 Mushrooms Killer Wandered through the Wet Forest
There is an area of wildness that is not shown on any map, where the soil remembers every step you take and the air tastes like rot. The Myco Hollow, as the locals refer to it, is a section of thick forest so spore-rich that
It seems to elude even the birds. There, the air is perpetually damp—wet with shimmering moss, fog, and something else that doesn’t seem exactly like water. And the Mushroom Killer roams around there. Nobody is certain what it is. It was previously human, according to some. Some speculate that it’s something that predates the trees and was roused by poison that was buried there decades ago. However, they all concur that fungi die wherever it goes—shriveled, blackened, as if dread itself reached into the ground.
A Creature Without a Face
Eyewitnesses, few and rattled, describe the creature as headless. Not as in decapitated, but as if it was born without a face—without eyes, mouth, or expression. Its torso tapers where a neck should begin, and its skin is a strange, cracked texture, like dried-out tree bark soaked in bleach. It moves with unnatural silence, dragging no feet, making no sound but the soft squish of soil under pressure.
B.J. Novak
According to some, it dons a cloak-like garment composed of brittle, browned sewn fungal caps. According to some, the cloak breathes, growing and contracting like a dying mushroom’s gills.Whatever it is, the earth is distorted by its presence. Where it has walked, the forest floor, which was previously home to a thousand different types of mushrooms, turns into a desolate crust. Mycelial networks—those secret underground arteries of nature—wither and shatter, and entire mushroom rings fall apart.According to some, it dons a cloak-like garment composed of brittle, browned sewn fungal caps. According to some, the cloak breathes, growing and contracting like a dying mushroom’s gills.
The Initial Absences
Before individuals began going missing, the Mushroom Killer was not a mythology.The first was Dr. Helka Morrow, a botanist who was studying the variety of fungi in Myco Hollow. She had identified more than 340 species in the area, many of which had not yet been identified. Her field journal’s most recent entry says:
ame across a strange patch of ground. No fungi. Not even mold. It’s as if the forest was sterilized. Something’s wrong here.” She never returned.Then came the hikers—two in one month. Later, a mushroom forager, then a photographer chasing the legendary bioluminescent caps that glow like fireflies at night. All of them vanished, and each time, the search parties found the same thing: a circle of decay, where nothing organic would grow, and not a single mushroom dared sprout.
The Science That No One Trusts
There is a theory from a fringe group of mycologists. They think the Mushroom Killer is the product of a botched bioengineering attempt—a mold-based weapon left over from a never-to-be-fought conflict, or maybe a fungus created to eliminate invading species. It changed over time, or something else took it over. Experts refer to it as “Ophiocordyceps Nullum,” a phrase that combines the Latin word for “nothing” with a known parasitic fungus. According to them, the murderer is a host that anti-life spores consume, generating a vicious cycle of devastation that eats fungal life as a perverse survival strategy. Most scientists laugh at that. However, none of them offer to enter Myco Hollow.
The Legend That Predated
Older tales are told by the local indigenous elders. They tell of a forest spirit who was betrayed, a protector of the fungal realm who was buried beneath a pile of poisoned earth after being beheaded by ancient settlers. They claim that its headless body arose once more, driven insane by loneliness and agony, and that it sought retribution against everything that grew from rot.
