There was no light.
No sound.
No body.
She floated—at least, that's what it felt like. Like a leaf caught in an endless current, drifting quietly in warm darkness. There was no up or down, no air to breathe, no blood to rush through her limbs.
If she even had limbs.
The first thing she noticed was the stillness. Not peaceful—not really. It was a forced calm, too quiet to be comforting. It felt like the world had been turned off, and she—somehow—was the only thing still running.
"Am I dead?"
She remembered the fall. The rooftop.
That girl's face.
The shock. The weightlessness. The moment the world flipped.
The sound her body must've made when it hit the concrete.
And then—nothing.
Shouldn't there have been pain? Shouldn't she have felt something? Even for just a second?
Instead, it was like being melted candlewax suspended in black water. Her thoughts didn't echo—they just drifted.
Time passed.
Maybe minutes. Maybe hours. Maybe longer.
It was impossible to tell.
Then—
RIIIIIIIIING.
A piercing, mechanical tone shrieked through the darkness.
Loud. Sharp. Unforgiving.
It split her mind open like glass shattering in silence.
She flinched—or tried to. But there was nothing to move.
The ringing was followed by static. Buzzing and broken, like a machine forcing its way into a frequency it didn't belong to.
And then—a voice.
[ Connection Established ]
[ Initializing Core Integration Protocol ]
[ Warning: Host Consciousness Detected. ][ Proceeding with override]
"Host?"
"Override?!"
Panic surged, but there was no mouth to scream, no chest to heave, no heart to race.
Then something grabbed her—
Not physically. Something deeper. A pulling sensation, like her very soul was being yanked downward.
The warmth around her turned suffocating.
The silence became a pressure cooker.
She was being moved.
Injected.
Crushed.
Rewritten.
She was no longer floating.
She was being thrust into a form that wasn't hers.
Something alien.
---
Slime.
Flesh.
A body—wet, soft, and shapeless.
She wasn't in control. Not at first.
It was like being poured into a sack of warm fluid and bones. Her awareness hit the edges of a new shape, and she immediately knew: this wasn't human.
She was inside it.
She was it.
There were no hands to move. No face to cry with. But she could feel herself pressing against something cold and curved.
"Glass?"
Her new body rippled, jelly-like, with an unfamiliar sense of mass. She wanted to panic—tried to, even—but her thoughts slipped through her like water through broken fingers.
And then came the voice again.
Clearer now. Direct. Robotic.
[ System Online ]
[ Designation: MIRROSITH — Class: Hybrid Aberration ]
[ Primary Directive: Consume. Assimilate. Evolve. ]
[ WARNING: Instinctive Override Imminent. ]
Before she could even think—
Something inside her howled.
A hunger.
Not the kind that came from skipping breakfast or forgetting lunch.
This was bottomless. Ancient. Starving.
It wasn't hers.
It belonged to the body.
Something feral buried deep in the flesh she now occupied.
It didn't whisper.
It roared.
Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat.
Anything.
Everything.
Anyone.
She fought it at first.
She wasn't a monster.
She was—
...She hadbeen human.
But the hunger didn't care.
It wrapped around her mind like a vice.
And through the glass she sensed them—others.
Figures in coats. Voices muffled by barriers.
She couldn't understand the words, but she could feel their attention.
Watching her.
Measuring her.
Waiting.
And she knew.
They weren't here to help.
They weren't surprised by what she was.
They made her this way.
She couldn't breathe—but if she could, she might have laughed.
Dead one moment. Reborn the next.
Not as a girl.
Not as a saint.
Not even as a person.
Just a thing.
---
The hunger never stopped.
It snarled behind her ribs—or whatever passed for ribs now—pressing outward like a second heartbeat. It wasn't hers. It couldn't be. But it pulsed through her anyway, louder than her thoughts.
And yet, louder still—fear.
Not ordinary fear. Not trembling-in-the-dark fear.
This was the floor-is-about-to-fall-out fear.
The what-the-hell-have-they-done-to-me kind.
She didn't know how long she'd been in that glass vat. Couldn't feel time. Couldn't feel her body. Was it minutes? Hours? Days?
"This can't be happening."
No answer.
The air around her suddenly hissed.
HSSSSSSSSK.
Something opened. Machinery groaned.
"Oh God."
She didn't even have a heart, but she swore she felt it stop.
CLANK.
Gravity hit her like a backhand.
Her body—if you could call it that—spilled from the tank. Wet. Mucous. For a moment, she thought she was dying again.
Cold metal smacked against her side. No—her everything.
There wasn't even enough structure to know what part had landed first.
"Get up. Get UP—move, move, MOVE—!"
But her limbs weren't limbs. Her bones weren't bones.
She twitched. Slid. Twitched again. Nothing worked right.
Overhead—through the thick ceiling glass—they were watching.
White coats. Faces blurred by frost and shadow. Eyes unmoved.
Just staring.
She wanted to scream at them.
"What the hell did you DO to me?!"
"Why am I like this?!"
"WHY AM I A FUCKING MONSTER?!"
No voice came out. Only the wet shifting of her own mass.
A new voice, artificial and cruel, crackled across the chamber.
[ Combat Trial #01 — Subject: MIRROSITH vs. CHIMERIC UNIT ]
[ Begin Containment Breach Simulation ]
[Combat.]
"Combat?!"
Her mind reeled.
"I'm not a soldier. I'm not even human. You want me to—what? Fight?! Like this?!"
BANG.
A door slammed open across the room.
And then—it came out.
Lurching. Broken. Stitched.
It looked like a griffin—but wrong. Everything was wrong. Wings sewn on backward. Talons warped. The beak cracked in the center like a split mask. Its movements were twitchy, unstable, as if it were constantly falling apart and trying to hold itself together.
And its body—oh God, its body—was tearing at its own seams.
It screamed, and it didn't sound like rage.
It sounded like suffering.
"They made that. Just like they made me."
She couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Not even a mouth to hyperventilate with.
Frozen.
The griffin turned.
Its eyes—glass marbles where pupils should be—locked on her.
And charged.
"No—no, NO—!"
She scrambled, or tried to. Her body slid backward in panic. She felt her mass ripple, pulling itself in directions she didn't understand. There was no running. No place to hide.
Too slow.
It crashed into her like a falling mountain.
Its beak cracked through her center—if she had a center—and everything went dark, hot, and tight*.
"I'm being eaten."
"I'm going to die again. I'm going to die like *this*."
"Is this what you wanted? You bastards—watching from up there, taking notes—IS THIS WHAT YOU FUCKING WANTED?!"
There was no breath to scream with, but her thoughts burned.
Inside the griffin, she was nothing. Just meat. Goo. Her being folded around its organs, its teeth, its bile. The stench alone was enough to break her will.
She should've died. She wanted to, for one agonizing second.
But then—something inside her snapped.
A spark.
Faint. Feral. Furious.
"No. Not like this."
"I don't care what I am. I don't care what you turned me into—"
"I'm not dying in this fucking cage."
[ INSTINCTIVE OVERRIDE: ENGAGED ]
Her body reacted before her thoughts could catch up.
Tendrils of slime lashed outward like whips.
She pierced through organs. Sank into hot tissue. Tore through veins.
The griffin thrashed. Screamed.
She didn't stop.
She wrapped around its heart—squeezed. Dug into its throat.
She was everywhere inside it.
And she was hungry.
So she devoured it.
Cell by cell. Sinew by sinew.
She didn't eat like a predator—she absorbed like a disease.
The screaming stopped.
And she remained.
Breathing.
Barely.
Burning.
When the haze lifted, she was still wrapped in what was left of it. Bones. Feathers. A shroud of muscle around her. Her body had changed again. Sharpened. Hardened. She felt… shapes in her that hadn't been there before. Wings that weren't hers. Claws beneath the surface.
And then her eyes opened.
Not her old eyes.
She didn't know what they were.
But she could see everything now. Every heat trace. Every movement.
Even the heartbeats of the men behind the glass.
And for the first time since the fall—
She didn't feel scared.
She felt hungry again.
But deeper than that…
She felt angry.
Her vision adjusted—new, inhuman, clear. Not just light and shadow, but heat, movement, vibration. The world unfolded like a battlefield map. Even through the reinforced glass of the observation chamber, she could see them. The scientists.
Most were busy. Typing. Speaking into headsets. Scrawling notes with detached precision.
But one had stopped.
A woman.
Not much older than her—if she still had an age. Short hair tucked behind her ears. A scar along her collarbone, just barely visible through the lab coat. She stood frozen, eyes locked directly onto the thing that had just slaughtered the griffin from the inside out.
Onto her.
For a split second—just one—
they made eye contact.
And in that second, something passed between them.
No words. No commands. No pity.
Just recognition.
She didn't know what it meant.
She didn't even know why it made her angrier.
"You. You did this. All of you."
Her mass surged forward, inching toward the edge of the enclosure. The shattered remains of the griffin still clung to her body like a grotesque cloak.
She could taste her own wrath now. And it tasted like blood and acid and a long, boiling scream.
"I'll remember your face. I swear—I'll remember."
The woman didn't flinch.
Instead—
she reached for something just off-screen. A panel. A switch.
"No—"
The vents above her hissed again.
A dense fog poured down in waves.
Chemical. Sweet-scented. Deceptively gentle.
It seeped into every pore of her being, numbing whatever passed for nerves. She tried to move. Tried to resist. But her thoughts slowed, her fury dimming beneath a heavy haze.
"No. Not yet. Don't you dare—"
"Don't you put me back in the dark—"
The last thing she saw was the glass wall.
And beyond it, that woman.
Still watching.
Still silent.
And then—
everything faded.
---
Darkness again.
But it wasn't the same silence as before.
This time, it buzzed. Like something waiting to speak.
She stirred—slowly, thickly, like her mind had been stuffed with cotton and syrup. Her thoughts came back in staggered bursts, flickering with the echoes of flesh, feathers, and pain.
The fight.
The griffin.
The screaming hunger.
And the face.
That woman's face.
"You watched. You watched me become that thing."
She didn't know how long she'd been unconscious. Seconds? Hours? Days?
But she knew the moment it returned.
That sterile, detached, inhuman voice.
---
[ REBOOTING HOST CONSCIOUSNESS ]
[ Neural Integration 87% Complete ]
[ Congratulations. First assimilation successful ]
[ Analyzing Bio-Data ]
[ Griffin [Class: Artificial Chimera] successfully consumed ]
> LEVEL UP!
>
> `Level 1 → Level 10`
>
> `New Stat Allocation: +45 Points`
>
> Vitality: +10`
> Strength: +12`
> Agility: +7`
> Sensory: +6`
> Adaptability: +5`
> Willpower: +5`
>
> `New Skills Acquired`
---
[SKILL: Shredclaw]
*Temporary transformation of limb into hooked talon. Bleeds on hit. High critical ratio.*
[SKILL: Predator's Lunge]
*Short-range burst movement toward enemy. Accuracy boosted when targeting weak points.*
[SKILL: Synthetic Regeneration (Lesser)]
*Self-repairs minor tissue damage over time. Accelerates while feeding.*
[SKILL: Predator's Instinct (Passive)]
*Enhances threat detection. Alerts host to incoming aggression even without visual input.*
[MUTATION: Fanged Maw (Internal)]
*Embedded within core. Can activate during consumption. Enhanced digestion speed.*
---
"Shut up."
Her thoughts came fast now—faster than before. Sharper, even. Like her brain had been rethreaded while she slept.
She could feel it again.
The weight of her body—soft, pulsing, unstable.
"You're congratulating me? For that?"
She remembered the griffin's eyes—wild, stitched, full of suffering.
She remembered the blood. The squirming flesh.
The way it thrashed as if begging to die.
And how she gave it what it wanted—only because she had to.
"I didn't win."
"I survived."
But the System didn't care.
It didn't understand mercy. Or trauma. Or fear.
Only numbers.
Only results.
She looked inward—not with eyes, but with something deeper. A phantom sense, guiding her through the contours of this body she still didn't understand.
The new stats pulsed faintly in her mind. The skills. The instincts.
None of it felt real.
But it was hers now.
"I'm being turned into a weapon."
And someone—someone out there—was watching it happen.