I died in a suit. Yeah, we get buried in them too, but that's beside the point.
Not exactly a heroic ending. No swelling music, no tragic betrayal, no final monologue. Just a worn-out office drone, running on caffeine fumes and muscle memory, stepping off a curb like a half-dead sleepwalker. There was a horn, shrill and shrieking, a blade of sound slicing through my ears, headlights too bright, molten white, swallowing everything whole. Then—
Nothing.
No pain. No regrets. Just… absence. Flat, smooth, suffocating. Like someone had pressed "mute" on the universe itself.
And then… I woke up.
The air hit first. Thick. Metallic. Wrong. Rust scraped my nostrils and soot coated my lungs, clinging like cobwebs to the soft tissue, gritty and unyielding. Every breath made my chest ache with foreign pressure, ribs straining against muscles that weren't mine. A coppery tang lingered across my tongue—bitter, electric, metallic, crawling over the back of my throat, coating every inch of my tongue in static taste. My heart slammed in my chest, but it wasn't mine, not really. Its rhythm was wrong, too fast, too hollow, hammering against bones that felt like borrowed paper-thin porcelain.
The silence pressed on my ears like wet cloth. Broken only by the steady drip of some liquid onto stone—slow, wet, deliberate. I could taste it before I smelled it: iron, blood, decay, a scent that coiled in my stomach and made my muscles twitch with nausea.
My eyes snapped open. The ceiling above was jagged stone, sharp shadows flickering under torchlight, flames dancing as though aware, aware of me. Every crack, every pockmark on the stone seemed deliberate, almost… coded, like a sentence written across architecture. I could feel the grammar of it brushing my senses, whispering comprehension I didn't yet possess.
I sat up. Heart hammering, muscles foreign, ribs pressed against soft bones I didn't recognize. The floor beneath me was rough, cold, jagged, biting into my palms as I pushed myself upright.
Bodies.
Hooded, collapsed, frozen in death's pause. Faces pale and waxy, eyes fixed in expressions my mind recoiled from computing. Mouths open, suspended mid-scream. The chamber reeked: sweat, burnt wick, coppery rot, the air thick enough to taste on my tongue. My skin crawled, gooseflesh rising as the nauseating tang of decay mingled with something hotter, something like fear itself. Somewhere beneath the panic, a whisper: observe. Learn. Stay.
I opened my mouth. A sound emerged, soft, melodic, vibrating the air in notes that didn't belong to me. My tongue felt slippery, liquid, alien. It moved like a live thing, independent of my intent.
My hands—porcelain-white, fragile as dried petals—trembled. Fingers long, delicate, nails sharp against the palms, joints stiff yet unnervingly flexible. Wrists thin, almost translucent. I flexed them, marveling at alien precision, the strange way my bones and sinew responded, like someone else's biology had been sewn into mine overnight. My arms felt hollow yet heavy, responsive yet wrong.
Then I saw it. A shard of polished metal on the floor reflected me back. Silver-white hair fell across delicate shoulders, skin unblemished and glassy, eyes wide, impossible, reflecting torchlight like liquid crystal. I looked like a doll. Fragile. Perfect. Trapped in someone else's narrative flesh.
The circle beneath my feet pulsed faintly, heartbeat-like, throbbing up through my bones. Each step echoed hollowly, reverberating across the chamber, as if the stone itself were a drum tuned to my presence. It was claiming me, demanding I move in rhythm. I felt the pulse in my joints, in my sinew, a faint vibration crawling up my spine.
Thunk. Heavy boots. Metal scraping. Low, urgent voices slicing the thick air:
"No way… they actually pulled it off."
"What did they summon?"
"Get ready."
The massive doors groaned as they opened. Five figures strode in. Steel sang under torchlight. Cloaks swayed like banners in windless halls. Fingers flickered with restrained energy, sparks leaping faintly into the air. The chamber temperature shifted, warmer, tinged with ozone and faint smoke, smells of charred hair and metal curling into my senses.
At their head, a knight in crimson plate. Eyes sharp, calculating. Lips curled. Every movement precise, predatory.
"Witch. The cultists summoned a devil."
My throat dried. "Wait—hold on, I'm not—"
"She speaks!" one mage snapped. A spear of light twisted in his palm, coiling and humming like trapped insects. "Get her before she casts!"
Cast? My legs trembled, strange muscles betraying me. Every step a calculation my mind couldn't follow. I staggered back, heels brushing the edge of the circle, energy thrumming beneath me. It was alive, aware, judging.
"She's resisting!"
"Preparing something!"
"No! I—"
Then—
[System Initialization Complete.]
[User Interface Activated.]
[Choose Alignment: White | Black | Random]
The voice rang inside my skull. Smooth. Synthetic. Female. Calm. Precise. A chill coiled down my spine, tangling with the pulse beneath my feet, threading through my bones.
Translucent panes of light flickered across my vision, floating like coded glass. Unreal. Alive. They smelled faintly of ozone, sharp and biting, brushing my senses with cold electricity. My skin prickled, a dozen microcurrents dancing across nerve endings that weren't supposed to belong to me.
A subtle pull tickled the edges of reality itself, tugging the chamber as if invisible hands had rewritten the walls. Threads beneath my fingertips shivered and pulsed, alive, twitching, waiting. Original Luna? An Eschelon? I couldn't tell. Couldn't pause.
I had no time to think.
The knight lunged. Steel flashed.
Pain bloomed against my temple, sharp, sudden, burning. My balance betrayed me, muscles uncooperative. The world tilted. Gravity abandoned me, leaving me weightless and dangling in horror. My teeth ground together, and the taste of copper and metal filled my mouth again.
Darkness.
And then, faintly, a thought threaded through the chaos:
"I open my eyes, and the world feels… too coherent. Yet I feel threads beneath my fingertips—alive, waiting, shaped by hands I cannot see."
Somewhere beneath it, deeper than fear or curiosity, I knew: I wasn't alone.
The chamber hummed faintly, as if breathing in tandem with me. Shadows stretched, twitching at angles that made my stomach lurch. The air was heavier now, oppressive, smelling faintly of ozone and iron. My skin itched, my bones felt like borrowed tools, my heartbeat pounding against ribs that weren't mine.
And yet—possibility. Threads. Potential. Something alive beyond the terror, coiled and humming, waiting for me to reach out.
The first real thought—beyond survival, beyond confusion—was instinct. Learn. Adapt. Observe. Move.
And with that, I realized: I wasn't merely summoned. I was rewritten.