Chapter Five – Fractures
He stared at his hands. Long fingers, pale skin, faint lines of black tracing the veins beneath. They didn't feel like his. They moved when he willed it, but every motion felt borrowed, as if he were wearing someone else's body.
"What am I?"T....he question left him low, almost reverent, yet hollow.
[Query received—]
The voice in his head never finished.the world snapped sideways.
A stag's eyes, wide with terror as antlers tangled in shadow. His claws dug deep, snapping sinew, spilling warmth across frost. The scream never left the stag's throat. Only the sound of tearing flesh.Wolves twisting beneath him, fur matted with blood. Their growls ended in sharp yelps as his jaws crushed spines like dry twigs. Loyalty meant nothing before the hunger that drove him.
A bear's bellow echoing through a forest of black bark. It reared, a mountain of muscle and rage. Bone gave way. Tendons snapped. Its roar died as its body slammed into the earth. Steam rose from its torn throat.Blood. Always blood. It steamed on cold leaves, pooled in soil, clung to him like a second skin.
Then...Metal tables. Cold restraints biting into his wrists. He struggled, but steel cut deeper. Figures in white leaned over him, faces hidden behind glass masks. Their voices were calm, clinical, detached, as scalpels pressed into flesh without hesitation. Pain was no longer pain. It was procedure.
A machine hummed, slow and merciless. Something hot and alien flooded his veins. He arched against the restraints, throat raw from screaming, the sound barely filling the sterile room. Even his agony was just data to them.
And deeper ...
A different body. A different world. Firelight on armored faces. Laughter easing the tension of war. For a moment there was warmth.Then the blade slid between his ribs.
Betrayal was not fire. It was ice. Their eyes met his as he fell. No hatred. No mercy. Only calculation. He was weighed, judged, and discarded.They left him bleeding into the earth while their footsteps faded.
The visions collided until nothing felt real. Beast. Experiment. Soldier. Betrayed. Each memory cut deeper than the last.He staggered back, clutching his head, nails digging into his scalp until blood welled. The tavern twisted around him, walls bending, floor heaving as if the world recoiled from his presence.
His pulse thundered in his ears, dragging up more fragments. Faces without names. Screams that might have been his. Chains. Soil. Fire. Too many. Too much.
He dropped to his knees, breath ragged, vision swimming. The tavern vanished, replaced by forest shadows, then a white chamber, then dying eyes in firelight. Reality flickered like a dying lantern.
Something writhed beneath his skin. Veins blackened, racing across his arms and chest. His fingers convulsed, joints bending wrong. For an instant claws pierced through, sharp enough to carve stone.
Then they receded, leaving him shaking.
His body was a battlefield.
The cold voice returned.
[Stability compromised. Host memory convergence — irregular.]
But it sounded distant now, drowned beneath the storm in his mind.
He pressed his palms to the floorboards, forcing himself to breathe, but the tavern offered no refuge. Every creak sounded like a scream. Every shadow stretched with hidden hunger. He felt watched, not by patrons, but by the countless selves clawing inside him.
Fragments surfaced again, each carrying something darker than memory.
The stag's terror burned with Wrath.
The wolves' loyalty twisted into Envy.
The bear's fall whispered of Pride.
The sterile lab stank of Sloth, cruelty carried out by machines while humans watched.
His comrades' betrayal reeked of Lust for gain.
Their cold eyes reflected Greed.
And in the blood he drank, the flesh he tore — Gluttony without end.
They were not memories.
They were seeds.Fractures bleeding into divinity.
His chest heaved. A scream built in his throat but never escaped. A thousand lives pressed down on him, crushing, suffocating.
He slammed his fist into the floor. Wood splintered beneath the blow, shards embedding in skin that did not bleed. The impact grounded him.
Slowly, he lifted his head.
The tavern came back into focus. Overturned tables. Flickering lanterns. Patrons pressed against the walls, faces pale with terror, none daring to approach. They saw it in him. Whatever he had become.Iron filled the air.
He drew a trembling breath. His hands curled into fists, claws threatening to break through again.
The voice in his mind still whispered, faint but insistent.
For the first time, he did not submit.
The fractures had not broken him..Not yet,But they had changed him.
And the change had only begun.