The Hollow Herd feature

After strange deaths on her failing Midwestern farm, widowed rancher Clara Whitlow discovers an ancient alien organism growing beneath her land—and forming a powerful psychic bond with her teenage son, Eli. As the creature transforms the farm and seeks to merge fully through the boy, Clara fights desperately to sever the connection. Her battle leads her into the cellar, where she uncovers the organism’s massive root-heart and destroys it, sacrificing herself—and, unknowingly, Eli’s own life-force tied to the creature. In the aftermath, Eli lies comatose in a hospital while scientists study a surviving silver tendril, quietly pulsing with life.