POV: Ethan Cole
Word Count: ~1,700
Tone: Desperation → violence → horror
Hook: "Using LE on a person feels like drowning someone in honey."
Ethan made it six blocks before they found him.
Not NYPD.
Not Thorne Industries.
Them.
He was cutting through a parking lot behind a shuttered bodega when the smell hit.
Rot.
Not garbage-rot. Not sewage-rot.
Plant-rot.
The smell of compost left too long in the sun. Of roots choking on their own decay. Of chlorophyll curdling into black sludge.
Ethan's stomach heaved.
And then he heard the voice.
"Seedling."
Low. Rasping. Like wind through dead leaves.
Ethan spun.
Three figures stepped out of the shadows between dumpsters.
They were wrong.
The first one—a man, maybe, hard to tell—had skin like birch bark. Peeling. Flaking. His eyes were solid black, no whites, and when he smiled, his teeth were wooden splinters.
The second was a woman. Her hair was moss. Living moss. Dripping. Crawling down her shoulders, rooting into her collarbone.
The third—
The third didn't have a face.
Just vines.
A writhing mass of thorned vines shaped roughly like a human head, constantly shifting, reshaping, never settling.
All three of them were glowing.
Not green.
Brown.
The color of diseased wood. Of fungal bloom. Of rot.
[WARNING: THORNBOUND CULTISTS DETECTED.]
[Threat level: MODERATE.]
[Recommendation: RUN VERY FAST. 🌱]
"Fresh Seedling," the birch-man rasped. "We can smell the Primordial on you."
The moss-woman stepped closer. Her movements were wrong. Too smooth. Like she was gliding on roots instead of walking.
"The Green Mother calls," she whispered. "She hungers. She needs."
"And you—" The vine-face leaned in. No breath. No warmth. Just the smell of rot. "—you will feed her."
Ethan backed up.
His spine hit a dumpster.
Nowhere to run.
[LE: 449/500]
[Combat Tutorial available. Activate?]
[YES / NO]
"Yes—" Ethan gasped.
The world shifted.
Suddenly, everything was overlaid with translucent green lines. Threat markers. Targeting reticules. Vital points highlighted on the cultists' bodies.
[COMBAT MODE ACTIVE.]
[Available Skills:]
[• LIFE DRAIN (Cost: 30 LE) - Absorb vitality from living target.]
[• THORN BURST (Cost: 50 LE) - Summon defensive thorns.]
[• ROOT SNARE (Cost: 40 LE) - Entangle target with subterranean roots.]
[Select skill or DIE IN APPROXIMATELY 4 SECONDS. 😤]
The birch-man lunged.
Ethan didn't think.
Just reached.
"LIFE DRAIN—"
His hand slammed into the cultist's chest.
And the world detonated.
It wasn't like healing the oak sapling.
That had felt like giving.
This felt like taking.
Ethan's hand sank into the birch-man's chest—not physically, the skin didn't break, but something pierced through—and he felt the man's life.
All of it.
Every heartbeat. Every breath. Every cell burning glucose and oxygen and living.
And Ethan drank.
The LE flooded into him like cold water down a burning throat. Sharp. Sweet. Wrong.
The birch-man screamed.
His bark-skin cracked. Peeled. Flaked away in chunks.
His eyes—solid black—went grey. Dull. Like stones.
He collapsed.
[+82 LE ABSORBED.]
[LE: 531/500]
[WARNING: CAPACITY EXCEEDED. EXCESS WILL BURN OFF.]
Ethan stared at his hand.
It was dripping.
Not blood.
Sap. Green. Glowing.
And beneath the sap—
His veins were moving.
Pulsing. Writhing. Like roots growing under his skin.
"Oh god—"
The moss-woman shrieked.
"MURDERER—"
She lunged, hands outstretched, and moss erupted from her palms, whipping toward Ethan like wet ropes—
"THORN BURST—"
The words ripped out of him on instinct.
His LE dropped—531 to 481—and thorns exploded from his forearms.
Not metaphorical thorns.
Real ones.
Two inches long. Black. Dripping with sap.
They punched through his skin—god it hurt—and shot outward in a spray of green blood and rage.
The moss-woman didn't even have time to scream.
The thorns hit her.
Through her.
Chest. Throat. Face.
She staggered.
Looked down at the holes in her body.
Green light leaking out.
She opened her mouth—
And wilted.
Like a flower in fast-forward. Her skin turned grey. Her moss-hair blackened. Her body folded in on itself, collapsing into a heap of dead plant matter.
[+64 LE ABSORBED.]
[LE: 545/500]
[You are experiencing LE TOXICITY. Symptoms: nausea, hallucinations, uncontrolled growth.]
[Please stop killing people for five minutes. 😤]
Ethan fell to his knees.
His arms were burning.
The thorn wounds weren't closing.
They were growing.
Tiny shoots sprouting from the holes in his skin. Green. Writhing. Trying to root into the asphalt beneath him.
"No—no no no—"
The vine-face stepped forward.
Slow.
Deliberate.
It tilted its head—vines shifting, reshaping, forming something almost like a smile.
"You taste like the Primordial," it rasped. "Like the First Forest. Like the Green Before Time."
It knelt.
Reached out.
Touched Ethan's face with a hand made of thorns.
"The Green Mother will feast on you."
Ethan's vision was blurring.
The shoots sprouting from his arms were growing faster. Crawling up toward his elbows. Rooting into muscle.
He was going to die.
Not from the cultist.
From his own power.
Eating him alive.
[LE: 547/500]
[CRITICAL TOXICITY.]
[Emergency purge required.]
[Discharge excess LE into nearest organic target OR suffer systemic failure in 90 seconds.]
Ethan looked up at the vine-face.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
And slammed both palms into the cultist's chest.
The LE didn't drain this time.
It exploded.
Every drop of excess energy—547 down to 200 in one second—flooded into the vine-cultist.
And the vines screamed.
They writhed. Twisted. Grew—
Too fast.
Too much.
The cultist's body detonated in a burst of thorns and roots and screaming green light.
Vines punched up through the asphalt. Wrapped around dumpsters. Shattered windows. A full-grown tree erupted from where the cultist had been standing, growing twenty feet in three seconds—
And then it died.
All at once.
The leaves turned black. The trunk split. The roots withered.
In five seconds, it was a dead husk.
Smoking.
Silent.
[LE: 203/500]
[Toxicity purged.]
[You just killed someone by overfeeding them life energy.]
[Congratulations. That's a new one. 😤]
Ethan collapsed onto his back.
Staring up at the grey sky.
His arms had stopped sprouting. The wounds were closing now. Slow. Painful.
But closing.
Around him: three corpses.
One dessicated. One withered. One overgrown.
All dead.
Because of him.
Ethan turned his head and vomited.
Green. Bitter. Tasting like chlorophyll and copper.
[Quest Complete: Survive cultist ambush.]
[+150 LE rewarded.]
[New total: 353/500]
[SKILL UNLOCKED: Verdant Fury (Berserk mode - high risk, high reward)]
[You have 16 hours, 58 minutes before Thorne arrives.]
[Safehouse is 1.8 miles away.]
[I recommend walking. You look terrible. 🌱]
Ethan lay there for a long time.
Staring at the sky.
Tasting copper and green.
His phone buzzed.
He pulled it out.
Mom:ethan please call me i saw the news are you ok
He stared at the message.
Hands shaking.
Then typed:
Ethan:im ok. dont worry. ill call soon. love you
He didn't send it.
Because Mira was right.
If he sent it, they'd trace it.
And they'd come for her.
Ethan deleted the message.
Put the phone away.
Stood up.
His legs shook, but they held.
He looked at the dead tree.
At the three corpses.
At his hands, still faintly glowing.
"Fuck," he whispered.
And started walking toward Prospect Park.
Behind him, the dead tree began to rot.
And deep in the earth, something vast stirred.
Tasting the blood.
And smiling.