Part 4: What Grows in Silence

The Bastards are hired (barely willingly) to investigate a magical anomaly deep in the fungal wilderness—where a massive bloom of otherworldly mushrooms has erupted overnight, swallowing entire villages. Spores are spreading faster than any known plague, and worse—something ancient is growing beneath the bloom. The deeper they go, the more reality bends. Paranoia, hallucination, betrayal... and the source may be tied to one of their own.

The Hollow Bloom

Part 4: What Grows in Silence

The glyph on Hanh’s wrist pulsed. Not with light—but with memory.

Not his own.

He staggered back from the lake’s edge, hand clutched to his arm, teeth grinding against the pressure rising through his veins. It wasn’t poison. It was knowledge. And it wasn’t meant for mortals.

Across the stone shelf, Shroomer Monk still knelt, eyes rolled white, mouth whispering things that echoed louder than sound. Lyra stood between them, tail lashing, fur bristled, unsure who the threat really was.

Then the lake spoke.

Not aloud—inside.

“The soil remembers what the sky forgets.”

It came in pulses—one for each of them. A voice made of spores, wet wood, and root-deep memory. Hanh’s knees hit the ground before he realized he’d dropped. His sigils scattered across the floor, bleeding black light into the dust.

“You came seeking answers. But you’re seeds, not seekers. You haven’t earned what you ask.”

Trashcore Pig Bastard barked a laugh, eyes wide. “I knew this was a cult. You see a glowing lake and some floating fungus and suddenly we’re in a root-based therapy circle.”

Scorpion Warlock didn’t laugh. He gripped his staff in both hands and hissed toward the water. “It’s not speaking to us. Not equally.”

He was right.

It was speaking mostly to Hanh.


The vision hit like drowning.

Hanh fell backward into nothing—lightless but full of form. Not a dream. A grafted memory.

He stood in a world older than myth. A cathedral of roots, fungal gods with faces made of bark and bone, and in the center—a single throne made of twisting mycelium, pulsating with breath.

On it sat a woman.

Or what had once been a woman.

Her eyes were black soil. Her mouth a bloom of spores. Her voice?

“You wear my mark, warlock. But not by my will.”

Hanh tried to speak but couldn’t. His words dissolved into dirt.

“You burned sigils in sacred ground. You woke a place that never slept. And now you carry my price.”

She raised a hand and—


Hanh jolted awake to the sound of violence.

Lyra was mid-leap, claws tearing into a mushroom-stalked creature that had risen from the lake—a guardian or perhaps just another byproduct of the thing beneath it. Trashcore was already swinging his burger-blade like a war drum, cutting through spores with wild abandon. Frog Prince floated slightly off the ground, cloaked in glowing yellow light and hurling small orbs like arcane grenades.

Scorpion Warlock had summoned something: a mirror of himself, fused with scorpion chitin and green flame. It fought without emotion.

Shroomer Monk just stood.

Arms outstretched.

Laughing.


“HE’S COMPROMISED!” Frog Prince yelled, dodging a flailing tendril.

“No shit!” Trashcore grunted. “He’s giggling at death like it owes him rent.”

Hanh pulled himself up, the glyph on his wrist still pulsing—but different now. Smoother. Less jagged. He raised his staff and began drawing again, but this time the sigils didn’t crack. They flowed.

Lyra landed beside him, her mouth soaked in ichor. She snarled—toward Shroomer.

“Stand down,” Hanh whispered to her. “He’s not the enemy.”

She didn’t growl again, but her ears stayed flat.

The enemy wasn’t the monk.

It was the thing inside him.


The cavern trembled.

Not from the creature. Not from any spell. From beneath.

The lake cracked—like glass breaking under pressure. The upside-down tree in the ceiling convulsed and then screamed, a deep fungal shriek that ruptured air itself.

The thing below was coming up.

And it wasn’t going to wait for introductions.


“I need time!” Hanh shouted, drawing a containment ward across the edge of the lake.

“Buy it then!” Scorpion called back, dragging Trashcore out of the way of a collapsing spire. “Five minutes, no more.”

Trashcore wiped blood from his lip. “I give you three and a half. Tops.”

Frog Prince cast a layered illusion that turned the cavern walls into a blur of mirrors. The lake pulse slowed. The rising mass paused, confused.

“Good trick,” Hanh murmured, breath short. “Better trick?”

He drove his staff into the ground and traced a sigil using the glyph on his wrist.

The stone floor shuddered.

Magic surged upward—not from Hanh—but through him.

He wasn’t the source.

He was the key.


The cavern burst into bloom.

Fungus—impossibly fast—sprouted across the floor, then twisted into a spiral of color and rot. From the bloom rose a shape: not a beast, not a god.

Something in-between.

It had no face. Just shifting bark, luminous veins, and a crown of open eyes.

And it looked like Hanh.

Or something that had worn his shape once.

Trashcore dropped his blade. “Nope. Noooope.”

Scorpion Warlock stepped forward, voice dark. “This is no summon. This is a seed echo. A memory of magic unfinished.”

Frog Prince whispered, “Then finish it.”


The battle wasn’t clean.

They fought with instinct and fear. Sigils and spores. Tooth and tremor.

Shroomer Monk was the first to fall—not wounded, but transformed. He stepped forward, offered a hand to the echo… and disappeared. No scream. No dust. Just gone.

The tree above cracked.

The lake drained upward.

And the cave began to collapse.


Hanh grabbed Scorpion’s wrist. “We leave. Now.”

Frog Prince dragged Trashcore toward the ledge. “Got your blade?”

“No,” the pig wheezed, “but I think it has me.”

Lyra led them up the stairs, roaring when the path wasn’t clear. The echo didn’t follow.

It just watched.

Like it knew it would see them again.


Outside, the sky had darkened.

But the spores were gone.

The forest, for now, was quiet.

They didn’t speak until they hit the clearing.

Frog Prince was first. “We lost Shroomer.”

Hanh didn’t answer.

Scorpion just stared at his reflection in a water skin. “What grows in silence,” he murmured, “does not always die there.”

Trashcore lit a cigarette he didn’t remember stealing.

And in Hanh’s wrist, the glyph pulsed again.

This time… like it was smiling.

The Bastards are hired (barely willingly) to investigate a magical anomaly deep in the fungal wilderness—where a massive bloom of otherworldly mushrooms has erupted overnight, swallowing entire villages. Spores are spreading faster than any known plague, and worse—something ancient is growing beneath the bloom. The deeper they go, the more reality bends. Paranoia, hallucination, betrayal... and the source may be tied to one of their own.
The Bastards are hired (barely willingly) to investigate a magical anomaly deep in the fungal wilderness—where a massive bloom of otherworldly mushrooms has erupted overnight, swallowing entire villages. Spores are spreading faster than any known plague, and worse—something ancient is growing beneath the bloom. The deeper they go, the more reality bends. Paranoia, hallucination, betrayal... and the source may be tied to one of their own.