The days bled together.
Or perhaps it was only one day, stretched endlessly, smeared across her mind like blood across stone. Miyu no longer counted the sunrises or sunsets. Time had become meaningless in the hollow ruins of the abandoned town.
She had stopped crying.
Her eyes—all of them—were dry now, wide and bloodshot, staring at the corpses that had long since rotted into husks. Flies buzzed in clouds above them, and the crows tore at their flesh, but Miyu still saw their faces as though they were fresh.
Accusing. Watching. Whispering her name in the silence.
She began whispering back.
At first, apologies. Then denials. Then laughter.
The laughter never stopped.
It came at night when she curled on the cold floor, wrapping her own arms around herself as the tendrils cradled her like a mother rocking her to sleep. It came in the day when she tore strips of meat from the corpses because the hunger clawed too deep, and the voices told her there was no shame in feeding.
And slowly… the laughter became words.
> They never loved you, Miyu. They feared you. You were always ours.
Her reflection in broken glass no longer looked like a girl. The hair hung wild, greasy and clumped with blood. Her skin was pale, her lips cracked, and the extra eyes pulsed with a red glow that throbbed in rhythm with the tendrils.
One night, as the whispers grew into screams, she snapped.
"Fine!" she shrieked into the darkness, her voice raw and broken. She tore at her jacket, ripping it from her body and letting the shadows spill free. "You win! You're all I have! I'm not human—I never was!"
The tendrils surged with delight, spreading like a blooming flower of darkness around her. The mouths opened wide, screaming with her, screaming for joy.
Her laughter rose higher, echoing through the streets. She staggered barefoot across the square, blood soaking her dress, her eyes darting in every direction.
"Do you see me now?!" she cried to the corpses, to the ghosts, to the gods who had abandoned her. "Do you see what I am?!"
She raised her arms, and the tendrils followed, tearing into the stone, ripping apart what little remained of the town square. Windows shattered, walls crumbled, the fountain split in half under the force of her frenzy.
Her own body bled from the strain, but she no longer cared. Pain had become pleasure. Fear had become fuel.
The whispers in her head no longer sounded separate. They were hers now.
Her voice.
Her truth.
She stumbled to the fountain, staring into the cracked pool of water that reflected her monstrous form: eyes upon eyes, teeth upon teeth, shadows twisting into something inhuman.
And for the first time, she smiled.
Not the trembling, broken smile of a girl begging for acceptance.
But the smile of something that had embraced its own monstrosity.
> Miyu is dead, the voices whispered, merging into her own thoughts.
Only we remain.
And as her laughter echoed into the empty night, she knew they were right.
She was not a girl anymore.
She was hunger.
She was madness.
She was the failure that had become something far worse.
And somewhere, in the far-off halls of the lab where she was made, the scientists who had abandoned her felt a shiver crawl down their spines—for their experiment had not failed.
It had bloomed.