The walls dripped. Not water. Not blood. Something thicker. Something alive.
Kara stumbled barefoot through the stone corridor, naked, shivering, the torchlight behind her fading into crimson fog. Her skin was marked in ochre and ash, painted with sigils she couldn’t read. She couldn’t speak either. Her tongue had been sliced at the base and sewn back on with black thread. The pain pulsed through her skull with every breath.
The corridor ended in a cavern.
Massive. Pulsing.
The floor was veined with fleshy ridges that beat with the rhythm of something enormous beneath. In the center, a circular platform rose from the meat floor like an altar birthed from a god’s spine. At its edge, hooded figures chanted in a tongue that didn’t belong in this world.
Kara stepped forward. Not because she wanted to.
Because the floor pulled her.
Her feet stuck with each step, sucked forward by tendrils too fine to see, but she felt them crawling across her ankles, up her legs, brushing her thighs. The cult parted silently. No one touched her. No one needed to.
The platform recognized her.
She climbed onto it. Or it lifted her.
The moment her feet left the ground, the platform shuddered. Flesh opened along its surface, unfolding like the petals of a diseased flower, revealing a second layer beneath: smoother, slick, warm. Her legs were spread. Her arms pinned down. She didn’t struggle.
The platform was breathing now.
The chanting grew louder.
The shadows between the columns began to twist.
From them came it.
Not one thing. Many things. A colony. A swarm within a shape. Bones formed, then unformed. A head, eyeless, emerged—part skull, part mouth, nothing human. Its torso was a shifting nightmare of limbs and holes and wet appendages twitching in hunger. Its lower body dragged behind, slathered in mucus, trailing with dozens of dripping organ limbs that pulsed and writhed independently.
It slithered to her.
The cult fell silent.
The monster loomed over Kara’s body and released a sound like breathing inside a rotting coffin. Its first touch came not from above but from within. One of the tendrils from the floor slid between her legs and entered her—slow, wet, warm. It pushed deep, thickening as it moved, pulsing with alien rhythm.
Her back arched.
A second appendage moved to her mouth, pressing against her lips. She gagged as it slid over her face, coating it in slime. It didn’t enter. It opened. It bloomed, revealing a smaller proboscis that slithered into her mouth and began vibrating against her throat.
Then came the real one.
The core limb.
It extended from the creature’s lower mass, thick and translucent, filled with glowing fluid. It wasn’t a cock. Not really. It had no shape that should function. But it was hard, ribbed, covered in tiny suckers and pulsating seams that expanded and contracted.
It entered her slowly.
She screamed through the proboscis, the sound trapped in her lungs as the thick limb stretched her beyond what was possible. Blood mixed with the creature’s fluid, dripping down the sides of the altar. The cult began to writhe, rubbing themselves beneath their robes, moaning in twisted delight.
Another limb wrapped around her neck, tightening and releasing with each thrust.
She wasn’t breathing now.
Her body convulsed, torn open and invaded.
More tendrils joined.
Two entered her from behind, splitting her apart, moving inside with a rhythm that synced to the pulsing platform. Another burrowed into her navel, through skin and muscle, into her core. She felt it violate places no one had ever touched. Her ribs cracked from the pressure.
The monster screamed.
Its scream was not sound but flesh—the vibration of its orgasm rippling through every tentacle. A thick flood of fluid poured into Kara from every angle. Her body swelled. Her belly expanded unnaturally, skin stretching thin and red. Her eyes rolled back. Her nipples burst open, and the fluid sprayed from them like milk made of starlight and rot.
Her hands clawed at the platform.
She wanted to die.
The platform wouldn’t let her.
The monster’s limbs retracted, one by one, slick with gore and pulsing light. Her body deflated, steaming. But she was still alive.
Barely.
Then the monster leaned in and kissed her belly.
Its bone tongue etched a symbol above her womb.
And Kara began to change.
Her skin turned gray. Veins blackened. Her eyes opened wide—too wide—and didn’t blink. A third eye split open in her forehead. Her legs fused. Her spine popped. A crown of bone sprouted from her skull. And from between her legs, something new pushed its way out.
Not a child.
Not a creature.
A portal.
An opening to the thing below the thing.
The altar began to sink, flesh parting around her like an orifice. The cultists screamed in ecstasy, one by one throwing themselves into the opening between her legs. Each time one entered, Kara moaned—louder, deeper. Her mouth no longer held a tongue. It held teeth.
She was the gate now.
And the Maw below was hungry.