Three years ago.

The drop was casual.

No fanfare. No warnings. Just a half-rotted hovercraft skimming low over the jungle canopy, and then two masked Contractors dragging Max's half-conscious body to the edge of the hatch and kicking him out like garbage.

He fell.

Branches slapped his shoulders. Vines snapped across his face. By the time he hit the ground, he was already bleeding.

The jungle didn't care.

It moved.

The soil was too soft. Spongy. Breathing. Roots curled where his fingers landed, as if tasting him. Trees bent overhead in angles too perfect, too mirrored – a symmetry that felt surgical. The air buzzed with a frequency too low for human ears, but it scraped the back of Max's skull like wire.

He rolled onto his side and groaned. Not from pain. He barely felt that anymore. Just revulsion.

The earth pulsed.

It wasn't just jungle.

It was flesh.

Somewhere, deeper in the canopy, something shrieked – a wet, birthing sound. Insectoid. Malevolent.

Max forced himself upright. His ribs were still cracked. Healing, but not fast enough. He braced one hand against a trunk.

The bark was warm.

It pulsed beneath his palm.

He yanked it away and staggered back.

From the corner of his eye, something moved – low to the ground. Clicks. A shimmer. And then he saw it:

A beetle the size of his fist, its carapace translucent, showing tiny larval sacs twitching inside. Its stinger was thick. Serrated. It skittered up his ankle before he even reacted.

Max snarled and stomped. The beetle popped – a hiss of green fluid, the smell like vinegar and rotting meat.

He checked his leg. No puncture. Not yet.

More were coming.

He staggered forward through the brush, deeper into the heat. Every surface was wet. The vines drooled sap that shimmered like oil. Webbing hung between the trees in sheets. Cocooned shapes swayed in the heat haze – human silhouettes, some child-sized. One of them twitched as he passed.

Max didn't stop.

He knew what this was. Orobas had told him in chilling detail what Lilith was.

The Mother of Monsters.

And this was her womb.

The trail opened into a clearing. No sky above – just the green-black canopy, riddled with massive hanging hives. They pulsed gently. Moaned. The air was thick with spores, glowing faintly. Like the jungle itself was exhaling corruption.

And then—

She stepped from the tree line, barefoot.

Lilith.

He had never seen a more beautiful woman – and he hated her for it.

Her gown wasn't fabric, but living chitin, dark green and wet with sap, fused to her pale skin like it had hatched from her flesh. It moved when she did, glistening as it traced the cruel perfection of her curves. Her hair poured down her back in a black cascade, too smooth, too heavy – like it had never known dirt or weight. Her eyes shimmered toxic green, slitted like a serpent's, and her horns curved back from her temples in polished arcs of obsidian.

She looked like a goddess sculpted from hunger.

And every instinct in Max's body screamed: run.

She didn't walk. She glided.

Every step left a print that sprouted moss.

Max froze.

His body responded the way all bodies did around her – pulse rising, breath catching, a flush of irrational hunger.

But his mind recoiled.

"Max," she purred. Her voice was velvet soaked in honey. "The prodigal soul returns."

He gritted his teeth. "Where… the fuck… am I."

Lilith's smile deepened. She stepped closer, cupped his cheek like a lover. Her touch burned cold. Not like ice. Like a lack of heat where life used to be.

"Don't worry," she whispered. "You're not in Hell."

She leaned in.

"You're in me."

Max jerked away, staggered back a step – but the vines beneath his feet shifted, subtly. Preparing.

She walked past him, gazing up at the hive canopy.

"They always fight at first," she said. "The strong ones. They think resistance means victory. But resistance…" She turned her head slightly, eyeing him. "Is just another kind of foreplay."

Max clenched his fists. "I'm not giving you anything."

Lilith laughed, delighted. "Darling—" she gestured to the jungle, the hive, the bloated birthing sacs dangling from branches.

"You already are."

Max didn't respond. He couldn't.

Because behind her, one of the cocoons burst. A clawed, half-human arm thrashed free. Its skin was translucent. Its face – still forming – whimpered in a child's voice.

"D-dad…"

Max's breath caught.

Lilith watched him.

And smiled.

"Let's see what else you can grow."

…………………

The temple pulsed.

It was not stone. Not wood. Not anything that should have been built. The walls were flesh – ribbed and slick, curving into an obscene cathedral of meat and root. Amber sacs swelled between the ridges like overripe fruit, pulsing with slow, liquid heartbeats. The air stank of honey, blood, and rot.

Max was bound to the altar at the centre. If it could be called that.

There were no chains. No metal. Only roots – thick, wet things that had grown up from the floor like veins searching for a heart. They wrapped his wrists, his ankles, his throat. They pulsed with his breath. They breathed with him. Every time he tried to move, they tightened – not cruelly, not violently. Possessively. Like a mother holding down a screaming child.

His skin crawled.

From the far side of the chamber, they dragged the first group in.

Humans. Dozens of them. Some walked on their own. Some were hauled by Lilith's spawn – drones that hissed and clicked with too many legs. Some of the humans were weeping. Some were silent. Most were young. Women, children, a few blank-eyed men. One little boy still held a plastic toy. His fingers trembled.

Some were volunteers.

Some were clearly infected already – visible under the skin. Bulges moving inside them. One girl had something twitching under her cheekbone.

Max thrashed. The roots didn't budge.

Lilith approached the altar like a bride on her wedding day. Every step of hers was barefoot, quiet, final. Her chitin dress swayed with her hips as she moved to stand over him, eyes alight with reverence.

"You are so fertile," she whispered, smiling. "And you don't even know it."

A shadow shifted behind her.

Something skittered down the wall.

Max didn't see it until it reared up beside him – six-legged, armoured in black, tall as a man but shaped like a wasp that had learned cruelty. Its head was a smooth plate of bone, and beneath it, its limbs ended in hooked syringes. It didn't wait.

It stabbed him in the back.

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Max screamed – his body arching – white-hot agony blooming down his spine like someone had poured fire into his nervous system.

He felt it root into him. Anchor. Drink.

His eyes glazed.

His body convulsed once, then stilled.

He wasn't in control anymore.

The world dulled. Became distant.

He felt his hand rise.

He hadn't told it to.

One by one, the humans were dragged forward. An organic cord – black and pulsing – slithered from the base of the insect and embedded into each human's chest. They jolted as the connection was made. Their eyes rolled. Some foamed at the mouth. Others screamed.

Max felt it each time.

Power. His power. Ripped from his soul and siphoned through the insect, into them.

It didn't empower them. Not properly.

It warped them.

Their bones cracked. Joints shifted at unnatural angles. Spines elongated. Flesh split and healed over in scales, claws, or chitin. Their eyes stayed human. That was the worst part. One girl grew mandibles from her cheeks but still cried.

And Max watched.

His body moving like a puppet.

He tried to fight.

Bit down on his tongue so hard he tasted blood. Tried to scream through the pain. Tried to kill himself, right there on the altar.

The roots wouldn't let him.

Lilith stroked his face gently. Her fingers were warm. Wrongly warm. Oozing something sweet and acidic.

"Shhh," she whispered. "You're giving birth to a new world."

She leaned in and kissed his cheek.

His skin blistered on contact.

He screamed then – truly. Not just from the pain. From the shame of it. The rage. The unending helplessness.

Above it all, he felt something else watching. Not seen. Not heard. But present.

Moloch.

Amused. Disappointed. Patient.

Max sagged in his bonds. A husk now. Breathing ragged. His eyes white with pain.

The ritual continued.

…………………

The pit stank of sweetness.

Too sweet. Like rotting fruit soaked in meat. Moss lined the ceiling in thick clumps, dripping condensation into the womb-like depression that passed for a cell. The walls were soft. Alive. They pulsed sometimes, like they were breathing with him—or for him. He couldn't tell anymore.

He lay in it. Naked. Filthy. Limbs curled, back bent, spine pressed into something spongey and wet.

Time didn't pass here. It collected.

The ceiling had no light, only glow-fungus and amber sacs that pulsed with larval shadows inside. Sometimes they popped. Sometimes they just stared at him—twitching things behind translucent skin.

Max tried to kill himself.

Many times.

Once with a jagged edge of chitin he'd torn from the wall. Slashed his wrists to the bone. The blood flowed fast. It felt like escape.

But the swarm came.

Tiny black insects, thousands of them, poured from the ceiling like dust that wanted him alive. They fed on his blood, then excreted a thick, glistening salve into the wounds. It hardened like flesh, stitching muscle and sinew and skin with a precision no human surgeon could match.

He screamed.

Did it again.

Next, he tried fire. Pulled his own Hellfire forward – not much, just enough. Enough to sear his throat and scorch his chest from the inside out.

But the swarm came again.

Singing. Clicking. Coating him in spit and ash.

The wounds closed.

The pain didn't even help. His nerves were still dulled. His body refused to register trauma properly. Pain dampening, once a blessing, had become a curse. Even agony couldn't distract him now. Couldn't knock him out.

Couldn't end him.

So he tried drowning. Curled into the shallow pool in the corner of the pit. Pressed his face into the muck. Breathed in sludge and waited for the black.

His lungs burned. He coughed. Puked. The insects returned.

He lived.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Something in him started to fray.

The first hallucination came on the third day. Or the third week. He couldn't tell anymore.

It was Liz.

She stood at the lip of the pit, staring down at him with wide eyes. Her hands outstretched. Her voice trembling.

"Dad... please. Wake up."

He blinked. Focused.

Her face split open.

Not bleeding. Not screaming.

Just... opening.

Dozens of black compound eyes blinked at him from under her skin.

He turned his face away. Bit his arm until his teeth cracked. The hallucination didn't fade. It just smiled.

He stopped sleeping after that.

Maybe because he couldn't. Maybe because Lilith didn't want him to.

But the next time he heard footsteps, they were real.

He looked up. Not expecting anything. Just… responding.

It was a child.

A human boy, no more than ten, stood at the edge of the pit. His stomach was swollen. Something twitched beneath the skin. His eyes were sunken. Wet. Scared.

He slid down the side of the wall, ankles slipping in the muck, until he reached Max's side.

"Please," the boy whispered. "It hurts. Make it stop."

Max stared at him. Tried to feel something.

Pity. Rage. Despair.

Nothing came easily anymore. His emotions were worn thin. Like callouses rubbed into scar.

But he still had hands.

He reached out. Pressed his palm to the child's forehead.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

A blue flame sparked from his fingers. It entered the boy's skull like a kiss. Gentle. Final.

The body jerked once. Then stilled.

No insects came.

No healing.

Max held the corpse a long time.

Then lowered it gently to the floor.

And something… shifted.

Not outside. Inside.

For the first time in what felt like months, his thoughts sharpened. Not into rage. Not into grief.

But clarity.

He couldn't kill himself.

He couldn't stop Lilith's swarm.

But he could kill her children. Quietly. One by one. The infected. The half-born. He could rob her of her harvest.

He could deny her.

That was enough.

For now.

He lay back into the pit. The moss shifted beneath his head like it hated him for understanding.

His lips cracked into something like a smile.

Not defiance.

Survival.

Quiet. Human. His.

The first rebellion in a new war.

…………………

They dragged him across the floor by his wrists.

The roots weren't gentle this time. Thorned tendrils dug into his forearms, yanking him across slime-slick moss and old blood. His back scraped wet stone. His legs twitched but wouldn't respond. The last time he'd tried to run, they'd filled his lungs with chitin shards.

Still, he struggled.

Not hard. Not heroically.

Just enough to be a problem.

The corridor pulsed with life. Not life – birth. Veins bulged along the walls, pumping amber ichor between chambers. Screams echoed in the distance, low and wet and constant. The smell was unbearable. Sweet rot. Like meat that still wanted to be eaten.

Then the roots hauled him up and dropped him.

Another birthing chamber.

The air shimmered with heat and pheromones.

He didn't even open his eyes at first.

But he felt them.

The victims.

Dozens this time. More than before. Lined up against the far wall like statues of fear and resignation. Some wept silently. Some twitched with the early signs of infection – veins blackened, eyes wide and glassy. A few stood still. Volunteers, maybe. Or already gone.

Max forced his eyes open.

Pain spiked behind them. He blinked through red. Blood had burst in the whites of his eyes from strain, or pressure, or just too many nights of forced obedience.

He didn't care.

Lilith entered like a scent before she ever stepped into view.

Her footsteps were wet clicks on the pulsing floor. She emerged in a shimmer of light and pheromone, her gown of green-black chitin slick with nectar. Every inch of her body was sculpted to seduce or terrify – maybe both. The perfect mother, the final queen.

Her poison-green eyes settled on Max.

"Again," she said sweetly.

He spat blood onto the floor.

"No."

A muscle twitched in her cheek. Her smile didn't move. But something underneath it did.

"You don't get to refuse, Max," she said, voice syrupy with promise. "You empower. You give. It's what you were made for."

He didn't answer.

He looked past her, at the people trembling along the wall. A boy barely old enough to shave. A woman holding a child with skin bubbling under the surface. A man whose mouth was stitched shut with pulsing web.

"No," Max repeated. Firmer this time.

Lilith stepped closer. Her hips swayed with unnatural precision.

"You've done it before," she whispered. "You'll do it again. And again. Until your fire is nothing but seed in my garden."

He clenched his teeth.

Blood slid from his nose.

Lilith raised one hand.

The hive responded.

From the ceiling, a shape dropped. Bulbous. Buzzing. A wasp demon the size of a man, its abdomen pulsing with something viscous and alive.

The moment its stinger entered him – he screamed.

Not from pain.

From rage.

He twisted against the roots holding him, eyes rolling back, every nerve in his body lighting with forced ignition. A fresh parasite crawled under his skin – no ceremony this time, just invasion. It tore through tissue and muscle like it was finding a home.

He bucked.

Lilith knelt beside him and stroked his cheek.

"Shhh," she breathed, her voice thick with honey and rot. "You should be proud. Every scream is a seed."

She pressed her cheek to his, and whispered through a smile:

"Giving birth always hurts."

A single claw traced the line of his jaw. Where it passed, his skin bubbled – boiling from the inside, as if rejecting her touch.

His scream was hoarse now. No more fire. No more fury.

Only defiance.

And then—

The air shattered.

No sound. No flash. Just breakage.

As if the dimension itself flinched.

Then the voice came.

It wasn't a voice.

It was gravity speaking.

"You've wasted enough of him."

The hive froze.

Even the walls stopped pulsing.

Lilith hissed – not from fear, but from frustration. Her smile turned brittle. Her monstrous form surged behind her beauty. Veins swelled. Her torso split, momentarily revealing the bloated wasp queen underneath – wings twitching, thorax heaving with venom sacs and pulsating eggs.

But then she bowed.

Low.

Deep.

"Moloch," she murmured.

His voice replied, distant but absolute.

"He is not to be broken."

Lilith's head stayed bowed, but her teeth were clenched.

"He resists. Slaughters my seeds. His soul feeds nothing."

"He is not yours to reap."

The voice began to fade. Like smoke being pulled back into the abyss.

"He will yield. In time. Or not. But he will not be wasted on you."

Silence.

The parasite inside Max stopped moving.

Something ripped it out.

He convulsed. Vomited. The root bindings crumbled, and the pain hit him like a delayed tidal wave.

He collapsed into the ichor-slick floor.

Alone.

But alive.

Behind him, Lilith snarled. The air buzzed with a thousand insect voices – hungry and furious – but they didn't touch him.

He was already being taken away.

A new set of roots dragged him, gentler this time. Ritualised. Reverent.

He didn't resist.

He couldn't move.

But something inside him burned.

Not rage.

Not hope.

Just that one, stubborn coal of defiance.

It had survived Lilith's kiss.

And it would survive her hive.

For now.

…………………

Max woke on a cold slab.

No moss. No pulsing flesh beneath his back. Just stone – smooth, sterile, surgical.

His eyes adjusted slowly. No movement above him. No webbed ceiling, no chittering larvae. The air was still. Clean. He inhaled once, shallow.

No spores.

He exhaled and did it again. Deeper. Testing.

No rot. No acid. No wet, crawling things in his throat.

Silence.

Not peace. But absence. The absence of pain. Of sound. Of Lilith.

His arms didn't hurt. His spine wasn't strung with cords. No roots wrapped his wrists. No swarm crawled beneath his skin, whispering in mandible clicks.

He sat up slowly.

The slab was elevated, surgical. A single light shone above him – harsh and white, casting no shadow of its own. Beyond that circle of light, the room dissolved into darkness. But not void. Not like before.

This was deliberate.

A pause.

A stage.

Max shifted his weight. His bones felt hollow, scraped clean. His scars were still there – he could feel the ridges, tight across his ribs – but the fever had passed. Whatever insects had lived inside him were gone. Or dormant.

His throat was dry.

He didn't speak.

And then— A sound. No footsteps. Just gravity shifting.

A voice, low and impossible.

"You burned what you were supposed to feed."

It came from the dark. From nowhere. From everywhere. Heavy. Layered. Like stone collapsing beneath a cathedral. Like a god grinding its teeth behind a smile.

Max didn't flinch.

He turned toward the corner of the room. A silhouette moved there – barely a ripple in the air. Too smooth to be flesh. Too quiet to be real.

Moloch.

Not revealed. Not fully. Just presence. A suggestion of a child's form, haloed by something too large to comprehend.

"Interesting," Moloch said.

Max stared.

Said nothing.

There was a flicker behind his eyes – Tamara's face. The infected child he had burned. The silence that had followed. And beneath it all, Liz. Not her image now. Her voice. Her laugh. The sound of her calling him "Dad."

He held onto that.

Even now.

"You will awaken them again," Moloch said. Calm. Certain. "But next time… I'll show you why."

Max's jaw clenched. He didn't answer. Couldn't.

But his hand moved – fingers curling against the cold slab.

A faint glow.

Not red. Not fire.

Blue.

Just a single ember. Flickering in the crease of his palm. Not Hellfire. Not power. Not even defiance.

Just memory. A name he refused to forget.

Liz.

He didn't speak it. He didn't have to.

The light was enough.

Moloch saw it.

And did not smile.

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