Page 43 of Sienna Rossi: Beyond Shattered Trust

The land is barren and stripped raw, as though life had once touched it but is now torn away. Dark stains mar the ground in sprawling patterns that twist my stomach with unease. It’s almost black, but I’ve seen those brown stains before, the marks of old blood.

Looking up, I see the sky above is not actually sky but the roof of the dome, from inside. It’s shifting, glowing dully.

The power here is immense. It feels wrong, sickening even. It presses against my skin, unease suffocating me.

I look around, realising exactly where I am. I’m inside the dome.

A shriek tears through the air somewhere to my left, high and sharp enough to make my teeth ache. It is answered by a deeper roar that reverberates through the ground beneath me. My heart hammers, and I quickly get to my feet; keeping low, I rush towards the nearest jagged, blackened stone. Every sound makes me flinch, and I feel as if something is watching me, but I refuse to make myself easy prey.

I stay there until I’m certain nothing is about to jump out at me. The hum of the dome itself is intensifying. I scan my surroundings as I begin moving again, my feet having a mind of their own. Up ahead, the land seems to dip, but I can hear something from that direction.

I keep moving, weaving through the rocks and uneven terrain until I come to a stop when my eyes land on the scene before me.

Cocoons.

Hundreds and thousands of what you can only describe as cocoons.

They rise from the ground like a forest of grotesque monuments, some so huge I fear to know what’s inside them, and others smaller but no less dreadful. Their surfaces are not smooth but ridged and veined, dark and semi-translucent in places where a faint inner glow reveals movement within. Some hang suspended between crooked spires of tree-like branches that weave through the cocoons. Others are rooted directly into the earth, thick cords burrowing into them as if drawing nourishment from somewhere.

A few have split open.

The openings gape like torn flesh, edges curled back and hardened. Inside them, there is nothing now but slick, slime-like residue and the faintest shimmer of energy dissipating into the air.

But most of the cocoons are intact.

Slowly, I step closer, my breath catching. Within the nearest cocoon, I see a shape, curled and suspended in swirling shadow. It is not fully formed, yet not formless either. Limbs stretch long and strange, fingers tipped with black, hooked claws that twitch as though testing their own strength. A narrow skull tilts within its prison, horns sweeping back in jagged arcs from its brow. Its mouth is too wide for its face, filled with rows of needle teeth that glint faintly in the low light. Thin membranes pull taut over sharp cheekbones, and beneath them something pulses in slow rhythm.

It looks a bit like a crawler, but at the same time, it’s different. We’ve seen the crawlers and studied them carefully. I was the one who first dreamed of the crawlers, too.

Another cocoon shudders, and I spin towards it, my heart ringing loudly in my ears.

I turn and glimpse at it. A second being is within it, more formed than the last, larger than the first; its torso elongated and ribbed as though armour grows directly from its flesh. Long tendrils of shadow trail from its spine, floating in the thick air like dark hair underwater. Its eyes snap open, and it looks directly at me.

They glow sinisterly, burning with hunger.

A whisper threads through the air.

It’s not sound exactly, but it’s like an odd sensation within my mind.

You are here.

I swallow and take a step back, but my feet do not obey fully. Something in me leans towards the voice even as dread floods my veins.

More cocoons begin to stir all around me.

Shapes shift inside them. Claws scrape softly against inner membranes. Horned heads turn in unison, though I have made no noise.

The whisper grows clearer.

Not one voice.

Many.

Layered and overlapping until they blur into something singular.

Come.

The ground beneath me hums, and I realise I am not simply standing among these things. I am being guided.