The first thing I heard was dripping concrete.
The second—my own bones cracking.
I woke up, not screaming, but suffocating.
My vision burned red, my tongue dry as dust. My skin, if I could call it that, was hard. Scaly. Thin. My claws flexed weakly on cracked concrete slick with decay.
I was... alive?
No. I was something else.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZING…]Reincarnation Path Detected
Host Identity: ERROR — MEMORY WIPEDNew Lifeform: Lizard-Type | Cold-Blood Class | Subspecies: Unknown
Ambient Radiation: CriticalFood Availability: None Detected
[Emergency Trait Active: Consume]— Convert material into Evolution Points (EP)
I didn't have time to question it.
There was nothing around me. No insects. No moss. No dust. Just me, and a pulsing heat coming from beneath the cracked metal mass I clung to.
My stomach screamed. My cells itched to die.
Then the System blinked again.
Source Material Detected: ELEPHANT'S FOOTWarning: Contact will cause irreversible mutation.Proceed? Y/N
I didn't think. I lunged.
And then…
Pain.
Radiation like razors slicing open my soul. My insides twisted. My brain caught fire.But I didn't die.
I adapted.
[Consume] Successful.+84,990,000 EP GainedNew Trait Gained: [Radiation Core Matrix I]New Skill Gained: [Atomic Ember – Variant Breath Lv.1]
I gasped.
Something inside me ignited—like a second heart. I opened my mouth, and the air shimmered.
Then, from my throat came a line of light, barely the width of a fingernail, carving a molten crack into the ground before me.
A mini atomic breath.
Not fire. Not plasma.
Decay. Condensed. Weaponized.
And that's when I realized—
I wasn't a lizard anymore.
I was becoming something else.