The trembling of the stalk grew more violent, the glow within it crackling like lightning trapped in glass. The ice-flora groaned—a sound no plant should ever make—as its crystalline petals split apart, shards of red-tinged frost scattering to the snow.
From within, something began to grow.
What had once been delicate blossoms now twisted, elongating, their edges jagged and alive with dark-gold veins that pulsed in rhythm with my own heartbeat. Roots tore free from the frozen ground, writhing like tendrils as they sought more of the snow, more of the blood spilled upon it. The red hue that once marked them was gone—consumed, replaced by an obsidian-gold radiance that was wholly alien.
I hovered back, breath caught in my throat, unable to look away.
The petals reformed, but they were no longer petals. They were spires—sharp, black crystalline blades tipped with gold fire, each one humming faintly with power. And then the thing breathed. Not like an animal, but a slow exhale of mist, curling upward into the cold sky.
The snow around it melted in a perfect circle, hissing into vapor, leaving a patch of bare, blackened stone beneath. Life and death were no longer balanced here—the flora had become something else, something outside of the ecosystem I had just watched unfold.
This… this is because of me.
I looked down at my finger, the faint sting of the cut still present, though the wound had already sealed itself without a trace. No scar, no mark. As if my body refused to acknowledge weakness.
The mutated flora continued to sway unnaturally, no wind pushing it, its spires clicking together like chimes. Sparks of blue and gold energy danced between the crystalline edges, unstable and searching.
And then it did something that made my stomach tighten.
It bent toward me.
Not fully—just a slight, deliberate tilt of its blade-like stalks, as though acknowledging my presence, recognizing me not as prey or predator, but as something it had been made for.
I whispered aloud, my own voice sounding hollow in the frozen silence:
"What… am I doing to this world?"
I let myself lean closer. Too close.
The flora shivered, crystalline blades rattling like teeth in a cold wind. Then—without warning—it moved. Spires shot forward, unnaturally fluid, wrapping around my wrist like living chains. My breath caught, and before I could tear away, the jagged growths split open, revealing writhing roots, slick and black-veined, that lunged for my skin.
They pierced me.
"—Aghhh!"
The scream tore out of me before I even realized it. My body convulsed midair, and I thrashed, but the roots slithered beneath my flesh like molten ice. I felt them—not on the surface, but inside—curling through my veins, racing toward my chest, my skull, my very marrow. It was cold, unbearable cold, like liquid frost forced into my blood. My vision blurred. My teeth rattled so violently I thought they'd shatter.
I clawed at my arm, at my chest, desperate to tear it out, but the flora was already inside me. Each pulse of my heart only dragged it deeper.
It was changing me. I could feel it—rewriting me. My blood, my bones, my nerves all being rewritten in alien script.
"No—no, get it out—!"
The agony peaked. The roots wrapped around my heart, my lungs, slithered toward my brain. The pain was so consuming I could no longer hold onto thought; there was only an endless tide of suffering crashing over me, dragging me under. I begged for it to end. Let me die. Please, let it end.
But even as I prayed for death, something else stirred.
The gray markings etched across my body began to glow—faint at first, then brighter, until they seared with blue and gold fire. I didn't summon them, didn't even know they could awaken, but they rose of their own accord. Something in me—the same terrible force that once devoured souls—lashed out against the invading roots.
There was a war happening inside me.
The flora pushed deeper, burning me alive with its alien hunger. My own markings surged in response, repelling, searing, consuming. My body was no longer mine; it was a battlefield. I could feel every moment of it—the tearing, the fusing, the rewriting. My mind couldn't hold on. It cracked beneath the weight of the torment. The world dissolved into whiteness and screams.
And then—silence.
I hovered there, half-conscious, breath ragged, tears frozen on my face. My body trembled violently, every muscle raw from the struggle. Slowly, painfully, the pain ebbed away… and in its place came something else.
I touched my forehead, gasping. My skin was hot. Too hot. Then I felt it—skin splitting open, flesh unmaking itself.
And then it opened.
A slit, raw and pulsing, torn into the center of my forehead. It peeled apart like a wound… and revealed an eye.
My breath froze in my throat.
The eye was red, veins glowing like embers. At its center spiraled black rings, endless, pulling the gaze inward. And within that spiral sat an iris darker than the void—an iris that watched.
The instant it opened, a wave of dread radiated outward. The very air seemed to recoil. Even I felt it—my own body recoiling from itself. The sense of death, of endings, of something utterly wrong, emanated from that eye.
I hovered, panting, staring at nothing.
"What… am I becoming?".
My skin crawled.
The sensation of the eye being there—open, alive—made every hair on my body stand on end. I could feel it, even without seeing. It wasn't just a part of me; it was something else, watching me from within myself.
And then, slowly, deliberately, the lidless wound closed. The red glow dimmed, the black spirals folded into nothing, and the strange flesh knitted itself into a single thin slit across my forehead. No blood, no scar—just a mark.
I touched it, fingers trembling, and the slit pulsed faintly beneath my skin. Alive. Waiting.
A shiver ran down my spine.
I let myself sink back, hovering just above the ice, breath dragging in ragged pulls. My body ached with exhaustion, yet it wasn't the weariness of muscles or bone. It was deeper. Like something inside me had been stretched too far, almost to the point of breaking.
I glanced down to where the flora had been rooted, where its crystalline branches once glimmered. There was nothing. No shard, no trace of roots piercing the ice. The only evidence was the burning mark on my forehead… and the hollowness in my veins, as though its essence had simply abandoned the ground to bury itself within me.
It was inside me now.
My stomach twisted at the thought.
I closed my eyes, but the memory of those roots writhing under my flesh returned with cruel clarity. That agony, that invasion—it clung to me. It hadn't just hurt; it had broken me. For the first time since I'd arrived in this strange world, I had begged for death.
On Earth, when sickness wasted me away, I had never feared the end. Death had been a certainty, almost a comfort—a release from a body that no longer obeyed me. But this…
This was different.
This was the kind of fear that lived in your marrow. The kind that tore away all illusions of strength. The kind that whispered you weren't in control, that you were nothing more than prey being reshaped by forces far greater than yourself.
And I couldn't ignore it.
I hovered there in silence, one hand pressed against the faint slit on my forehead, the other trembling against my chest, gripping tight as though I could keep myself from falling apart.
No matter how much I wanted to dismiss it, I couldn't.
Something had changed.
Something had claimed me.