thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
Stories
168
Chapters
1,512
Words
3.2 M
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Reading
11 d, 4 h
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The six elite root-trackers pour through the shattered ironwood door, their segmented beetle-armor scraping against the petrified walls. Their serrated bone-blades are drawn, dripping with clear paralytic venom. They move with the terrifying, synchronized absolute certainty of the hive, their silver spore-masks gleaming in the dying, chaotic light of the rogue nursery. I am lying on my back, the heavy leather hilt of the silver-edged root-knife protruding from the center of my chest. The pain is a…-
22.4 K • Completed
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Beneath the Ninth Root — Before the Forest Turns East The woman growing beneath me has my face. Her mushroom crown is still folded, pale gills pressed together like hands in prayer. Indigo velvet skin stretches over new bones while the Walking Forest drags us across the dead continent on a million root-legs. Each footfall sends warm soil pulsing against my knees. I should burn her before she opens her eyes. Instead, I kneel at the edge of the birthing hollow and watch my own mouth learn to…
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22.4 K • Completed
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The flesh melts with a wet, bubbling hiss, releasing a plume of turquoise smoke that tastes of copper and fermented rot. I do not look away. I force my eyes to stay locked on the iron brazier, watching the heat peel the indigo velvet skin back from the skull of the clone. The creature writhing in the flames wears a face I know better than my own. It wears Ilyss’s face. The exact slope of her jaw, the precise, calculating set of her brow, the crowning halo of glowing pink fungal fronds—all of it is…
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22.4 K • Completed
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The tracker lunges, its serrated bone-blade slicing a perfect, lethal arc through the heavy turquoise fog. It moves with the terrifying, synchronized grace of the hive mind, completely silent, driven by the absolute authority of the red-strobing canopy above. I twist, my Orchidkin reflexes snapping into focus, but the air is too thick, the thorny ground too treacherous. Before the blade can sink into my chest, a flash of blackened iron intercepts it. Ilyss’s sickle catches the bone-blade with a…
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22.4 K • Completed
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The phantom heat of Ilyss’s blood is still slick on my hands. I press my palms flat against the petrified wood of the cache floor, dragging my wood-white skin across the rough grain, trying to scrape the sensation away. It does not work. My pulse hammers a frantic, erratic rhythm against my ribs. My lungs heave, fighting the heavy leather straps of my silver filtration mask. The golden ambient light pulsing from the stolen memories woven into the walls of the chamber strobes in time with my…
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22.4 K • Completed
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The echo of my own scream vibrates in the hollows of my pale blue orchid horns. I am pressed hard against the petrified curvature of the cache wall, my wood-white skin slick with cold sweat and the fading, luminous residue of our shared blue nectar. The biological connection is severed, the calyxes at my abdomen snapped shut so violently that the muscles beneath my skin throb with a dull, echoing ache. The physical intimacy is gone, replaced entirely by the suffocating weight of the sunlit room, the…
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22.4 K • Completed
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The silver edge of my root-knife bites into the first calcified biological lock. It shatters with a sickening, wet crack, oozing a thick, colorless fluid that immediately begins to harden in the air. I do not hesitate. I swing the heavy ironwood hilt again, driving the blade into the second lock, then the third. The feedback from the impacts shudders up my arm, rattling my teeth behind the heavy silver mesh of my filtration mask. Beside me, Ilyss remains perfectly still, her hands resting loosely at her…
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22.4 K • Completed
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The golden fluid inside the amber pod sloshes gently, disturbed by a current I cannot feel. I stare through the thick, gelatinous curvature of the glass. The clone floating suspended in the amniotic warmth wears my exact face. The precise slope of my cheekbones, the delicate curve of my pale blue orchid horns, the wood-white skin unmarred by the scars of the canopy. But it is the clone’s abdomen that makes the blood freeze in my veins. Beneath the translucent surface, the unformed calyxes are glowing…
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22.4 K • Completed
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The silver blade is an inch from Ilyss’s throat. My wood-white hand is completely rigid, locked around the heavy leather hilt with a terrifying, mechanical strength that I cannot consciously undo. The blade trembles slightly, catching the strobing, violent crimson light of the memory-threads woven into the nursery ceiling. I am screaming inside my own head, throwing every ounce of my will against the biological override, but it is like trying to stop a falling petrified tree with my bare hands. The…
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22.4 K • Completed
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The impact shatters the bio-membrane. We hit the floor of the abyssal trench with the force of a collapsing star. The pressurized, oxygen-rich sanctuary of the leviathan lung-sac bursts outward in a violent cascade of bioluminescent fluid. The sheer concussive force throws me backward. My spine slams against a jagged edge of fossilized coral, driving the breath from my secondary lungs in a silent, agonizing rush. The heavy, freezing water of the deep reef instantly crushes in to fill the void. It is not…-
21.0 K • Completed
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