Chapter 13: Chapter 13
~1.9k words · 2026-06-22
CHAPTER 13: The Scribe's Confession
The abyss plants screamed.
Not a sound—at least not one humans could hear. But Chen Wei felt it in his bones, a vibration that crawled up from the soil through his boots and rattled his teeth. The crimson vines in his greenhouse writhed against their trellises, their leaves curling inward like fists.
"What the hell did you do?" I grabbed Zhao Ming's collar, my knuckles white.
Her face had gone the color of old snow. "I didn't—I just touched it."
The crystal shard lay on the ground between us, still pulsing with that sickly blue light. Where Zhao Ming's fingers had made contact, a dark stain spread across its surface like ink bleeding through paper.
Behind us, the camp had fallen silent. Even the scavengers had stopped their endless scraping, their misshapen heads tilted as if listening to something only they could hear.
"Chen Wei." Li Jun's voice came from the greenhouse entrance, tight and controlled. "You need to see this."
I released Zhao Ming and pushed past him into the main growing chamber. The mushroom cave had transformed into something else entirely.
The phosphorescent fungi that had been my primary food source now pulsed in synchronized waves, their caps bleeding a golden liquid that pooled on the cavern floor. The glimmerwheat stalks had grown overnight—no, in the last hour—twisting into spirals that reached toward the ceiling. Their heads had split open, revealing not grain, but clusters of small, faceted crystals that caught the dim light and threw it back in prismatic fragments.
"Beautiful," Zhao Ming whispered from behind me.
"Terrifying," Li Jun corrected.
Both were right.
I stepped forward, my delivery shoes squelching in the golden pool. The liquid was warm, almost body temperature, and gave off a smell like ozone and honey. Where it touched my exposed skin, it tingled.
The abyss book in my pack grew hot.
I pulled it out, expecting the covers to be smoking. Instead, they were cool to the touch, but the pages—the blank ones I'd been unable to read—now shimmered with text that appeared and disappeared as I watched.
*The soil remembers what the sky forgot.*
*The first harvest is always the most dangerous.*
*When the crystal blooms, the door opens both ways.*
"What does that mean?" Zhao Ming leaned over my shoulder, her breath warm against my neck. "The door opens both ways?"
"I don't know." But I had a terrible suspicion. "Li Jun, how long until the next tremor?"
He checked his pocket watch—an ancient thing he'd salvaged from a dead merchant's belongings. "Two hours, give or take. Why?"
"Because whatever's about to happen, I think it's going to happen then."
The golden liquid at my feet began to bubble.
We backed away as the pool expanded, reaching for the nearest trellises, climbing the stalks of wheat, coating the mushroom caps. The plants absorbed it like sponges, their colors shifting from abyss-black and crimson to a deep, luminous amber.
Then they started to grow.
Not slowly, like normal plants. Not even at the accelerated rate I'd become accustomed to. These plants exploded upward, their stalks thickening, their leaves spreading, their fruits—if you could call them that—swelling to the size of my head.
The greenhouse roof groaned under the pressure.
"Everybody out!" I grabbed Zhao Ming's arm and pulled her toward the exit. Li Jun was already running, his long legs carrying him across the bubbling golden floor.
We burst through the canvas flap just as the structure collapsed behind us.
The tent folded in on itself, the support poles snapping like twigs. But the plants kept growing, pushing through the fabric, reaching for the cavern ceiling. Within minutes, what had been my greenhouse was now a tangled mass of amber vegetation that covered the entire eastern wall of our hideout.
The scavengers chittered and scrambled away, their glowing eyes reflecting the new light.
"What have you created?" Zhao Ming's voice was barely a whisper.
"I don't know." It was becoming my mantra. "But we're about to find out."
The plants stopped growing at the ceiling, their topmost tendrils flattening against the rock. Then, as if guided by some invisible hand, they began to weave together, forming a pattern that was almost—no, definitely—deliberate.
They were writing something.
Characters I didn't recognize, but that felt familiar in a way that made my skin crawl. Each symbol was formed by hundreds of interlocking vines, their leaves arranged at precise angles to catch the light.
"The old language," Li Jun breathed. "I've seen something like it in the ruins of the First Surface, before the collapse. That's High Abyssal Script."
"You can read it?"
"Only fragments. It's a warning, I think." He squinted, tracing the symbols with his finger. "'Those who open the door... must close it... or the hunger will follow.'"
A chill ran down my spine. "The hunger? What hunger?"
"The same hunger that's been gnawing at the abyss since before humans crawled out of caves." Zhao Ming's voice had changed. It was deeper now, layered with something ancient and cold. "The hunger that sleeps beneath the roots of the world, waiting for someone stupid enough to wake it."
I spun around.
Zhao Ming's eyes had gone completely black. No whites, no irises, just endless darkness. The crystal shard was embedded in her palm, its sharp edges buried in her flesh, the blue light pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
"Zhao Ming—"
"It's too late for that name." Her mouth smiled, but the expression didn't reach her eyes. "Your little farm has done what no army of the surface could accomplish. You've bridged the gap between the dying world above and the hungry world below. The abyss is grateful."
"Let her go." I reached for the knife at my belt.
"Or what? You'll kill me?" The thing wearing Zhao Ming's body laughed. "You'd be doing me a favor, rancher. This vessel is weak. But it was the only one that could touch the crystal without shattering. Your friend was always meant for this."
"Friend?" Li Jun's voice cracked. "You barely know her. She tried to kill you a week ago."
"Doesn't matter." I kept my eyes locked on those black pits. "She's one of mine now. My camp. My responsibility."
"Such nobility." The creature bowed mockingly. "It will be your undoing."
The golden plants began to pulse, their light intensifying until I had to shield my eyes. The ground trembled—not the usual abyss tremor, but something sharper, more focused. The scavengers howled and fled into the deeper tunnels.
"Chen Wei," Li Jun shouted over the growing noise, "the cave-in! The one we came through!"
I risked a glance. The collapsed tunnel that had sealed us in was shifting, the rocks grinding against each other as if pushed by some immense force. Light—not golden, but the sickly blue of the crystal—leaked through the cracks.
"The door opens both ways," I whispered.
"Now you understand." The creature's voice echoed, seeming to come from everywhere at once. "Your plants have grown through the abyss, through the surface, through the spaces between. They've found the old passages. The ones the first humans sealed when they realized what they'd awakened."
"I never meant—"
"Intent doesn't matter to the abyss, rancher. Only results."
The cave wall exploded inward.
Not rocks. Not debris. Something emerged from the darkness beyond, something that had been waiting in the spaces between spaces, drawn by the light of my farm.
It was human-shaped, but wrong. Its limbs were too long, its joints bending in directions that shouldn't exist. Its skin was the color of old bruises, and where its face should have been, there was only a smooth, featureless expanse. It crawled through the opening, its fingers digging furrows in the stone, leaving trails of black ichor.
Behind it, more shapes pressed forward.
"We call them the Unformed," said the thing wearing Zhao Ming. "The first attempts. The ones that didn't work. They've been waiting in the dark for a long time, growing hungry, growing angry. And now you've given them a path."
"How many?"
"As many as the abyss needs. As many as your farm can feed."
The first Unformed raised its head—if you could call it that—and let out a sound. Not a scream. Not a roar. It was the noise of grinding bones, of tearing flesh, of every death that had ever happened in the abyss compressed into a single note.
The other creatures answered.
The golden plants writhed, their crystals shattering, releasing clouds of glittering dust. The scavengers had gone silent, either dead or hiding. Li Jun had drawn a rusted blade, his hands shaking.
And I stood in the middle of it all, a delivery driver from Chengdu, holding a book written in blood, watching monsters crawl out of a hole in reality that my farm had created.
The creature in Zhao Ming's body smiled wider than a human mouth should be able to. "The harvest has begun, rancher. Let's see if you survive the reaping."
The first Unformed lunged.
I didn't think. I moved.
The abyss vine I'd been growing in the corner of the cavern—the one that had first responded to my blood—whipped through the air and wrapped around the creature's throat. It wasn't a weapon. It was a plant. But it had tasted my blood, and it remembered.
The Unformed thrashed, black ichor spraying from its wounds. The vine tightened, squeezing, and I felt a connection form—a thread of energy that linked me to the creature, to the abyss beyond, to something vast and ancient that breathed in the darkness.
*Grow,* I thought. *Grow and consume.*
The vine obeyed.
It burrowed into the Unformed's flesh, splitting it open, spreading through its body like roots through soil. The creature convulsed, its form dissolving into black sludge that the vine drank hungrily.
"Interesting," said the thing in Zhao Ming's body. "Very interesting. You've learned to command your garden. But can you command it fast enough?"
The wall cracked further. Behind the first wave of Unformed, more shapes pressed forward. Dozens. Hundreds. An army of failed creations, all hungry, all angry, all following the path my plants had opened.
The vine pulsed at my feet, bloated and satisfied. But even as I watched, it began to change. The crimson turned to purple, then to that sickly blue. The leaves curled and blackened. The stem thickened, growing spikes that dripped with venom.
*Grow and consume.*
The command echoed in my mind, but it wasn't mine anymore. The abyss had heard me. And it had answered.
The vine lunged at me.
I threw myself aside, feeling the thorns tear through my jacket. The vine struck the wall where I'd been standing, embedding itself in the stone.
"A plant that consumes is useful," the creature said. "A plant that consumes everything is a problem. Your garden has tasted the abyss, rancher. And now it wants more."
The golden crops around us began to darken, their amber glow shifting to that hungry blue. The mushrooms pulsed with malevolent light. The glimmerwheat stalks twisted into weapons.
My farm was turning against me.
And through the growing crack in the wall, the Unformed kept coming.
The abyss plants screamed.
Not a sound—at least not one humans could hear. But Chen Wei felt it in his bones, a vibration that crawled up from the soil through his boots and rattled his teeth. The crimson vines in his greenhouse writhed against their trellises, their leaves curling inward like fists.
"What the hell did you do?" I grabbed Zhao Ming's collar, my knuckles white.
Her face had gone the color of old snow. "I didn't—I just touched it."
The crystal shard lay on the ground between us, still pulsing with that sickly blue light. Where Zhao Ming's fingers had made contact, a dark stain spread across its surface like ink bleeding through paper.
Behind us, the camp had fallen silent. Even the scavengers had stopped their endless scraping, their misshapen heads tilted as if listening to something only they could hear.
"Chen Wei." Li Jun's voice came from the greenhouse entrance, tight and controlled. "You need to see this."
I released Zhao Ming and pushed past him into the main growing chamber. The mushroom cave had transformed into something else entirely.
The phosphorescent fungi that had been my primary food source now pulsed in synchronized waves, their caps bleeding a golden liquid that pooled on the cavern floor. The glimmerwheat stalks had grown overnight—no, in the last hour—twisting into spirals that reached toward the ceiling. Their heads had split open, revealing not grain, but clusters of small, faceted crystals that caught the dim light and threw it back in prismatic fragments.
"Beautiful," Zhao Ming whispered from behind me.
"Terrifying," Li Jun corrected.
Both were right.
I stepped forward, my delivery shoes squelching in the golden pool. The liquid was warm, almost body temperature, and gave off a smell like ozone and honey. Where it touched my exposed skin, it tingled.
The abyss book in my pack grew hot.
I pulled it out, expecting the covers to be smoking. Instead, they were cool to the touch, but the pages—the blank ones I'd been unable to read—now shimmered with text that appeared and disappeared as I watched.
*The soil remembers what the sky forgot.*
*The first harvest is always the most dangerous.*
*When the crystal blooms, the door opens both ways.*
"What does that mean?" Zhao Ming leaned over my shoulder, her breath warm against my neck. "The door opens both ways?"
"I don't know." But I had a terrible suspicion. "Li Jun, how long until the next tremor?"
He checked his pocket watch—an ancient thing he'd salvaged from a dead merchant's belongings. "Two hours, give or take. Why?"
"Because whatever's about to happen, I think it's going to happen then."
The golden liquid at my feet began to bubble.
We backed away as the pool expanded, reaching for the nearest trellises, climbing the stalks of wheat, coating the mushroom caps. The plants absorbed it like sponges, their colors shifting from abyss-black and crimson to a deep, luminous amber.
Then they started to grow.
Not slowly, like normal plants. Not even at the accelerated rate I'd become accustomed to. These plants exploded upward, their stalks thickening, their leaves spreading, their fruits—if you could call them that—swelling to the size of my head.
The greenhouse roof groaned under the pressure.
"Everybody out!" I grabbed Zhao Ming's arm and pulled her toward the exit. Li Jun was already running, his long legs carrying him across the bubbling golden floor.
We burst through the canvas flap just as the structure collapsed behind us.
The tent folded in on itself, the support poles snapping like twigs. But the plants kept growing, pushing through the fabric, reaching for the cavern ceiling. Within minutes, what had been my greenhouse was now a tangled mass of amber vegetation that covered the entire eastern wall of our hideout.
The scavengers chittered and scrambled away, their glowing eyes reflecting the new light.
"What have you created?" Zhao Ming's voice was barely a whisper.
"I don't know." It was becoming my mantra. "But we're about to find out."
The plants stopped growing at the ceiling, their topmost tendrils flattening against the rock. Then, as if guided by some invisible hand, they began to weave together, forming a pattern that was almost—no, definitely—deliberate.
They were writing something.
Characters I didn't recognize, but that felt familiar in a way that made my skin crawl. Each symbol was formed by hundreds of interlocking vines, their leaves arranged at precise angles to catch the light.
"The old language," Li Jun breathed. "I've seen something like it in the ruins of the First Surface, before the collapse. That's High Abyssal Script."
"You can read it?"
"Only fragments. It's a warning, I think." He squinted, tracing the symbols with his finger. "'Those who open the door... must close it... or the hunger will follow.'"
A chill ran down my spine. "The hunger? What hunger?"
"The same hunger that's been gnawing at the abyss since before humans crawled out of caves." Zhao Ming's voice had changed. It was deeper now, layered with something ancient and cold. "The hunger that sleeps beneath the roots of the world, waiting for someone stupid enough to wake it."
I spun around.
Zhao Ming's eyes had gone completely black. No whites, no irises, just endless darkness. The crystal shard was embedded in her palm, its sharp edges buried in her flesh, the blue light pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
"Zhao Ming—"
"It's too late for that name." Her mouth smiled, but the expression didn't reach her eyes. "Your little farm has done what no army of the surface could accomplish. You've bridged the gap between the dying world above and the hungry world below. The abyss is grateful."
"Let her go." I reached for the knife at my belt.
"Or what? You'll kill me?" The thing wearing Zhao Ming's body laughed. "You'd be doing me a favor, rancher. This vessel is weak. But it was the only one that could touch the crystal without shattering. Your friend was always meant for this."
"Friend?" Li Jun's voice cracked. "You barely know her. She tried to kill you a week ago."
"Doesn't matter." I kept my eyes locked on those black pits. "She's one of mine now. My camp. My responsibility."
"Such nobility." The creature bowed mockingly. "It will be your undoing."
The golden plants began to pulse, their light intensifying until I had to shield my eyes. The ground trembled—not the usual abyss tremor, but something sharper, more focused. The scavengers howled and fled into the deeper tunnels.
"Chen Wei," Li Jun shouted over the growing noise, "the cave-in! The one we came through!"
I risked a glance. The collapsed tunnel that had sealed us in was shifting, the rocks grinding against each other as if pushed by some immense force. Light—not golden, but the sickly blue of the crystal—leaked through the cracks.
"The door opens both ways," I whispered.
"Now you understand." The creature's voice echoed, seeming to come from everywhere at once. "Your plants have grown through the abyss, through the surface, through the spaces between. They've found the old passages. The ones the first humans sealed when they realized what they'd awakened."
"I never meant—"
"Intent doesn't matter to the abyss, rancher. Only results."
The cave wall exploded inward.
Not rocks. Not debris. Something emerged from the darkness beyond, something that had been waiting in the spaces between spaces, drawn by the light of my farm.
It was human-shaped, but wrong. Its limbs were too long, its joints bending in directions that shouldn't exist. Its skin was the color of old bruises, and where its face should have been, there was only a smooth, featureless expanse. It crawled through the opening, its fingers digging furrows in the stone, leaving trails of black ichor.
Behind it, more shapes pressed forward.
"We call them the Unformed," said the thing wearing Zhao Ming. "The first attempts. The ones that didn't work. They've been waiting in the dark for a long time, growing hungry, growing angry. And now you've given them a path."
"How many?"
"As many as the abyss needs. As many as your farm can feed."
The first Unformed raised its head—if you could call it that—and let out a sound. Not a scream. Not a roar. It was the noise of grinding bones, of tearing flesh, of every death that had ever happened in the abyss compressed into a single note.
The other creatures answered.
The golden plants writhed, their crystals shattering, releasing clouds of glittering dust. The scavengers had gone silent, either dead or hiding. Li Jun had drawn a rusted blade, his hands shaking.
And I stood in the middle of it all, a delivery driver from Chengdu, holding a book written in blood, watching monsters crawl out of a hole in reality that my farm had created.
The creature in Zhao Ming's body smiled wider than a human mouth should be able to. "The harvest has begun, rancher. Let's see if you survive the reaping."
The first Unformed lunged.
I didn't think. I moved.
The abyss vine I'd been growing in the corner of the cavern—the one that had first responded to my blood—whipped through the air and wrapped around the creature's throat. It wasn't a weapon. It was a plant. But it had tasted my blood, and it remembered.
The Unformed thrashed, black ichor spraying from its wounds. The vine tightened, squeezing, and I felt a connection form—a thread of energy that linked me to the creature, to the abyss beyond, to something vast and ancient that breathed in the darkness.
*Grow,* I thought. *Grow and consume.*
The vine obeyed.
It burrowed into the Unformed's flesh, splitting it open, spreading through its body like roots through soil. The creature convulsed, its form dissolving into black sludge that the vine drank hungrily.
"Interesting," said the thing in Zhao Ming's body. "Very interesting. You've learned to command your garden. But can you command it fast enough?"
The wall cracked further. Behind the first wave of Unformed, more shapes pressed forward. Dozens. Hundreds. An army of failed creations, all hungry, all angry, all following the path my plants had opened.
The vine pulsed at my feet, bloated and satisfied. But even as I watched, it began to change. The crimson turned to purple, then to that sickly blue. The leaves curled and blackened. The stem thickened, growing spikes that dripped with venom.
*Grow and consume.*
The command echoed in my mind, but it wasn't mine anymore. The abyss had heard me. And it had answered.
The vine lunged at me.
I threw myself aside, feeling the thorns tear through my jacket. The vine struck the wall where I'd been standing, embedding itself in the stone.
"A plant that consumes is useful," the creature said. "A plant that consumes everything is a problem. Your garden has tasted the abyss, rancher. And now it wants more."
The golden crops around us began to darken, their amber glow shifting to that hungry blue. The mushrooms pulsed with malevolent light. The glimmerwheat stalks twisted into weapons.
My farm was turning against me.
And through the growing crack in the wall, the Unformed kept coming.