Dark.
Then… light again.
I wake with a jolt — not because I choose to, but because my bones are shifting. Again.
Growing.
Not fast.
Just… stretching.
Thickening.
The way trees grow when no one looks at them.
Every hour, another inch. Another crack. Another pop.
It stings like hell, but it also feels right, like my body is remembering what it's supposed to be.
I'm bigger now.
Legs longer.
Chest heavier.
Closer to the size of a full-grown deer — the kind the winged-things whisper about with fear in their throats.
And speaking of them…
My eyes open fully, and the cage comes into focus.
Thirty guards, just like their leader barked. Wings tucked tight, spears glowing with that annoying holy hum.
Their fear is thicker now. I can smell it. Taste it.
Delicious.
I shift, testing my weight.
The chains rattle.
They jump. Pathetic.
My head aches — not from pain, but from remembering the last thing I saw before blackness swallowed me.
Him.
The older one with blond hair. The one who looked down at me like he wasn't scared. Like he wasn't disgusted.
Like he pitied me.
I snarl at the thought. My teeth scrape together, new edges forming.
Why would he look at me like that.
Why would he care?
Why would he—
The chains flare with light, cutting off my thoughts. Angelic magic burns across my limbs, making my muscles twitch.
I hate it.
One of the soldiers mutters, "He's grown again… look—look at his legs—"
Another whispers, "This thing is evolving—"
I tilt my head slowly toward them.
They freeze.
Good.
I speak, my voice cracked and wrong and echoing like something half-formed:
"Where… he?"
The guards flinch back.
Their fear spikes so fast it almost chokes me.
One soldier stammers, "The Elder will see you when—"
"When I BREAK you," I growl, and push against the chains.
They panic instantly, wings flaring, weapons sparking.
Sigils on the floor blaze to life to keep me pinned.
The growth stops — for now.
But it will start again.
They can feel it.
I can feel it.
———————————————————————————————-*
Every hour, I get stronger.
Closer to the form I'm meant to have.
Closer to tearing these smug feathers apart.
And when I'm free…
I will find the blond elder again.
I don't know why yet.
To kill him?
To understand him?
To silence that strange, unwanted echo of emotion buried in the look he gave me?
…Maybe all of them.
For now, I stare at the guards through the bars, tasting their terror, my body still unfamiliar and half-formed.
But growing.
Always growing.
Time drips like blood.
The thirty guards stand in a circle around my cage now — shields up, spears glowing, wings tense.
Behind them, the scholars shuffle in. Soft-robed. Weak-scented.
But loud.
Gods, they never shut up.
They whisper theories like idiots tasting fear and pretending it's wine.
"Is it magical evolution?"
"Some kind of fallen spirit?"
"Why does it mimic us?"
"Does it understand language?"
Of course I understand.
I just enjoy watching them squirm.
One leans closer, clutching a glowing notebook.
"It reacted to the Elder," she whispers. "Maybe it remembers faces."
Her voice hits my ears, sharp and clean, and something inside me turns.
I repeat it back.
Not perfectly.
Not human.
A deep, scraping hiss.
Like I'm dragging her voice over broken bone:
"Re…mem…bers… facessss."
Every guard jolts.
The scholar nearly drops her notebook.
I grin, cracked lips pulling back over too many teeth.
Another scholar steps up, voice shaking:
"Say something else. Anything."
I tilt my head, studying the way his throat moves when he talks.
Then I echo him:
"Any…thing."
Half the room gasps.
One guard mutters, "Spirits preserve us…"
I copy him too.
"Pre…serve… usss."
They HATE it.
Their fear tastes like smoke and honey on my tongue.
Perfect.
————————————————————————————-*
Hours pass.
I grow again — just a little.
Bones stretching, skin tightening, body settling into its deer-like shape.
A thousand eyes watch.
A thousand breaths hold.
Their fear makes the growth hurt less.
One soldier — a younger one, feathers drooping with exhaustion — slumps against the bars.
Idiot.
His elbow slips through the gap.
The moment his skin enters my space, the scent hits me.
Warm.
Alive.
Terrified.
My hunger ROARS.
Before he even realizes he messed up, my head whips forward.
My teeth clamp down.
CRUNCH.
He screams — high, broken, beautiful.
The guards shout, wings flaring, weapons rising — too slow, too slow, TOO SLOW.
I yank.
The arm pops through the bars with a wet, horrible rip.
He goes down shrieking as blood spatters the floor in bright arcs.
I don't stop.
I bite again — deeper — teeth shearing through muscle and bone.
The arm comes off in my mouth like tearing a branch from a tree.
Warm blood floods my tongue.
Delicious.
Powerful.
Perfect.
The other guards shout, "PULL HIM BACK! PULL HIM BACK!"
But I pull first.
I drag what's left of him toward me until two soldiers grab his legs and rip him away.
The stump sprays blood.
The scholar in front faints.
Another vomits.
I chew slowly.
Deliberately.
Bones crunching between my jaws as I stare at them through the bars.
They look at me like I'm death.
Good.
When I finish, I let my voice crackle out, deep and wrong, repeating one of the soldier's panicked shouts:
"Pull… him… back."
The room goes silent.
Blood still coats my tongue.
Warm.
Heavy.
Perfect.
—————————————————————————-*
The guards are dragging the half-dead soldier away, shouting orders like panicked children, but the scholars…
Oh, the scholars don't run.
They stare.
Wide-eyed.
Shaking.
But curious.
Idiots.
One steps closer — a woman whose voice shakes harder than her hands.
"We… we need to document this… the regeneration, the teeth, the voice mimicry—"
Her words trip over themselves.
Her heartbeat is LOUD.
I tilt my head toward her, unstoppable grin stretching wider.
She whispers something to the others:
"It learns patterns too quickly… this is beyond mimicry… this is adaptive cognition—"
I copy her voice, scraping deep in my throat:
"Adap…tive… cog…nition…"
The way her soul almost leaves her body?
Delicious.
The guards yell, "STEP BACK FROM THE CAGE!"
But the scholars don't listen because their brains are made of soggy leaves.
One tall scholar pushes past the others and kneels right in front of my bars, notebook glowing with some enchanted spell.
His hands shake but he's determined.
"Look at its eyes," he whispers to his team. "The sclera are… shifting? It reacts to light. Multiple reflections in a single eye—no, multiple pupils—"
He leans closer.
I lean closer too.
Our noses almost touch through the bars.
He trembles but keeps writing.
"Fascinating… its pupils dilate in several directions at once—almost like a predatory photoreceptor network—"
I whisper it back, voice glitching like broken bone:
"Pho…to…receptor… net…work."
He freezes.
His pen drops.
He looks up at me, slow and terrified, whispering:
"It… it's not just repeating us…
It understands the concepts."
Exactly.
I smile wider.
Teeth clicking softly.
The scholars panic.
"Impossible—!"
"No creature can learn that fast—!"
"It's only been conscious for a few hours—!"
I cut them off:
"Ow-errs.Few… ow-errs."
They stumble backward like I slapped them.
The bravest (or dumbest) scholar creeps forward again, lifting a crystal that glows red at my heat signature.
"Get a reading on its body temperature," he mutters.
The moment the crystal hums near me—
It screeches like metal melting.
The scholar yelps and drops it.
The crystal cracks down the middle, glowing bright then going dark.
He stares at it, horrified.
"The temperature is— that's impossible—"
Another scholar grabs it. "What did it read?"
"It didn't. It overloaded."
He turns slowly toward the others, face pale as moonstone.
"Its body temperature is… wrong. Not too high. Not too low. Just—wrong. Like it's not following biological rules."
He points at me with a trembling hand.
"No heart rhythm, no breath pattern—
it doesn't even have a stable anatomy. It's still reorganizing itself every few minutes—like its bones aren't decided yet."
Oh, I LIKE that.
I repeat him slowly, savoring his fear:
"Not… de-ci-ded… yet."
The room goes SILENT.
A third scholar, voice cracking, says:
"It's forming… options.Choosing what it wants to be.Like it's evolving in real time."
The youngest one whispers:
"…we can't contain something like this."
I lunge forward, chains snapping tight, sparks exploding across my skin.
They scream.
I whisper, gently, perfectly:
"Con…tain… this?"
Their faces freeze.
Delicious~