The world does not begin with light.
It begins with pressure.
Something shifts inside the shell. It's not a thought. The shift isn't a decision. A redistribution transforms stillness into strain. The space that has held me for so long stops behaving like certainty.
The shift comes after a long equilibrium, not suddenly, but decisively. Wet warmth presses on every surface of me. It is close. It is constant. It is the only condition that exists, until it does not.
Then a seam yields.
A soft wall inside the shell fails first, and fluid surges into new spaces. Limbs that were folded are forced to unfold. Not gracefully. Not evenly. One joint locks, then releases. Another follows. Each movement produces friction and resistance, as well as feedback.
Feedback becomes the first lesson.
The shell holds.
It holds until it cannot.
A crack starts deep in the lattice. It travels along the curve of the egg in a line that had always been meant to break under the right force. That force has finally arrived.
Tick.
Air intrudes.
It is thin, cold, and sharp. It replaces the wet interior with a medium that steals heat. It burns as it touches tissue not yet conditioned to it. Everything tightens in reflex. Muscles contract too hard. A new rhythm stutters into being.
The crack widens.
Light enters as a fractured green glow, filtered through canopy layers and fungal skin. It is not bright. The light is simply different, and this difference is enough to provoke a reaction.
The shell fails in sections. Plates separate along growth seams. A segment collapses inward, then outward. Fluid spills onto fungus and rot. Shell fragments slide and drop with dull, heavy impacts.
Thud. Thok.
I spill with them.
The ground takes my weight. It gives under me, soft with decay, but solid beneath, held by roots and old human metal. My body convulses once in the new medium, then stills. Stillness is the only way to sort sensation.
Breath happens by reflex.
In. Out. In.
Each cycle stings. Each cycle teaches. Air fills internal channels and leaves them again, carrying heat and chemical traces. With each breath, the burning reduces by a fraction.
Gravity presses down. The ground pushes back. Contact defines orientation.
I lift my head.
It is heavy. The muscles supporting it have never worked in this way. The effort pays in input.
Above me is not open sky.
It is a ceiling formed by the ruins of a collapsed structure intertwined with jungle growth. A partial dome. A collapsed corridor spine. A slope of compacted earth and vegetation that has swallowed the facility and left only ribs. Vines hang in loose nets. Fungal shelves cling to old composite. Light breaks through in fractured panes, green-shifted and restless, filtered by the canopy and the living skin that has claimed the metal.
I turn.
The egg lies broken across the rise where the ground lifts at the center of the clearing. Even now, in its cracked state, it remains the largest mass in the clearing. Its ridged plating is dull with years of fungal skin. Vines wrap it where the jungle has tried to make it vanish. Shell fragments rest against rot and human debris, heavy pieces that do not look like rock until I remember what they were.
Three service corridors branch away from the clearing's edge, each promising depth before collapsing into curtains of vine a few meters in.
At the clearing's lower edge, the old service path runs out as a streambed, only a few body lengths downslope. Water runs through it in a thin sheet, moving with the quiet insistence of gravity. It slides over dark metal. It carries sound.
It is a constant, low, moving presence.
I do not know "stream," but I know movement. I know the difference between moving water and moving air.
I shift my body away from the broken shell.
Talons scrape against metal.
Skrrt.
The claws bite and hold.
My wings remain folded. They are heavy. They are present but not yet useful.
A pressure tightens inside me.
Hunger.
It is not a thought. It is a deficit that demands correction.
The nearest thing that smells like nutrition is inside.
It is behind me.
The shell.
I turn and lower my head to it.
The exterior plating is ridged and thick, layered like horn. Fungal skins cling to it. Moisture beads along cracks. The shell smells of my fluids, my heat, and my waste.
I open my jaws.
The mouth opens wider, and I feel the mechanics align. Teeth interlock. Curved edges find purchase.
I bite into the shell.
The first bite is resistance, then fracture.
Snap.
A section breaks free. The taste is mineral and dense. Not sweet. Not clean. But energy is energy. My jaw muscles contract, and the fragment crushes.
I swallow.
Heat begins to spread inside me as digestion engages.
I bite again.
Shell fragments splinter and break. I tear sections free and consume them, working around fungal growth without avoiding it. The shell is thick enough to satisfy my hunger, and consuming it is both simple and safe. No chase. No injury. The behavior of the prey remains unknown to me.
I feed until the sharp edge of deficit dulls.
Then I stop.
When hunger stops screaming, other signals become audible.
Sound arrives from the streambed along the old service path. A steady flow. A faint echo as water passes over hollow metal. A drop that falls somewhere deeper at an uneven interval.
Plink… plink.
I move toward it.
The path slopes away from the clearing, where the ruins break into pieces. A section of wall is here. A collapsed corridor there. Metal that has become terrain. The water runs down the lowest line, a thin sheet over dark plating.
I lower my head and drink.
The cold shocks my mouth. The taste is clean with a faint metallic trace. It is not unpleasant. It is information. Minerals. The residue left behind by previous human activity is present. Jungle runoff.
I drink again.
Then I lift my head and stare into the water.
At first it is only motion. The surface moves. It breaks shape.
Then the angle changes, and the surface becomes a mirror.
I see color.
Black striping follows the contours of my body, banding red and yellow. Blue crest elements show where the light catches them, bright against the warmer tones. The pattern is not camouflage. It is a declaration. I am built to be seen.
I lean closer.
Four eyes stare back.
Two are forward-facing, aligned for depth and distance. The world through them compresses and sharpens. The other two sit farther back, set nearer the rear of my skull to read heat and peripheral motion as much as form.
The protective brow ridges above my forward eyes cut off a portion of the world. When I tilt my head, I can see forward and down with brutal clarity, but directly above is a blind wedge. It is a design flaw that is not relevant yet, because nothing here hunts me from above.
I hold still and watch the reflection hold still with me.
Then I move one limb and watch the limb move.
Six limbs answer.
The first pair sits over my shoulders. They are the main wing limbs, folded tight and heavy with membrane and finned members layered against my sides. In the middle of each folded wing, a talon rests against the ground, a rigid point meant for standing when flight is not the purpose.
The second pair of wings is smaller and positioned lower. They mirror the main wings in shape and membrane, scaled down to about a third of the main span, and built for control and correction. Each carries its own mid-wing talon for bracing and balance when I move on the ground.
The third pair are legs with three-toed, taloned feet that scrape metal cleanly and bite into rot when I shift my weight.
Something at the ridge of my head stirs.
A pair.
Two neural queues begin at the crest line and run back along my neck, close to the spine, braided in their own muscle and sheath.
They flex.
Within them, fibrous tendrils move like sensitive roots, an extension of the nervous system made into touch. The sensation that returns is different from claw or jaw. It is finer. It is for knowledge.
I extend them cautiously.
They slide forward along my body line, not reaching out far, but far enough. The tips brush the wet metal edge where water sheets down, and sensation travels back through the paired queues in a clean, immediate thread.
I touch again, tracing the boundary where metal, fungus, and water meet. The paired queues flex and retract, then extend again as if they want to map the surface using sensation alone.
I withdraw them slowly, careful not to snag them on anything sharp.
Thrmm.
A faint vibration runs through the ground.
Not from wind.
Not from the water.
Something else.
I freeze.
The vibration repeats, subtle but present, as if a weight inside another structure has shifted. It is not near enough to be loud. It is near enough to matter.
My head turns.
I track it by sound through the ground, then by scent as air currents catch it. It smells like the shell smelled before it broke. Warm. Dense. The interior of the living space is attempting to become part of the exterior.
Not deeper inside the ruins.
I move outward, toward the facility's access approach, where the wall transitions into a hillside and the jungle presses tightly against the human structures.
I follow the streambed down and out from the clearing, where the old service path compresses briefly beneath a low overhang before opening again near the outer wall.
Metal draws closer overhead for only a short stretch. The air cools. The sound of water tightens into a muted hush as it passes between surfaces rounded by roots and skinned by fungi.
Then the enclosure breaks. The ceiling splits into gaps where the jungle has chewed through. Light returns in fractured panes, and the air tastes less like damp metal and more like leaf and wet soil.
I keep going because the scent is stronger this way. The vibration originates from ahead, not from behind.
Then I find it.
Another egg lies against the outer wall near the access approach, only a couple of meters from the port's buried geometry, camouflaged by moss and fungal shelves the way the jungle camouflages everything it intends to keep. The egg I found is smaller than the one I laid, or perhaps my egg is simply larger than it should be, indicating an irregularity that does not yet have a name.
This egg is intact.
It vibrates faintly.
It is waking.
The scent from it is fresh and recently warmed. The shell has not cracked, but the interior pressure is rising.
I stand over it and listen.
There is movement inside.
Not rhythmic. Not calm. The same beginning happened to me.
In another time, I might have ignored it. In another world, I might have recognized it as kin.
But I saw it for what I wanted.
Food.
I do not hesitate long.
My head crests are sharp even at birth. Not fully hardened, but edged. They are designed to cut. The crest beneath my lower jaw frames the mouth and protects the underside when I drive forward.
I lower my head and strike.
The crest meets the shell with force. The shell resists. The crest scrapes, then bites, and a fracture line forms.
Skree.
I strike again.
The second impact widens the crack. The shell gives in a shallow split. The fungus clinging to it tears away.
A wet, internal scent blooms into the air.
Hunger answers immediately.
I widen the opening with jaws and talons. Shell fragments break and slide.
Crk. Crk.
Inside is a body curled in stasis, membranes slick, limbs folded, and eyes closed.
It is alive.
It is waking.
It resembles me in all but size.
That does not change what it is.
I feed.
The first bite tears into soft tissue and trapped fluid. Warm. Dense. It ruptures instead of resisting, releasing heat and a metallic richness that coats my mouth and runs down my tongue. The taste is thick with stored potential, nutrients are hoarded and never spent on movement, never burned for flight or muscle.
My jaws close again, crushing and pulling. Membranes split. Internal pressure vents in a wet surge. Fibers part under my teeth, slick and elastic, before giving way. My throat works automatically, swallowing matter still warm enough to twitch once before going still.
My body answers immediately. Heat blooms outward from my core as digestion locks on. Blood accelerates. Muscles draw tight, not in hunger now, but in recognition. Energy floods systems that had been waiting for it. Hunger does not fade; it collapses, folded inward and replaced by a dense, grounded satisfaction.
I feed until nothing remains inside the shell but residue and collapse.
Shell fragments remain. I consume those too, crushing them and swallowing minerals and structures along with flesh. Nothing is wasted.
When I finish, the perimeter is quiet again, except for the distant movement of leaves and the constant hush of the breathing jungle.
My breathing slows.
The pressure in my core eases into something closer to balance.
Only now do I move back toward the clearing.
Only now does the wider world become relevant.
I lift my head.
The forest presses in around the ruins. The canopy filters light. Wind moves in higher layers and breaks into uneven currents near the ground.
I breathe.
Scents arrive, layered and deep.
The jungle itself is a constant. The jungle is characterized by its constant presence of rot, leaves, moisture, and fungi.
But beyond that constant are signals that point outward.
The closest sounds are the hoofbeats to the west.
Not heavy. Not thunderous.
The movement of numerous small bodies is synchronized. Quick stops. Short starts. As they browse, a rhythm repeats itself. Their scent rides low, carried in the near air and caught in the ruin's broken angles.
Hexapede.
They are close enough that the sound reaches me cleanly. They are so close that their movement inscribes itself on the ground.
To the north, next, a thinning.
Not emptiness. The air takes on a distinct texture. The scent of grazing was diminished. There is a greater presence of stripped vegetation. The scent is bone-clean and fresh. There is a faint, sharp trace left by something that takes and leaves little behind.
A hunter.
Not here. He was nowhere to be found in the clearing.
The distance was close enough to leave a mark on the wind.
To the far east, water.
Not the thin sheet along the old service path. Something larger. The river does not speak loudly from here. Its sound is not distinct, only a low, continuous pressure when the wind shifts just right. Cool mineral rides with it, faint and clean, as if the world is colder in that direction.
It is not close.
To the south, farthest away, something massive moves beyond my knowledge.
Not visible. Not close enough to scent clearly.
But sound travels.
A deep trumpeting rolls through the canopy at long intervals, arriving as vibration more than call, as if the air itself remembers the weight of it.
The signal is distant enough that it means only one thing. Something enormous exists that way, and it is not within reach.
I hold still and let the map form.
This is not full cognition.
It is not planned with words.
It is pattern recognition, and it is quick.
I am not a normal hatchling.
The body confirms it in subtle ways. My limbs carry weight too easily. My torso is longer. My head is heavier, and the neck supports it without trembling. When I shift, the ground yields more than it should under a creature my age.
Most hatchlings would emerge large but still fragile, dangerous without being secure. Wings are awkward. Membrane fresh. The body is built for growth more than dominance.
But when I compare myself to the other hatchling I ate, I am bigger.
By roughly half again.
It is not visible to me as a number but as leverage. This is similar to how my talons dig deeper into the bark. As is the way my jaw crushes shell fragments without hesitation. Similarly, my muscles respond to exertion with less strain than they should.
Some part of the place beneath me did not build a normal egg.
Some of it was built up in excess.
I do not know that.
I only live it.
Wind brushes my wings. I do not open them fully, but I shift them slightly, feeling how pressure changes across the membrane and over the finned members.
The finned members can separate.
I test it.
I make a slight adjustment to it. The edges part like slotted segments, letting air pass between them. The sensation is immediate. Pressure changes across each section. The world becomes measurable in currents.
I close them again.
I need to understand this territory.
I begin to move.
I don't move in chaotic circles. I move in deliberate arcs.
The ruins remain my anchor. Human metal and collapsed walls provide cover.
I step outward from that anchor in widening rings.
The first ring stays tight to the clearing perimeter.
The second pushes into the forest edge until the ruin is half-hidden behind vines.
The third follows a slight rise where the ground is firmer and the canopy thins by degrees.
Each ring returns me to the center.
Each return sharpens the map.
Small life scatters as I pass. Arthropod analogs cling to bark and flick away. A darting creature with translucent wings vanishes into a leaf fold. None of it matters as prey.
All of it matters as a signal.
Life density. Movement. Ambient patterns.
I pause near a damp patch where the ground sinks and plants grow thick. I lower my head and watch.
Something crawls along a vine, something smaller, hard-shelled. It vibrates faintly as it moves.
I extend the paired queues.
The tips brush it lightly.
The creature freezes.
I touch again. It curls inward, defensive, then releases and crawls away.
Curiosity satisfied.
Not because the creature mattered, but because contact matters. Touch provides data. The paired queues are built for it.
I retract them and continue.
Wind changes.
The Hexapede scent thickens. Hoofbeats become clearer, a steady rhythm interrupted by pauses as they browse.
I stop at the edge of a small open pocket where the forest thins. Not open plains. It is simply a break where the canopy and the overhanging ruins loosen enough for light to reach the ground in wider panes.
From here, if I raise my head, I can see a little farther.
I do.
The herd is not in full view. Trees interrupt the line. But I catch movement. Blue and red bodies shifting between trunks. I see a flash of pale fan structures lifting briefly before retracting.
They are alert even without seeing me.
Their scent organs sample the air. Their ears pivot. Their herd is not panicked, but it is not unaware.
They are prey that survives by hearing danger early.
I do not rush them.
My hunger is not urgent now. Shell and the other hatchling have provided. I can afford patience.
So I watch.
Watching becomes rehearsal. I track their movement and the paths they favor. I note where the ground is open enough for a strike, where trees would obstruct, and where escape routes would funnel them.
I note one more thing.
Their size.
The creatures are not massive; relative to my size, they are only slightly smaller. They're built for grazing and quick weaving turns.
I withdraw from the edge and journey back to the ruins.
The sun shifts in the canopy. Light breaks at different angles. The clearing warms.
I settle under a collapsed wall in the clearing where shade holds. The metal beneath is cool. The boundary feels safe because it is known.
My body works on what I consumed.
Digestion is not passive. Heat spreads through my core. Nutrients break down and distribute. Shell mineral density becomes structural support. Fresh flesh becomes concentrated calories.
I feel the difference tightening. As strengthening. Not growth that can be seen yet, but capacity that accumulates.
My eyes close for a short time.
I don't fall into a deep sleep.
Rest.