Darkness.
Not the absence of light that humans called darkness—the kind that still held shapes and shadows, that eyes could adjust to given time. This was absolute. A void so complete that up and down lost meaning. A blackness that pressed against awareness like a physical weight.
In this nothingness, something learned to exist.
The first year was instinct.
Hunger. The gnawing emptiness that consumed everything else. Not the simple hunger of a belly wanting food, but something deeper—a cellular scream that demanded sustenance, demanded more, demanded anything to fill the void that matched the darkness.
The thing that would eventually be called Xenos didn't have words for this. Didn't have thoughts in any recognizable form. It had sensations. Needs. The rough stone beneath whatever passed for its body. The taste of minerals in air that never moved. The sound of eight hearts beating out of sync, creating a rhythm that echoed off walls it couldn't see.
And the hunger.
It learned the dimensions of its prison through touch. Dragging itself—crawling, slithering, moving in ways that had no name—across every surface. Ten paces in one direction before stone stopped it. Eight in another. The walls were smooth, carved with precision that suggested purpose. A cell. Though the thing didn't know what cells were.
It tried to eat the stone. Its form shifted, producing mouths in places where mouths shouldn't be, grinding against rock until something in its jaw broke with a wet crack. The pain was sharp. Immediate. Educational.
The jaw healed in seconds. The thing tried again, achieving the same result.
On the third attempt, it stopped. Not from learning that stone wouldn't nourish it, but from discovering something more interesting: its body changed.
The first intentional shift happened by accident.
The thing had been exploring a corner of its cell, probing the seam where wall met floor, when one of its limbs caught on a protruding edge. The appendage tore—flesh separating from whatever passed for bone—and hung by a thread of meat.
It didn't hurt the way broken jaws did. This was different. A wrongness that demanded attention.
The thing stared at the torn limb. Or would have stared, if its eyes were positioned in a way that made staring possible. Instead, it focused—a dozen eyes swiveling independently, pupils contracting, vision overlapping into a composite image that no human brain could process.
The flesh began to knit back together. Tissue crawling across the gap like living things, pulling the severed piece back into alignment. In thirty heartbeats—roughly four seconds by any external measure—the limb was whole.
The thing touched the healed area. No scar. No weakness. As if the injury had never happened.
It tore the limb off again. Deliberately this time.
The pain was educational. Sharp at first, then fading to a dull ache that disappeared as regeneration kicked in. The thing watched—felt—its body rebuild itself. Observed the process with something approaching curiosity.
It tore the limb off seventeen more times before moving on to other experiments.
Hunger returned with a vengeance on the thirtieth day.
The thing had learned to track time by the rhythm of its hearts. Eight distinct pulses, each slightly offset from the others, creating a pattern that cycled every six hundred heartbeats. It counted obsessively, having nothing else to occupy the darkness. By its estimation—crude and instinctive—thirty rotations of its own internal clock had passed.
Then the slot opened.
Light speared into the cell—dim by any human standard, but overwhelming to eyes that had known only absolute black. The thing recoiled, its form destabilizing, limbs multiplying as panic triggered defensive mutations. A dozen mouths opened across its surface, screaming silently.
Something slid through the slot. The opening closed. Darkness returned.
The thing approached the new presence cautiously, eyes adjusting, form slowly stabilizing back into something vaguely humanoid. Its hands—it had settled on hands, finding them useful for manipulation—touched cold flesh. Meat. Dead, but fresh enough that blood still pooled beneath torn skin.
It had no concept of what animal the meat came from. No understanding of death or life or the ethics of consumption.
It only knew hunger.
The feeding took minutes. Teeth that could shatter stone made quick work of flesh and bone alike. Nothing was wasted. The thing consumed everything—marrow, gristle, organs that would have poisoned a human system. Its body processed it all with equal efficiency, breaking down matter into energy with an alchemy that defied natural law.
When it finished, the hunger had dimmed from a scream to a whisper. Not gone. Never gone. But manageable.
The thing sat in the darkness, learning its first lesson about the world beyond its cell:
Something out there knew it existed. Something fed it.
Something wanted it alive.
By the three hundredth day, patterns had emerged.
Once every thirty rotations, the slot opened. Meat appeared. The thing ate. The darkness returned.
No variation. No communication. No acknowledgment that what they fed was anything more than an animal.
But the thing was learning.
Its consciousness, developing in isolation, had nothing to model itself on except its own experiences. It didn't know what people were. What language was. What society or family or love meant. These concepts had no foundation in its world of stone and dark and monthly feedings.
What it did know was loneliness.
Not the philosophical loneliness humans experienced—the existential ache of disconnection from others. The thing's loneliness was more fundamental. It was the only thing in its universe. The only consciousness. The only awareness that experienced the passage of time.
Everything else was stone. Dead meat. Darkness.
It began to test the boundaries of its prison more deliberately. Throwing its body against walls with enough force to crack bone. The regeneration fixed everything, but the walls remained unmarked. It tried to dig through the floor, hands morphing into implements that could shred metal. The stone resisted everything, infused with something that made it harder than natural rock.
Rui. Though the thing didn't have a name for the energy that permeated the cell's construction.
After exhausting physical escape attempts, it tried something else.
It tried to make sound.
The first noise it produced was less a word and more a gurgling shriek—air forced through a throat that had never formed correctly, shaped by a mouth that couldn't decide on a consistent configuration.
The sound echoed off stone walls and died in the darkness.
The thing tried again. And again. Over days, then weeks, it learned to modulate. To control the flow of air. To force its throat into shapes that could produce something other than mindless noise.
It didn't know what words were. But some instinct—some fragment of genetic memory inherited from a mother it had killed—drove it to articulate. To create patterns in sound that held meaning, even if the thing itself didn't understand what meaning was.
By the four hundredth day, it could produce syllables.
By the five hundredth, it could sustain tones.
By the seven hundredth, it formed its first word—though it had no comprehension that what it had created was language.
"Ahhhh."
The sound filled the cell. The thing listened to its own voice bouncing back at it, creating the illusion of another presence. Of something else that existed.
It spoke the sound again. And again. Until the word lost all meaning and became just vibration. Just proof that it existed.
That it could affect the world, however slightly.
The observation slot opened on the nine hundredth day.
Not the feeding slot—that one sat low, barely six inches tall. This was different. Higher on the wall. Smaller. A rectangle of dim light that appeared without warning.
The thing approached, its form shifting to something more compact, eyes migrating to the front of its mass to see through the opening.
A face stared back.
Human. Male. Young, though the thing had no framework to judge age. The features were symmetrical in a way the thing's never were—two eyes, one nose, one mouth, all positioned in expected locations. Hair the color of old blood. Eyes that held something the thing would eventually learn to call hatred.
"You should have died with her," the face said.
The words meant nothing. The thing didn't have language yet—not comprehension, just sounds. But the tone registered. The contempt. The disgust. The wish for non-existence that dripped from every syllable.
The thing reached toward the slot, wanting... something. Connection. Acknowledgment. Proof that the face was real and not just another hallucination born from isolation.
The slot slammed shut.
Darkness returned with the finality of a grave closing.
The thing stood frozen, one hand still extended toward where the light had been. Its hearts hammered in discordant rhythm—faster now, agitated by the encounter. By the first non-hostile interaction it had ever experienced, even if hostility was all it contained.
Something changed in that moment. Some fundamental shift in its developing consciousness.
It wasn't alone. The darkness, the cell, the stone—these were imposed. Created. Chosen.
Something had put it here.
Something kept it here.
Something hated it enough to visit just to confirm that hatred still burned.
The thing's hand dropped. Its form destabilized, cycling through a dozen configurations before settling on something grotesque—all angles and edges, spikes erupting from flesh that wept fluids the color of old bruises.
It didn't have words for what it felt. But if it did, they might have been:
Why?
The second year was thought.
The thing—Xenos, though it still didn't know names—stopped trying to escape physically. Instead, it turned inward, exploring the strange territory of its own mind.
Consciousness was forming. Not the instinctive awareness of the first year, but something more complex. The ability to reflect. To question. To remember with clarity rather than just reacting to immediate stimuli.
It began organizing its experiences into categories. Stone was solid. Air was empty. Hunger was need. Darkness was constant. The monthly meat was survival. The face at the observation slot was...
It didn't have a word. But the memory of those eyes burned in its forming psyche. The first interaction with another conscious being, and it had been rejection. Condemnation. A wish for death delivered with the certainty of absolute conviction.
Xenos tried to understand. Its alien intelligence circled the problem like a predator stalking prey. What had it done to deserve this? What crime had it committed that warranted eternal imprisonment in absolute darkness?
No answers came. Only more questions.
It started marking the walls.
Using claws that could gouge stone infused with Rui, it carved. Not language—it didn't have that yet. But symbols. Representations of concepts it couldn't articulate. A circle for the feeding cycle. Lines for the passage of time. A crude face for the visitor who'd damned it with words it couldn't understand.
The wall became a canvas of incomprehensible art. A madman's diary written in scratch marks and abstract representations. Evidence that something conscious existed in the dark. That it was trying, desperately, to make sense of its existence.
No one saw it. No one responded. The monthly feedings continued without variation. The observation slot remained closed.
Xenos carved until its claws wore down to bloody stumps, then waited for them to regenerate and carved more.
The first attempt at speech happened on day one thousand and forty-two.
The feeding slot opened. Meat slid through. The thing that delivered it—a guard, though Xenos didn't know what guards were—paused before closing the slot. Just a moment. A heartbeat of hesitation.
Xenos lunged toward the opening, mouth forming frantically, throat convulsing as it tried to produce the sounds it had been practicing in isolation.
"Ahhhh—uuuu—eee—"
The guard's breathing quickened. Audible through the slot—rapid, panicked. The kind of breath that preceded flight.
Xenos pushed harder, forcing its vocal cords into configurations that approached human:
"Hh...hel...p..."
The slot slammed shut so hard the impact echoed through the cell like a gunshot.
Xenos pressed against the wall, listening. Footsteps—rapid, retreating, fleeing up stairs that led to a world it had never seen. Then silence.
It stared at the closed slot, processing what had just happened. It had communicated. Produced a sound that carried meaning—even if it didn't fully understand what "help" meant, some instinct had shaped the word.
And the response had been terror. Flight. Rejection even more complete than the hateful face at the observation slot.
Xenos backed away from the wall. Its form destabilized, collapsing into something low and sprawling, multiple limbs spreading across the floor. Eight hearts beat faster, processing emotions it had no names for.
Confusion. Hurt. Something that might have been the first stirrings of anger.
It tried to speak again, practicing alone in the darkness:
"Help. Help. Help."
The word echoed off stone and died. No one answered. No one came.
Xenos curled into itself—a mass of flesh and bone that approximated a fetal position—and experienced its first moment of true despair.
The third year was control.
Xenos—still nameless to itself, still undefined—made a decision. If the world outside rejected what it was, then it would become something else. Something that might be accepted.
It started with the body.
Its form had always been fluid, shifting based on need or instinct or the random mutations that came with existing as an impossible aberration. But it had never tried to force a specific shape. Never attempted to impose order on the chaos.
It began simply. Two arms. Two legs. A torso. A head.
The first attempts were grotesque. Limbs that bent backwards. A head that sat at a wrong angle. Organs that migrated to incorrect positions. Each attempt lasted minutes before instinct reasserted itself and the form collapsed back into comfortable monstrosity.
Xenos persisted.
Days became weeks became months. It worked with the obsessive focus of something that had nothing else—no distractions, no external input, just the singular goal of becoming something that looked human enough to not inspire immediate terror.
It studied its own body with ruthless objectivity. Noted which configurations remained stable longest. Which arrangements of bone and muscle produced something approaching bilateral symmetry. Which placement of eyes seemed most... normal.
Normal. It didn't know why that word mattered. But some deep instinct insisted it did.
By day twelve hundred, it could hold a roughly humanoid shape for an hour before exhaustion forced it back to its natural state.
By day thirteen hundred, the shape felt less forced. More natural.
By day fourteen hundred—three years after being sealed in the dark—Xenos looked almost human.
Almost.
The proportions were still wrong. Arms too long. Torso too thick. Skin that couldn't decide on a consistent texture. And the eyes—it could only manage to consolidate down to four, positioned in a way that suggested humanity without achieving it.
But it was progress. Evidence that will could triumph over nature. That it could choose what it became.
Xenos sat in the darkness, holding its humanoid form, and spoke to the emptiness:
"Why?"
Its first coherent word. Its first question. The fundamental mystery of its existence distilled into a single syllable.
The darkness didn't answer. It never did.
But for the first time since consciousness had emerged in the black, Xenos felt something that might have been determination.
It would find out. Somehow, despite the stone and the dark and the absolute isolation, it would discover why it existed. Why it had been imprisoned. Why that face at the observation slot had looked at it with such pure, undiluted hatred.
And maybe—though this was a fragile hope that barely survived in the crushing isolation—maybe it would find something that didn't want it dead.
Something that would look at it and see more than a monster.
Something that would answer when it asked:
"Why?"
On day one thousand ninety-five—three years exactly since its birth—the feeding slot opened.
Xenos approached in its practiced humanoid form. It had learned the guard's routine. The way the meat hit the floor. The pause before the slot closed. The breathing pattern of someone performing a distasteful duty.
This time, Xenos spoke before the slot could close:
"Please."
One word. Clear. Articulate. Undeniably conscious.
The guard's breathing stopped. A long silence stretched. Then, so quiet it almost didn't register:
"Christ above."
The slot closed. Footsteps retreated. Silence returned.
But something had changed. The guard had responded. Not with words, not with acknowledgment, but with recognition. With the understanding that what lived in the cell wasn't just an animal.
It was something that could speak. That could ask.
That was conscious enough to say please.
Xenos stood in the darkness, processing this small victory. Its first successful communication with another being. The first crack in the wall of isolation.
It was almost nothing.
But in a world of absolute nothing, almost counted for everything.
Eight hearts beat in their discordant rhythm. Xenos's form stabilized, holding its humanoid shape with less effort than before. Its four eyes—reduced from dozens—stared into darkness that had become as familiar as its own flesh.
And it spoke to the emptiness, practicing words it had learned from fragmented instinct and desperate observation:
"My name is..."
It paused. It didn't have a name. Didn't know names existed as concepts.
But it finished anyway:
"My name is... me."
The darkness swallowed the words. Offered no correction. No validation.
Just stone and black and the eternal rhythm of hearts beating in isolation.
Somewhere far above, in a world of light and people and things with names, three years had passed since the Archambeau family had sealed away their darkest secret.
Below, in the crushing dark, that secret had learned to think.
To speak.
To question.
And in questioning, to become something more than the sum of its impossible parts.
The thing in the dark had become conscious.
Now it just had to survive what came next.