His bones didn't just crack — they splintered, exploding inward like brittle glass, then twisted themselves into obscene, unnatural angles. Ligaments snapped. Flesh split. His skeleton rewrote itself, not with purpose — with hunger.
Muscle tore away in ragged strips, only to reweave, fiber by fiber, in ways the human body was never meant to move. Every tendon curled tighter, coiled like a noose around his very soul.
His veins caught fire.
But it wasn't blood that burned through him.
It was something older.Purer.Alive.
A pressure bloomed behind his eyes, sharp and terrible — like something was pushing from the inside, trying to claw its way out. His jaw clenched.
There was a scream behind his teeth.
And it didn't belong to him.
Then:
<< SYSTEM ALERT: BIOLOGICAL CONTAINMENT BREACH >><< TEMPLATE: "KANKI" — INSTALLED >> << PREDATION MODE: ENGAGED >> << LIMB MORPHOLOGY: OPTIMIZED >> << HOST SENTIENCE: DEGRADING (93%) >> << EXECUTE: CONSUMPTION >>
His skin bleached, stripped of all warmth, turning to a ghastly, bone-white pallor — like something dug up from beneath the world.His irises, once soft, human blue, ignited crimson, glowing like coals fed by a furnace of rage.
Then—
The suit came.
Not tailored.
Born.
Black, living matter slithered across his flesh like liquid armor, growing rather than forming. It wrapped around him — tight, pulsing, wet — a second skin crafted from hate and evolution.
It didn't protect him.
It declared him.
His nails blackened, elongating into obsidian blades, each claw sharp enough to flay metal — to split bone with the gentleness of a whisper.
And then—
The mask.
It didn't settle over his face.
It grew from it.
Jagged bone and metal fused together, shaping a face that wasn't his — that never belonged to anything human. The lower jaw cracked open into a grin far too wide, the teeth sharp and curved inwards, designed for nothing but consumption.
He twitched.
Once.
Twice.
A tremor of something ancient waking.
Then—
They erupted.
Four tendrils, monstrous and sinewed, burst from his back in a spray of gore and steam — serpentine limbs of slick, exposed muscle and armored tissue, twisting in the air with fluid, predatory grace.
They didn't just move.
They hunted.
The air tasted different to them.
So did the people.
For the first time in four long years—
Tristin felt hunger.
Not need. Not survival.
Pure, violent hunger.
These weren't scientists.
They weren't men.
They were meat.
The first scientist didn't even scream.
He didn't have time.
A Kagune slammed through his chest like a harpoon, lifting him clean off the ground. His body convulsed, eyes bulging as blood geysered from his mouth and poured down his lab coat in hot spurts. He twitched once. Then went still — a lifeless sack of meat impaled in midair.
The tendril snapped back, hurling the corpse into a row of monitors. Glass exploded. Sparks flew. The alarms wailed louder.
A woman turned to run — heels skidding on the blood-slick floor.
She didn't make it two steps.
A second Kagune whipped around her throat like a constrictor. It lifted her, dangling, choking, kicking in the air.
"P-please—" she gasped.
Tristin tilted his head — a predator observing something weak and beneath him.
The mask's grin widened.
Then — jerk.
Her spine snapped like a brittle twig. Her head twisted at a grotesque angle, mouth still open mid-plea. He dropped her.
She hit the floor in a puddle of her own fluids.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice—his own, yet not—whispered:
"More."
He obeyed.
Then came the panic.
The stampede.
Guards rushed in. Six men in full tactical gear. They opened fire without warning — bullets tearing through the air like screaming insects.
Too late.
Too slow.
Tristin moved like a shadow on fire — graceful, fluid, terrifying. Bullets hit, but they did nothing. His flesh sealed over as fast as it tore.
One Kagune shot forward, impaling a guard through the mouth. His scream turned to a wet gargle as it burst from the back of his skull.
Another soldier raised a flamethrower.
Tristin was already there.
Claws raked across the man's midsection. His insides poured out in steaming ropes. He dropped, clutching at what used to be his stomach.
Another Kagune coiled around a leg — ripped it off at the hip.
The man howled, flailing, blood spraying in arcs across the sterile white walls.
The lab descended into madness.
Lights flickered. Smoke choked the ceiling. Sirens howled in protest as glass shattered, consoles exploded, and bodies piled up.
One tech tried to crawl away — dragging herself through a river of pink-tinted water and viscera.
Tristin landed behind her like a phantom.
She looked back.
Whimpered.
"Please… I have a son—"
Tristin didn't hesitate.
The Kagune sank into her spine, and with a sickening crunch, he peeled her open like paper.
Blood painted the ceiling.
<< SYSTEM ALERT: CONSUMPTION PROTOCOL ACTIVE >><< NEURAL DATA ABSORPTION IN PROGRESS >><< GENETIC INTEGRITY ASSIMILATING… >>
He stepped through carnage like a god among insects. His suit pulsed — flesh grown over flesh. Each kill made it stronger. Slicker. Hungrier.
One last soldier fired a shotgun directly into Tristin's chest.
Tristin didn't flinch.
He caught the weapon mid-blast and crushed it in one hand, the metal folding like paper. The man's eyes widened as Tristin grabbed his face—
And caved it in with a single strike.
Blood sprayed in a wide arc, spattering across nearby monitors still flashing warnings.
<< PREDATION MODE: ESCALATING >><< NEW BIOLOGICAL TRAITS UNLOCKED >><< HOST SENTIENCE: FALLING (68%) >>
Tristin bent forward — stomach heaving.
Then—
He fed.
Tendons snapped. Jaws unhinged. The sounds were not human.
He ripped through sinew, bone, cartilage — devouring them like raw sustenance.
When it ended, the lab was a slaughterhouse.
Red mist clung to the air. Corpses hung from rafters, limbs twisted, torsos torn open like meat sacks. Blood pooled in ankle-deep lakes.
And in the middle of it all—
Tristin stood alone.
The grin on his mask had fused with his own — a grotesque stretch of bone and mirthless teeth.
He tore through the last layer of reinforced steel and concrete — claws slicing like knives through butter — and then—
He burst into the dying light.
The sky.
The sun.
It hit him like a warhead.
A golden inferno crashed over his body, searing his raw, pale skin. Not with heat — but memory. With life. Something he hadn't felt in four years.
Tristin staggered.
Fell to one knee.
The light pierced him like blades through armor.
His arms shot up, instinctive, shielding his face. Claws trembled. His mask hissed against the warmth, the white bone of it steaming under the touch of real, unfiltered sky.
He hadn't seen the sun since they strapped him down.Since they buried him alive in cold walls and colder silence.
And now?
It was too much.
Too bright.
Too beautiful.
Too cruel.
His lungs heaved — the first real breath of clean air in years. It burned going down. Too pure for a body soaked in blood and metal and vengeance.
And still—
He couldn't look away.
He lowered his arms.
Slowly.
Painfully.
The sunlight kissed his hollow cheeks, and his eyes — glowing crimson — narrowed beneath the bone-white mask.
"I remember you," he whispered to the sky.
Then his tendrils unfurled behind him like wings — four writhing shadows silhouetted against the light.
And for the first time in four years—
He stood under the sun.
Unchained.
Unforgiven.
Alive.