Earth-616 — Yukon, Canada — Winter, 1947
The forest slept beneath winter's breath.
Miles of unbroken snow lay stretched across the land like silk, untouched and unspoiled. Pines stood tall and rigid, their branches heavy with frost. A frozen stream split the tree line, the ice black and clear, undisturbed by paw or bootprint. No fire. No voice. No cities for hundreds of miles.
Just cold. And quiet.
And then… something broke the sky.
At first, it was only a flicker. A pale shimmer in the upper atmosphere — the kind of thing only owls might notice as they turned their heads skyward. But then it grew brighter. Sharper. The stars dimmed as a long, purple streak cut across the clouds.
It wasn't a plane. And it wasn't falling fast.It was falling with purpose.
As it neared the earth, the clouds split around it in a slow spiral. Trees below trembled from the heat that radiated outward — not a blaze, but a pressure. A pulse.The object itself was small — no bigger than a man's torso — and shaped not like a meteor, but like something meant to hold life.
A smooth black shell, veined faintly with glowing violet lines. Not glowing from reflection, but from within.
It pulsed.
A single, slow heartbeat of light.
Then it hit.
No explosion. Just a muted whump of snow collapsing under impact. Steam hissed as heat clashed with frost, and snowmelt carved shallow rivulets through the trees. The egg sank halfway into the earth, half-buried, radiating slow warmth.
Around it, the world returned to silence.
The wind whispered. Ice cracked beneath distant branches.
And deep inside the glowing shell — something stirred.
💭 First Person — Inside the Egg
It felt like a dream at first — the kind where time folds in on itself and your body doesn't feel quite your own. I was there, aware and thinking, but the sensations didn't make sense. My position was wrong. The air, if there was any, felt too thick. My body didn't seem to know where it started or ended.
I wasn't floating. I was curled tightly in a cramped space, compressed on all sides by something warm and unyielding. The surface pressing against my back was smooth and slick, and the rest of me was coated in a fluid that clung and refused to let go. My knees — if I still had them — were locked against my chest. My spine arched hard, molded against a curved interior. Whatever held me was alive with pressure and heat.
The darkness was absolute. Not the kind found in a room with no lights, but a deeper, heavier kind — one that made you forget what light even looked like. And yet, it wasn't silent. Within the hush of the fluid, I sensed a low, steady rhythm, slow but undeniable.
It was a heartbeat. Familiar and internal.
Mine.
The warmth around me wasn't comforting. It felt closer to being submerged in something too dense, too close. It saturated my limbs and filled the space like a weight, and the longer I stayed, the more it felt like I was being held too long inside something meant to end.
Even my skin felt wrong. Smooth and slippery, maybe even scaled. I wasn't breathing through my mouth. I didn't feel a nose. Air — or something like it — flowed through me from deeper inside. It was instinctive, functional, not voluntary.
A muscle twitched. I hadn't intended to move, but the response was real. One limb shifted outward, pressed against the wall, and slid away again. Not a hand, not quite a leg. Just a blunt, solid limb that responded when I strained. Behind me, something thicker unfurled and dragged. It was heavy. Long. It felt like it was attached to the base of my spine.
The realization came slowly: these parts belonged to me.
The pressure increased. Something in me demanded to move, not just because of discomfort, but because of instinct. I couldn't stay. I wasn't supposed to. My limbs started to kick out in awkward, instinctive bursts. One of them struck the wall hard, and a crack formed. Thin light cut through it, sharp and sudden.
My eyes burned at the brightness. I hadn't seen light in — however long I'd been like this. A moment later, another push sent my body forward, and the shell that enclosed me gave way. It didn't fall apart all at once — it split, snapped, then collapsed in fragments as I forced myself free.
I tumbled into snow.
The cold shocked me, but not in the way I expected. It didn't hurt. The sensation of the wind, the ice, the open air — it startled me, but my body handled it easily. I lay sprawled in a shallow crater, steaming as heat rolled off my skin and melted the snow into slush beneath me. My limbs trembled. My chest pulled in air, fast and deep. I could feel a pressure inside — like something warm and unsettled lived just behind my ribs — but it wasn't dangerous. It was just… different.
I opened my eyes and saw the world.
Everything was too clear. I could pick out the texture of bark on the trees ten meters away. I could see the individual strands of ice coating every pine needle. Even the snowflakes in the air seemed slower, heavier, more distinct. Nothing was blurred or softened. Shadows had weight. The lines of the forest were unnaturally sharp.
When I tried to stand, my legs bent the wrong way. My balance tipped, and I collapsed again. I stared down at my limbs, confused, and realized that what I had weren't hands. Four digits extended from each forelimb — thick, sharp, black — more like claws than fingers, but built with purpose. They dug into the snow without slipping.
The skin along my arms was dark and ridged — not smooth, but lined like tough hide. Black, but not a flat black. A faint shimmer traced the scale edges in the light, glowing violet beneath the surface like heat through coal. The texture was closer to crocodile than snake — heavier, tougher.
As I shifted to all fours, something dragged behind me. I turned to see it. A long, segmented tail, lined with small spikes and ridges, moved slowly behind me. It curled slightly to one side, twitching on its own, but when I focused, I felt control return to it. It was strong, dense, and steadying. I didn't know why I had it — only that it made balance easier.
A sound built in my chest as I tried to speak, but my voice was gone. What emerged was low and rough, like a growl forced through a dry throat. The sound didn't feel threatening, just unfamiliar. The warmth in my chest flared slightly at the effort — and with it came a faint metallic taste in my mouth, bitter and smoky, like something sulfurous.
I stayed still for a while, just breathing and observing. The forest was silent except for the creaking of branches under snow. Wind shifted between the trees. My breath steamed into the cold.
Then, movement drew my attention downward. Beneath me, the snow had melted into a thin, rippling puddle.
The reflection in it was unclear — rippled and broken by the disturbed surface — but enough remained to unsettle me.
A narrow face. Smooth, scaled, dark. Large eyes with slitted pupils. A long snout. No ears. No real nose. The image was distorted, but unmistakably alien.
I leaned closer and saw hints of violet in the dark — subtle glimmers of the same glow I'd seen on my arms. The gold in my eyes shimmered faintly through the blur, surrounded by that purple ring. It was hard to tell where the scales ended and the shadows began.
I didn't look human. I didn't look like anything I'd seen before. And whatever I was — it was mine now.
I backed up from the puddle and sat down awkwardly in the snow. I focused on breathing, on processing. My claws left deep grooves in the snow. My tail rested against the ground, flicking slightly when I lost focus.
Then, slowly, memory returned.
The street.The headlights.The moment of stillness before impact.Then nothing.
I'd died.
There was no question in my mind anymore. I remembered it — the fear, the certainty, the helplessness. The way the world narrowed. The lack of pain. Just the knowledge that I wasn't going to make it.
And now… this.
I stared down at my body. Not fully understanding. Not fully believing. But knowing it was real.
Reincarnation? I'd laughed at the idea once. Some people believed in it. Others didn't. Maybe you came back as something better. Maybe worse. But this?
I wasn't a bug. I wasn't a rat. I wasn't even something human-adjacent.
I had claws. A spiked tail. My skin was armor. My eyes glowed in a way that made even me uneasy.
I didn't know what that meant.
But I knew it wasn't a mistake.
This was a second life.
And I was going to find out why I had it.
(Hey! I'm a new writer — been reading a lot of fanfics lately and finally thought, why not try one myself? This story is something I've been thinking about for a while. I wanted to create a powerful being, but not one who starts out overpowered. No instant god-mode. Just raw potential — something that grows slowly, painfully, and realistically over time.
The idea is to explore what it means to become strong, not just be strong from the start. If you're into slow-burn power progression, survival, and a main character figuring out his place in a strange world, then I hope you'll enjoy this ride.
Thanks for reading. More to come soon.)