Chapter 1: The Taste of Dirt and Rain

Chapter 1: The Taste of Dirt and Rain

The only thing worse than the heat of the Hesperia high desert was the coffee Eddie Morales was drinking. It was thin, bitter, and tasted like it had been brewed with battery acid and regret. He took another scalding sip from the stained paper cup, the liquid doing little to wash away the grit coating his teeth. His beat-to-hell sedan, a relic from an era when cars had character instead of sensors, idled rough, kicking up dust that swirled in the twilight.

Eddie ‘Calaca’ Morales. That’s what they called him at the Bureau of Afterlife Management. The Skeleton. It fit. He felt hollowed out, a framework of procedures and paperwork stretched over weary bones. At thirty-eight, the lines around his eyes weren’t from laughter. They were etchings of too many strange nights, too many souls processed, and the lingering chill of having died once already.

His current assignment: Manifestation File 734-Delta. The ‘Green Faith.’ Some new-age eco-cult holed up in an abandoned warehouse just off the 15. The preliminary report mentioned chanting, trespassing, and claims of communicating with ‘the planet.’ Standard C-list weirdness. A simple observation and report job. Get in, document the spiritual residue, file the paperwork, and maybe catch the end of the game at a bar that didn't check IDs too closely. That was the goal. A simple, blessedly boring goal.

He killed the engine and the car shuddered into silence. The desert quiet rushed in, vast and unnerving. Pulling his worn denim jacket tighter, he winced as his old leg injury, a souvenir from a poltergeist with a penchant for throwing forklifts, gave a familiar throb. He limped toward the warehouse, a corrugated metal box rusting under a sky the color of a deep bruise. The moon was rising, unnaturally large and bright, casting long, skeletal shadows from the Joshua trees.

The main door groaned open under his push. The air inside was the first sign that this wasn't standard C-list weirdness. It was cool, damp, and thick with the smell of a greenhouse after a storm—rich soil, wet leaves, and the cloying sweetness of pollen. It was a smell that didn't belong in a derelict building in the middle of a desert.

His boots echoed on the concrete floor. The vast space was empty, save for dust motes dancing in the beams of moonlight slanting through grimy upper windows. Then he saw them.

Spirals.

They covered the walls, the floor, the support pillars. Intricate, interlocking spirals painted in what looked like mud and chlorophyll. They weren't just patterns; they felt like a language, a circuit board for a power he didn't recognize. He pulled out his Bureau-issued recorder, its sterile design a stark contrast to the organic chaos around him.

"Agent Morales, initial entry," he muttered, his voice flat. "Location is… decorated. Esoteric markings consistent with nature-based ritual. No entities present. Air quality anomalous, high humidity and organic particulate." He was following protocol. Protocol was safe. Protocol was the wall he built between himself and the cosmic horrors he policed.

As he spoke, a soft green light began to pulse from the spirals on the floor. It started as a faint flicker, like a dying firefly, then swelled in intensity, bathing the cavernous space in an eerie, bioluminescent glow. The rhythm was slow, hypnotic. A heartbeat.

Desire: Just file the report. Go home. Obstacle: The weird, pulsing light and the wrong-feeling air.

"Okay," Eddie breathed, his hand instinctively going to the cold, empty space on his belt where his Reaper badge used to sit before it was demoted to his wallet. A Class-3 Manifestation Handler didn't get the fancy tools. He got a recorder and a healthy dose of caution. "Unscheduled light show. Definitely an upgrade from chanting."

He took a step toward the center of the largest spiral, trying to find the source. His foot crunched on something. He looked down. A small, dry seed lay on the concrete, no different from a thousand others you might find in the desert. Yet, in the pulsing green light, it seemed to absorb the glow, holding it deep within its core.

"You're a long way from home, Herald."

The voice was soft, serene, and came from right behind him.

Eddie spun around, his body tensing for a fight. A woman stood there, her bare feet silent on the concrete. She was gaunt, with a fanatic's fire burning in her unnervingly clear eyes. Her dark, unkempt hair was threaded with tiny, living green vines, and faint, verdant veins pulsed beneath her pale skin. It was Lina, the cult's founder. The First Bloom.

"Bureau of Afterlife Management," Eddie said, the words automatic, his shield against the strange. "I'm here to—"

"We know who you are, Calaca," she interrupted, a smile touching her cracked lips. The smile didn't reach her eyes. "We've been waiting. The Mother felt your emptiness. A perfect vessel. A fallow field waiting for a seed."

Eddie backed away slowly. This had gone far beyond a simple report. This was active recruitment, and the benefits package probably sucked. "Listen, lady, I'm just here to make sure you're not sacrificing goats or summoning anything that’ll bring down property values. Pack up your plants and find a new place to drum."

The green light intensified, the pulse quickening. The air grew heavy, thick as mud. "He doesn't understand," Lina whispered, not to Eddie, but to the air itself. "He still thinks in terms of property and paperwork. Show him, Mother. Show him what it means to truly grow."

The concrete beneath Eddie's feet groaned. Before he could react, thick, thorny vines erupted from the painted spirals, whipping through the air like serpents. They weren't painted on; they were the spirals. He dodged, his bad leg screaming in protest, but they were too fast, too numerous. One wrapped around his ankle, thorns digging into his denim. Another coiled around his wrist, its grip like living steel.

Action: He tries to use his authority, his Bureau identity, to control the situation. Result: It fails completely. He is overpowered by a force outside his experience.

He was lifted off his feet, held suspended in the air at the center of the warehouse. The vines tightened, not to crush, but to hold him fast. He struggled, but it was like fighting a mountain.

Lina approached, her expression one of ecstatic reverence. She held a single, glowing green seed in her palm—identical to the one on the floor. "Humanity is a disease," she crooned, her face illuminated by the light from her hand. "A blight of concrete and poison. But the Mother is the cure. She sleeps, but she dreams. And in you, Herald, her dream will take root."

She reached forward, her fingers prying his jaw open. The raw, primordial power washing over him was suffocating. It wasn't the cold, orderly energy of souls and ectoplasm he was used to. This was chaotic, furious, and overwhelmingly alive. It tasted of deep earth, of the first rain on dry soil, of rot and rebirth.

"No," he choked out, but his voice was a whisper.

Lina smiled, a tear of green sap rolling down her cheek. "Don't fight it. This is a gift. You will be the first branch of the new world."

Turning Point: The ritual isn't about killing him, but changing him.

She pushed the seed into his mouth.

Surprise: The communion begins.

The moment it touched his tongue, the world dissolved. He wasn't in the warehouse anymore. He was everywhere. He felt the tectonic grind of continents, the slow, patient thirst of a billion roots plunging into the earth. He heard the whisper of every leaf in every forest, the furious scream of ancient redwoods meeting a chainsaw. A voice, not of words but of pure, instinctual force, flooded his mind. It was a consciousness of immense age and fathomless hunger.

GROW.

Roots, phantom and yet agonizingly real, burst from the seed in his throat, driving down through his body, weaving through his veins, wrapping around his bones.

RECLAIM.

The cold, bureaucratic emptiness inside him, the part that died and was rebuilt by the Bureau, was filled with a torrent of surging, wild, green life. His soul, a neat and tidy file in the cosmic cabinet, was being ripped apart and rewritten.

CONSUME.

The world snapped back into focus with a gut-wrenching lurch.

He was on his hands and knees in the dirt outside the warehouse, coughing and retching. The taste of soil and chlorophyll filled his mouth. The moonlight seemed dim, the desert air thin and sterile. He gasped, spitting onto the sand.

There, glowing with a faint, green pulse in the dirt, was the seed.

He scrambled back, his heart hammering against his ribs. The warehouse door was closed. The building was dark and silent, as if nothing had ever happened.

He checked himself. No vines, no wounds. Only the phantom ache of thorns and the memory of roots in his marrow. His recorder was gone. He fumbled in his jacket, his fingers closing around his wallet. He pulled it out and flipped it open.

His Bureau badge was gone. In its place was a single, pressed green leaf that crumbled to dust the moment the air touched it.

A cold dread, deeper than anything he'd ever felt dealing with ghosts or ghouls, washed over him. He grabbed his comms bead, the direct line to his regional handler.

"Dispatch, this is Agent Morales. I have a Code Black situation at 734-Delta. Hostile primordial entity. Agent compromised. Requesting immediate exfil and a full containment team. Dispatch, do you copy?"

Only static answered. A dead, empty hiss that was more final than any spoken word.

They had cut him off.

He looked from the silent warehouse to the glowing seed in the sand. He was no longer Agent Morales. He wasn't even Calaca anymore. He was something else. Something marked. Something hunted. And he was utterly, terrifyingly alone.