I don't know what's happening.
One moment I'm forcing my arm to move, trying to drive the metal rod into the core, trying to end this thing once and for all-
and the next, something inside the heart grabs me.
Not physically.
Not with muscle.
Not even mana.
But with "energy".
With intent.
The rod shakes in my hand. My whole body trembles. The heart should be crushing me, tearing me apart with every contraction- but instead the pressure shifts. It circles me. Folds around me. Pulls me in like a whirlpool made of heat and blood.
My arm refuses to thrust forward.
My fingers won't let go of the rod.
My entire body is locked in place, suspended in the roaring chamber of heart.
Then the glow starts.
At first, it's faint, just a pulse of red light in the blood around me. But then it spreads, bleeding through the liquid, crawling over my skin, sinking beneath it. The heart beats again and the light slams into me like a hammer.
BOOM.
My ribs feel like they've cracked. Heat rushes into them.
BOOM.
My blood thickens. My vision shudders. My heartbeat stutters, then surges, then stutters again.
The heart isn't killing me.
It's "injecting" something into me.
My fingers twitch uncontrollably around the rod. My legs kick as if they're being puppeted. My spine feels like it's being threaded with molten wire. I scream, but the sound dissolves into the churning core. Blood fills my mouth, my nose, my lungs- but somehow I keep breathing, or something *forces* me to.
The light inside the chamber brightens.
It isn't light.
It's… essence. Raw life. The monster's life.
The transfusion begins.
It hits me all at once- an explosion inside my veins, a flood of heat racing through every artery, every nerve. My muscles tighten so hard I nearly black out. My bones vibrate, humming with a rhythm that isn't mine. My skin glows faintly under the blood, veins lighting up like molten cracks.
I feel the monster's heartbeat syncing with mine.
I feel its pulse overriding my own.
I feel something ancient and immense pushing itself into me, rewriting me, remaking me, filling me with a power I was never meant to hold.
I can't breathe. I can't move. I can't think.
Visions slam into me, vague but I can understand it, moments from the monster's memory, feelings that aren't human, instincts carved from centuries of survival and destruction. For a moment, I lose myself completely, drowning in a consciousness that dwarfs mine like a mountain over a spark.
But somewhere, somehow, a tiny part of me refuses to fade.
I cling to myself with whatever's left of my humanity, even as the transfusion drags on, burning, twisting, reshaping.
Time collapses.
I don't know if it's seconds or hours.
Eventually… the heat slows.
The glow dims.
The pressure eases.
I open my eyes and the heart, the core, the massive body I've been trapped in for so long. It shudders, cracks, and "disintegrates". The colossal monster doesn't just fall. It dissolves, particle by particle, like sand blown apart by the wind. The chamber collapse inward, and I am flung free.
For a moment, I see nothing but darkness. Then it splits open.
I am no longer inside a monster. I am in the middle of a stormy ocean. Waves tower above me, lightning flashing in the blackened clouds. The wind tears at me, cold and screaming. Around me are hundreds of ships, hulks of steel and fire, most broken, ripped apart probably by the monster I was in. Yet the logos, the insignias on the sides of the ships, they blur and twist beyond recognition, warped by the transfusion, impossible for my mind to fully comprehend.
I float amidst the chaos, the transfusion's red energy still thrumming through me, my body alive in ways I can barely process. I can feel the monster's essence still inside me, beating, pulsing, resonating with everything around me. It's overwhelming, terrifying, intoxicating.
And then-
A sound.
No-
a "voice".
Deep. Heavy. Rumbly.
Not from around me.
From "inside" me.
It vibrates through my ribs. My skull. My blood.
One word.
"You"
My breath stops.
My heart-
no, "our" heart-
beats once.