The sea spat him out like it was done with him.
Malik rolled across the stones until jagged rock split his shoulder. He coughed seawater and blood, his ribs aching with every heave. The tide lapped at his legs, pulling like greedy fingers, as if it wanted to drag him back into the abyss where slaves disappeared without names.
For a moment, he stayed there, face pressed to cold stone. His chest rattled like a broken drum. Every muscle screamed from the gauntlet of Mariejois chains, beatings, running, fighting. And yet beneath the exhaustion, something burned. A strange vitality coursed through him, coiled hot in his veins, refusing to let his body quit.
The fruit.
He hadn't thought there had been no time. In the chaos, with blood filling his mouth and steel closing around his throat, he'd swallowed it whole. Bitter, foul, unnatural. And now it was inside him, reshaping him.
His tail twitched against the rock, heavy and foreign. Malik glared at it, gripping it with blood stained fingers. Another chain, another reminder he wasn't who he had been when this nightmare began. Yet even as disgust stirred, he couldn't ignore the truth, he was alive because of it.
"Freedom," he rasped. The word came out cracked, like it had no business on his tongue.
Pushing himself upright, Malik staggered forward into the treeline. The island rose above him in jagged cliffs and choking green, a wilderness untouched by men. The air stank of rot and damp earth. Trees clawed at the sky with twisted limbs.
It wasn't welcoming. But Mariejois had taught him something important: nothing in this world was.
By nightfall, he had something that barely passed for shelter. A wedge of sticks and palm leaves pressed against stone, more illusion of safety than the thing itself. His body screamed for rest, but his gut screamed louder. Hunger was a blade twisting in his belly, sharper than any whip.
He stumbled back into the jungle, guided by the gnawing void. His ears picked up sounds too sharp, scents too vivid. Something had changed in him his senses stretched, dragging him deeper into the night's danger.
The growl came from his left. Low, guttural. A predator circled the intruder. Malik crouched, teeth clenched, fingers curling around a crude stick he'd snapped on the way.
The beast burst from the dark, six legged, with fangs glistening like knives. It slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. His ribs flared white hot. Jaws snapped for his throat. Malik's hands shot up, catching its snout an inch from his jugular.
Pain tore across his chest as claws raked him, blood soaking through his rags. The animal snarled, but Malik snarled back, eyes flashing crimson and green in the moonlight. Something primal screamed awake inside him.
With a roar, he twisted hard. Bone cracked. The beast spasmed once, then sagged limp over him.
Malik lay beneath it, panting in the stench of blood. His arms shook, every nerve alight. He should have felt horror. But what filled him was… Hunger.
His tail lashed behind him. He pushed the carcass aside and stared at it. Meat. Warm. Fresh. His stomach growled like it had found its answer.
He tore flesh free with shaking hands and shoved it into his mouth. It was raw, sour, stinking. He gagged, but he swallowed. Bite after bite until the hunger dulled and his body hummed with heat.
When he finally staggered back to the shelter, he was smeared in blood, chest burning. He dropped onto the dirt and let the jungle's sounds close in the skitter of insects, the distant roar of another beast. His eyelids dragged down heavy, but for the first time in days, he slept.
Days bled into one another.
The island did not let him rest. Storms pounded the cliffs. Predators hunted him relentlessly. Hunger returned as fast as he killed. Every night he collapsed bruised, cut, and bloody. And every morning he rose, body aching but stronger than the day before.
The changes sharpened. Wounds sealed quicker. His reflexes snapped tighter. His tail no longer twitched clumsy but struck like a whip, breaking bones with cracks like snapped wood. Malik fought with tooth, nail, stick, and stone, until each kill fed his strength back into him.
Each scar carved into him became another reminder, he had survived.
And each survival whispered the same command, grow.
One stormy night, Malik crouched over the corpse of a horned predator, steam rising from its blood. His chest was heaving, his knuckles raw, but he was alive. Alive in a way he had never been in chains.
He looked into a rain pool beside the carcass. His reflection stared back braids matted to his forehead, scars webbing across a face too young for them, heterochromic eyes burning with an intensity that unsettled even him.
Not a slave.
Not anymore.
But not free either.
He knew the truth. Mariejois would not forget. Somewhere, beyond the storm and sea, men in gold and white whispered his description. They would come. They always came.
His lips curled into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Let them," he whispered.
Lightning split the sky, thunder shaking the island. Malik stood unmoving in the downpour, blood washing from his skin, eyes fixed on the endless horizon.
The gods' chains had broken. And if the world wanted him bound again, it would learn just how sharp the claws of its escaped slave had become.