Brazil.
The rainforest was not silent. It murmured, breathed, groaned—a green cathedral of whispering leaves and predator eyes, ancient beyond human comprehension. The canopy above was a mosaic of emeralds and shadows, pierced only by narrow rays of sunlight. And beneath it, walking with the cautious reverence of someone stepping into a sacred tomb, was Mateus Azevedo.
He adjusted his glasses and checked the drone controller in his hand. The machine buzzed overhead, sending back aerial footage of a nearby clearing—the site of a recent mining expedition. Or what was left of it. The images were strange: machinery rusted over as if abandoned for years, despite only being installed three months ago; trees growing over dig sites at an impossible rate; a generator half-swallowed by moss.
"What do you see, Mat?" asked Lena, his colleague and the only one in their team with both courage and sarcasm in equal measure. She stood behind him, recording notes in a battered field journal.
"The forest's reclaiming the land too fast. Something's wrong here."
Their team consisted of five people: Mateus, Lena, Andre—an indigenous guide from the Ticuna tribe, Talia—a documentary filmmaker, and Raj—an Indian tech specialist handling the drones and sensors. They had come to document ecological damage, but what they found was something else entirely.
The local village, Novo Caminho, had changed since Mateus last visited two years ago. Elders no longer spoke of hunting or fishing. Their children didn't go near the river. Even the dogs refused to bark at night. When asked about the mining site, villagers shook their heads and mentioned one name: "O Fome Verde."
"It means 'The Green Hunger,'" Andre explained that night by the campfire. "An old belief, older than the tribes here. A spirit. A force. You hurt the forest, and it eats you."
Raj chuckled. "You mean, like a killer tree? Come on, man. That's just—"
A scream cut him off. It came from the jungle. Talia was gone.
They found her camera near a thick curtain of vines. Her last footage showed her wandering toward a strange humming sound. The vines had moved. They were wrapped around her legs before the screen cut to static.
Mateus didn't sleep that night. Nor the next. Each day, another member of the team vanished. Andre found Lena's hat hanging from a tree branch twenty feet high, her name etched into the bark beneath it—bleeding a sticky, dark sap.
Raj insisted on leaving. He packed the drone and data drives and made for the river. They found his body three days later, bone-white and hollow, like something had drained him from the inside.
Now only Mateus remained. And the forest wanted him to see something.
It started with the dreams—visions of twisted trees, roots like intestines, and a breathing sound that echoed through his skull. Each night he was pulled toward a place locals whispered about: Boca da Terra. The Mouth of the Earth.
He followed the visions. Days passed. Food ran out. Insects nested in his clothes. The jungle gave him water but no rest. When he reached the grove, the air was thick with spores. The trees here had no leaves—just blackened trunks that pulsed with life.
At the center of the grove was the tree.
It towered over him, impossibly wide, its bark pale and veined like skin. The roots moved when he approached. Not metaphorically—literally. They slithered.
He stepped closer.
The ground opened.
He fell.
Down a tunnel of roots and soil, Mateus landed in a cavern lit by bioluminescent fungi. The air was sweet. Sickly. In the center stood the Heart Tree, a massive trunk of fiber and flesh, connected to every living thing above.
He saw faces in the bark—his friends, the miners, even Lena—screaming silently. The forest hadn't killed them. It had absorbed them.
A voice entered his mind, not spoken but felt.
You scar. You consume. You burn. Now, be consumed.
Mateus dropped to his knees. But even then, something in him resisted. He remembered Lena's field notes. Raj's drone data. Talia's footage.
He still had his satchel. Inside it—a vial of industrial-grade pesticide they had brought for testing.
He stood. Shaking. Opened the vial.
And hurled it at the roots.
The cavern screamed. Roots convulsed. A high-pitched whine filled the air as the heart of the forest rotted in seconds. The tree above collapsed in on itself. And then, silence.
He crawled out days later. Weak. Dirty. Alive.
The grove was gone. Just earth now. No sign of the monstrous tree. No sign of his team. Only the memory.
He uploaded the footage. Wrote the report. Exposed the horror.
But every now and then, Mateus hears the whisper of vines outside his apartment window in São Paulo.
Sometimes, they call his name.