A tsetse fly, the size of the fingernail of a starved baby, and transparent enough to glimmer like dew on a tomb, floated in loose spirals through the stifling, vapour-choked canopy of a primeval marshland forest. The air about was a bog-brew of decaying leaves, sulfur-dipped roots, and the breath of unseen predators, each breath thick with death. But, in spite of it all, the tsetse fly was rolling on, not by reason but by a crude, parasitic urge that throbbed in its diminutive thorax like war-drums.
On every side the evening was filled with unseen music: the pulse of far-off wing-beats, the muffled patter of clawed feet in the moss, and the plaintive melody of tree-singers whose voices were as shimmering as the moonlight. These vibrations beckoned the insect like the siren, and each beat of the neighboring blood awoke an appetite in its runic heart. It did not reason. It did not scheme. It hunted.
The forest suddenly convulsed. A wall of cyclonic wind roared through the trees with deafening roar. Leaves shrieked as they were torn off branch and bark to form a whirlpool of emerald fire that obscured the low-hanging moons. The tsetse fly had been swept helplessly on this wild current, its delicate form tossed about in the air like a damned mote.
Reality fractured.
Everything stopped.
Leaves were suspended motionless in mid-air like carved emerald daggers. A snake, half-way in the act of striking, with fangs uplifted over a cowering rodent, stood motionless. The psychic hum of the ley-lines even was hushed. The holy river of this world, time, stopped flowing.
And then there was a sound, not a sound, but a pressure which compelled every atom of air to kneel in recognition.
BOOM.
A blade of light cleaved through the sky from the high heavens, its presence not mere illumination but a rewrite of cosmic law. It did not fall. It chose. And it chose the tsetse fly.
It struck.
The moment the light collided with the insect, a voice—cold, machine-born, older than stars—pulsed directly into the fabric of the swamp's mana web.
[Chronometric Anchor Calibrated. Temporal Point Stabilized.]
[Elapsed Time Since Universal Genesis: 7.002 Billion Years.]
[Compatible Host Detected. Initiating Fusion Protocol. Lifeform Objective: Stage 10 Ascension. Commencing Now.]
What followed was agony—raw, ceaseless, transcendent. A consciousness screamed from within the tsetse fly's minute brain, fracturing and reforming in a feedback loop of pain. Within this mindscape of molten memories, a human name tried to resurface. Buzz Windbreaker. That was him. Or rather, what he had once been.
The wind returned. So did gravity, scent, and meaning.
Buzz plummeted, weightless and howling. Except it was not his voice. It was a high-pitched, multi-tonal vibration that crackled in the air like spell-static. Colors distorted. Trees warped into unending monoliths. The world had become too large. Far too large. His limbs flailed—but they were not limbs. He looked down. His mind tried to resist.
Six jointed legs twitched beneath his newly translucent body, each tipped in pinprick claws. His skin shimmered with waxen reflection, and the centerpiece of his horror—the proboscis—hung grotesquely from what was once his mouth.
He tried to scream again.
Instead, a series of buzzing clicks emerged. His mandibles did not allow for speech.
A flash of insight broke the spiral: this wasn't a dream or a drunken hallucination. The last memory: a bar, a bet, and fifty bottles of whisky. Then blackness. Then pain.
Before his numerous eyes flickered a status screen burned into the very fabric of his perception.
[Name]: Buzz Windbreaker
[Race]: Common Tsetse Fly (Stage 1)
[Bloodline]: Dormant
[Lifespan]: 1 Hour (Extendable via Lifespan Consumption)
[Stage]: Quasi-Stage 1 Larval Pest (Early)
[Rank]: 1 (Instability Detected)
[Evolutionary Pathway]: Undefined
[Condition]: Soul Damage, Structural Fragility, Instinct-Override Active
[Abilities]:
Lifespan Sense (F-Rank, Passive) – Detects ambient vitality signatures in low-radius pulse
Micro Drain (F-Rank, Innate) – Drains fractional lifespan per successful bite
Buzz gazed at the wavering image, and his mind was as confused as ants under a boot. Sixty minutes. That was the best he could.
But something bestial, something unhuman, possessed me. His wings burst. His body stirred.
He could smell it--prey. Something warm. Alive. Time-stuffed.
He forced his way through knotweed and hanging moss, and was directed by a heat-map of lifespan energy. It was a gentle, throbbing signature, hardly defended.
A squirrel.
It was sitting on a branch and pecking at an acorn, and it did not notice. Buzz alighted without a sound, his clawed legs scattering weight like a dancer in his last pose. He set himself, and pitched the angle of his descent like an air tactician.
He switched on the Micro Drain system with a psychic flex. Proboscis lowered. Meat encountered opposition--as when a needle is thrust into scaled leather. The agony shrieked in his thorax, yet he made no retreat.
A second push. Penetration. Blood poured in, hot and clean. His inner sight blazed--sigils burning on his inner runes.
[+6 minutes Lifespan Absorbed] [+10 minutes Lifespan Absorbed]
Buzz detached and flew up, the blast of spent life following him in streaming ribbons. His flesh throbbed. The soul-fractures hushed.
Sixteen minutes saved.
It was not survival. It was proclamation.
The famine was just starting.