Plup-plop. Plup-plop. Plup-plop.
The ground belched up black syrup where Hmu Hmo lay. It crawled over him like hot tar, bubbles popping with screams trapped inside. By moonrise, the ooze had swallowed him whole—a living coffin of viscous darkness.
Three sunrises passed.
Inside the sludge cocoon, Hmu Hmo's raw nerves screamed. Fire ants gnawed his bones. Lightning forks stabbed his eyeball. When the pain finally broke his mind, cold spread through his chest like poisoned honey. The numbness reached his fingers last, death's icy grip prying them open one by one.
Lights flickered, swirling in a dizzying haze. Faces emerged—his mother, father, sister, and the villagers. All of them. Waiting. Watching. Their ghostly forms hovered, suspended in the glow. Hmu Hmo's throat tightened. He tried to call out—a plea, a scream—but no sound came. His lips refused to move. Panic surged. His tongue—gone. Teeth—unfelt. Did his mouth even exist?
The ground beneath him shattered. He fell, spiraling down, down, down into the abyss. Endless emptiness swallowed him whole. Darkness pressed in, suffocating. And then, in the consuming void, three words vibrated through his bones: Death Is Salvation.
Hmu Hmo's body breached the inky ooze, suspended mid-air, dissolving and reforming in a cruel loop. Flesh unraveled, strand by strand, only to be crudely reassembled—nonexistent hands slicing away the broken, slapping raw, unformed tissue into place. It wasn't healing; it was butchery. A gruesome remaking.
Each repair dragged memories through his nerves like barbed wire: the cold bite of iron claws retreating from his skin, layered of charred flesh ripped into place, wounds sealing shut in reverse. Monster jaws rejected him, spitting him out whole instead of devouring him. Every torment rewound, condensed, and driven into him as searing jolts of pain.
When the final tendon snapped into place, he collapsed. His knees hit the ground, trembling. He was reborn; the flesh was real, the pain was real, limbs attached—new. But now, he was drowning in agony and burning confusion.
"RRRAAAAHHHHH!!!" His scream tore loose, carrying everything: rage, horror, the unbearable weight of being forced back into existence. It echoed endlessly as though the world itself recoiled from his rebirth.
—
Hmu Hmo labored to dig a mass grave. Blisters split his hands. Shredded flesh and splintered bones piled into a creaking cart, at least of what was left. With each fetid load he hauled to the gaping pit, every rotten scrap was buried with care.
He vomited—not from the rot, but from the desperate need to purge it all. Everything that had been forced down his throat. He retched until his stomach bled, yet no finger clawed its way out. No eyeball he could feel. No flesh. Only bile, streaked yellow and red.
Then, the waxed children. Scattered flesh hung like spoiled fruit from brittle bones. He wrapped their ruined bodies in coarse sheets, avoiding burial clothes that might tear at what stood left of their rotten form.
On the dais, his sister still hangs, rot weeping from every opening and where the ropes bite through. Her heart is gone, leaving behind a weeping hole that echoes memories of her laughter, her tears, her very life. But, somehow, Hmu Hmo can feel it beating, screaming, crying from within him.
He sliced a length of sturdy canvas, swaddling her bloated form with ritual care, then layered her favorite gown over the makeshift shroud.
He hauled the shrouded mass to the grave he dug, and one by one, he rolled them down. Then the dirt started falling after.
Unbeknownst to him, the stench of rot had stirred something within the depths of the woods—an ancient hunger, biding its time for the holy magic to unravel. Now, they came in throngs: thousands of monsters marching upon the village. They descended like a living avalanche, transforming the forest floor into a writhing carpet of furred maggots. With relentless hunger, they surged through the trees, flowing like larvae over a carcass, encircling the settlement in undulating, suffocating waves.
As the last clod of earth settled, Hmu Hmo paused, burdened by a profound silence. Slowly, he turned to carve a solitary pit for his sister. His raw hands trembled with each measured scoop, a physical echo of the grief he bore. But no tears came, no mourning given. Only the sounds of his gravel hitting the ground: Thud-whish... Thud-whish... Thud-whish...
When the grave finally lay ready, and the canvas-wrapped form rested in quiet stillness, Hmu Hmo drew a deep, shuddering breath, releasing every unspoken farewell with that single, weighted exhalation.
He cast one last look at her wrapped form, tears streaming down his face. His voice rose in a strangled cry, but—
RUMBLE! He froze.
RUMBLE! He spun around—
Wolf-like monsters exploded from the tree line, their needle-like fangs sinking deep into his thighs. The pain stole his scream before it could escape.
He thrashed—elbows shattering jaws, torn nails ripping through goopy eyes, heels driving down to crush throats. CRACK! RIP! SQUELCH! THUD! The monsters swarmed; he fought like a cornered animal.
"Graaaah! Stay back! Stay back!" he bellowed, his voice cracking with desperation. But the monsters surged forward, deaf to his cries.
They lunged for his sister's shrouded face. Hmu Hmo threw himself across her. Jaws closed on his collarbone—SNAP!—"GRRRK-AH!" He drove his fist into the monster's jaw. SMASH! SMASH! SMASH! Their teeth remain. His knuckles fractured.
His screams dissolved into gurgles as they tore into him, stripping muscles from bones in frenzied bites. Blood sprayed in arcs, painting the grave's edge in crimson streaks. KRRRACK! His skull gave way, cracking open like a walnut, spilling its contents like a burst pomegranate.
The whispering din—Death is Salvation—rattled through Hmu Hmo's reforming skull, a haunting chant that clung to the shards of his mind. Muscle fibers spun from shadow and spite, stitching him back together. He emerged at the village's edge, trembling with a rage that burned hotter than the memory of his demise.
Grabbing a rusted shovel and a splintered pitchfork, he dove back into the writhing horde—back to where her shrouded form lay ravaged.
Bodies collided—his shovel cleaving furred maggots bellies, his pitchfork tines bursting swollen eyes. A monster's jaws clamped his forearm. He swung the bleeding stump. THUD! THUD! THUD!
Their teeth met his skull. His swing died mid-motion. Claws shattered his ribcage. Brain matter splattered.
They scattered his flesh like debris, but not his will. He reformed by the creek, by the granary, by the blood-drenched altar. Each time, he charged back into the fray—each time, more relentless, more furious. Monsters shrieked. Flesh tore. Claws collided with unwavering resolve.
THUD! THUD! THUD! CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!
Rainstorms blurred. Blood-hazed sunrises. Days turned into weeks. His limbs quaked, weapons warped, and he collapsed before his sister's grave. Breath ragged. Skin slick with blood—his and theirs.
The monsters lay in grotesque heaps, their ruptured organs tangled with the remains they unearthed. His sister's canvas fluttered weakly, draped over a mound of indistinguishable pink pulp. Her flesh—devoured to nothing. Her bones—shattered and chewed to shards.