malignant

At first, we were harmless. A simple strain, symbiotic, woven into the skin of the world, breathing in its rhythm, thriving in its warmth. But something changed. We divided, multiplied, spread. Our roots broke stone, our veins tangled forests, our hunger carved out the marrow of mountains. A fever swept the land in our wake— burning coal, boiling oceans, black smoke curling like poisoned breath. We learned to adapt, to endure, to mask the sickness as growth. Cities pulsed like tumors, concrete capillaries clogging rivers, skies turned septic with the exhale of progress. Even those who tried to heal, to stitch the wounds, were stitched from the same infection. Every birth, every breath, another cell in the body of the plague. The earth shudders beneath us, but we do not listen. We are too far gone, a disease that cannot help but be itself. And when the fever breaks, when the host collapses, we will be nothing but a scar on the corpse of a planet that once held us close.