SOUL FIRE, VOL. 2 - IT REIGNS

Produced by Cajete, 2026. Do not use without permission. Before the first oceans cooled, it was already here, woven into the black basalt and tectonic veins of the planet like an ancient, slumbering nervous system. To this entity, the rise of humanity was nothing more than a momentary blink, an insignificant outbreak of warm flesh crawling across its crust. It did not hate them, it was simply indifferent, utilizing them the way a parasite uses a drop of water to move across a room. For millennia, it had survived by fracturing its colossal consciousness into the souls of the utterly unremarkable, hiding inside the mundane thoughts of a quiet farmer, a passing clerk, or a stranger on a crowded street. When it needed to migrate, the host's eyes would suddenly go dead and hollow, their hands turning into clumsy, violent instruments that slaughtered whoever stood nearby, leaving behind a trail of ruined bodies before the entity slipped silently into the next average, unsuspecting soul.