.
choosing.
Then he heard it again.
Not through the air—
through his bones.
A voice spoken from under the surface of the world itself:
"Do not fear.
You were called first."
The vine wrapped around his leg.
Akio screamed—
but not from pain.
The vine wasn't crushing him.
It was lifting him.
Pulling him down.
Down into the earth.
Down through the cracking ice.
Down into a darkness lit by pulsing black veins.
He clawed at the ground, fingers scraping ice, but it wasn't enough. The vine's pull was relentless, dragging him into a narrow tear in the permafrost.
For one last moment, he saw the sky — violet-black auroras twisting, forming shapes resembling roots spreading across the heavens.
Then the voice spoke again:
"Witness.
Return."
And Akio was pulled beneath the earth.
Alive.
Chosen.
Claimed.
---
PART III CLIFFHANGER:
Akio is dragged underground — not to his death, but toward something waiting for him in the dark.