The world didn't end with the truck. It ended with silence.
Not the peaceful silence of Ave's apartment at dawn, nor the respectful hush of the library. This was a suffocating, living silence. Thick. Humid. Heavy with the scent of damp earth, decaying vegetation, and something metallic, like blood left to rust. It pressed against him, invaded him, replacing the roar of the city, the screams, the shriek of brakes.
Awareness returned not as thought, but as sensation. A profound, alien wrongness.
He tried to gasp. His mouth – no, his jaw – felt split, comprised of hard plates that clicked together wetly. No air rushed in. Instead, a strange vibration rattled through his throat, a high-pitched, chittering hiss that echoed in the oppressive quiet.
Panic.
Where am I? Hospital? Coma?
Cold, sharp, and utterly primal. It spiked through his core, overriding the lingering echo of relief.
He tried to push himself up. His arms – they weren't arms. They were long, segmented things, folded awkwardly against his chest. Hard. Sharp. He felt points digging into soft ground. He tried to move his legs. Too many. Spindly. Tangled beneath him.
No. No, no, no, no!
He thrashed, a frantic, uncoordinated flailing. His vision swam, a dizzying kaleidoscope of fractured green and gray. Thousands of tiny hexagons repeated the same image: towering, impossibly large green stalks stretching upwards, vanishing into a mist-choked, bone-white sky. The perspective was nauseating, utterly inhuman.
Grass. That's… that's a blade of grass. But it's… huge.
He looked down, desperate for the familiar blue of his shirt, the tan of his pants. He saw green. Pale, almost translucent green, segmented like armor. Folded against his chest were two long, serrated appendages, cruel hooks lining the inner edges. They twitched, a muscle memory that felt predatory, violent.
Hands. Those should be hands. My hands!
He tried to scream. Only a frantic, clicking hiss emerged. He scrambled backward, his too-many legs churning the damp, mossy ground. He felt exposed, vulnerable, trapped in a nightmare body.
A reflection caught his compound eye. A dewdrop clinging to a colossal grass stem. He froze, staring.
A triangular head. Bulbous, multifaceted eyes that held no warmth, no soul, only fractured reflections of the alien world. A long, segmented thorax. Spindly legs. Pale green chitin, still soft-looking.
A mantis. A juvenile praying mantis.
The realization hit him like the truck all over again. This isn't a coma. This isn't hell. This is… me.
Ave Morgan – the man who mended butterflies, who listened to plants, who believed in the inherent good – was gone. Replaced by this… thing. A fragile nymph at the bottom of an impossible food chain.
Why? I saved her! I did good god damn it! What is this place?!
The silent scream echoed in his mind.
[Initialization Complete.]
The voice wasn't sound. It was data. Cold, crisp, and utterly devoid of emotion, resonating directly inside his skull. It bypassed his nonexistent ears, imprinting itself on his consciousness.
[Welcome to The Ossuary Spire.]
A translucent blue screen flickered into existence before his compound eyes. It hung in the air, defying physics. Text scrolled across it:
[Assessment: Soul - Pure/Altruistic (Anomaly Detected).]
[Assessment: Body - Mantodea Nymph (Tier 0).]
[Current Location: Floor 1 - The Garden of Roots.]
[System Notice: Previous existence parameters irrelevant. Karmic balance reset to zero.]
Irrelevant.
The word struck him harder than the physical impact. His life, his kindness, his sacrifice… meaningless here.
[Prime Directive: Ascend.]
[Core Law: Devour or Be Devoured.]
[Warning: Kindness is a fatal mutation. Mercy is structural weakness. Adapt or become part of the Spire's foundation.]
The screen shifted.
[Status Window Activated.]
Name: Ave
Race: Green Mantis Nymph (Juvenile)
Level: 1
HP: 5/5
Stamina: 3/3
Strength: 0.3
Agility: 3.5
Vitality: 0.4
Intelligence: ??? (System Recalibrating...)
Passive Skills:
[Camouflage (Lv.1): Minor blending with green foliage.]
[Predator's Instinct (Lv.1): Basic threat detection/prey targeting.]
Active Skills: None
Evolution Points: 0
Ave stared at the screen, his insectile heart – a long tube pumping sluggish green hemolymph – hammering against his thin exoskeleton. Ascend. Devour. Adapt. The concepts were opposite to everything he was. Camouflage? Predator's Instinct? His human mind recoiled.
A rustle. Not loud, but amplified a thousandfold in the oppressive silence and through his new senses. It came from behind a massive root system, thick as a tree trunk, covered in sickly yellow fungus.
His new body reacted before his mind could process. He froze. Instinctively, his pale green form seemed to melt slightly against the vibrant moss beneath him. His head swiveled silently on a surprisingly flexible neck, compound eyes scanning the source of the sound.
Through the fractured mosaic of his vision, he saw it. An ant. But not like any ant on Earth. It was the size of a large cat. Its carapace was a deep, scarred crimson, gleaming with a faint, oily sheen. Its mandibles were massive, serrated bone-crushers that clicked together with wet, hungry sounds. Its antennae waved, probing the air, thick as pencils. It moved with a terrifying, purposeful gait, its six legs thumping dully on the soft ground.
Soldier Ant. Level 2. The identification flashed into his mind, courtesy of the cold, intrusive System.
[Emergency Quest: First Blood.]
[Objective: Survive the Soldier Ant encounter.]
[Sub-Objective: Kill the Soldier Ant (Optional - Bonus Reward).]
[Reward: 10 Exp, Survival.]
[Failure: Death. Consumption. Assimilation into the Ossuary.]
The ant stopped. Its antennae twitched violently. It turned its head. Its multifaceted eyes, smaller and darker than Ave's, locked onto his position. It had sensed him. Camouflage wasn't enough.
Predator's Instinct screamed: THREAT! FIGHT OR FLIGHT!
Human terror warred with alien biology. Ave's mind screamed RUN! But his mantis body, recognizing the size and aggression of the ant, knew flight was likely futile. His raptorial forelegs – those cruel, serrated hooks – unfolded from his chest with a soft, leathery rasp. They snapped into a defensive position, held high, trembling slightly. It wasn't conscious. It was pure, hardwired survival.
The ant charged. It moved with shocking speed for its size, a blur of red and black, mandibles wide open, aiming to shear him in half.
Move! Ave's human intellect finally kicked in, overriding the freeze response. He pushed with his spindly legs, leveraging his high agility. He didn't run forward or backward. He lunged sideways, towards the cover of a thick, dripping mushroom cap.
CRUNCH! The ant's mandibles snapped shut on empty air where he'd been a millisecond before, tearing a chunk out of the mossy ground.
Ave scrambled behind the mushroom, his tiny heart pounding.
Too close. Too big. Too strong. He assessed with frantic logic.
Strength 0.3 vs… probably 3 or 4? Agility 3.5 is my only advantage. Mandibles vs. claws. Exoskeleton vs. exoskeleton. Mine is softer. Vulnerable.
The ant rounded the mushroom, relentless. It wasn't intelligent, but it was driven by hunger and aggression. It lunged again, a horizontal snap aimed at his thorax.
This time, Ave didn't dodge. Instinct, honed by millions of years of mantis evolution, took over. He struck.
His forelegs lashed out with surprising speed, not to block, but to grab. The serrated hooks on the inside clamped down with surprising force on the ant's extended mandible, just below the crushing joint.
SCREECH! A sound like grinding metal erupted as chitin met chitin. Ave felt the impact vibrate through his entire body. His Strength stat was pitiful, but the leverage and the design of his claws held. He locked the ant's primary weapon.
The ant thrashed violently, trying to shake him off. Ave clung on, his other legs scrambling for purchase on the slick ground. He was being shaken like a ragdoll. Stamina: 2/3.
He couldn't hold forever. He needed to hurt it. His other foreleg was free. He drew it back, the sharp point aimed not at the armored head, but at the softer joint where the ant's head met its thorax – a vulnerability his new instincts highlighted.
Do it! his human mind screamed in revulsion.
It's kill or be killed!
I can't! the saint protested. It's just an animal!
The ant bucked wildly. Ave's grip slipped slightly. A mandible edge scraped against his soft abdominal plating. Pain, sharp and alien, lanced through him. A thin trickle of green hemolymph welled up.
[HP: 4/5]
The pain, the sight of his own vital fluid, the cold blue System prompt hovering at the edge of his vision – it shattered the last vestige of hesitation. Survival instinct roared louder than morality.
With a chittering hiss that was part terror, part fury, Ave drove his free foreleg forward with all the strength his tiny body could muster.
THUNK.
The sharp point punched through the softer chitin at the neck joint. Greenish ichor, not blood, spurted out. The ant let out a high-pitched, keening whine that vibrated through Ave's claws. Its thrashing intensified, then suddenly weakened.
Ave held on, driving the claw deeper, twisting, his body trembling with exertion and horror. The ant's movements grew sluggish, then ceased. Its multifaceted eyes glazed over.
[Soldier Ant (Lv.2) Defeated!]
[Exp Gained: 15 Exp]
[Level Up!]
[Ave is now Level 2!]
[+1 to all stats!]
[HP: 5/5 -> 6/6]
[Stamina: 3/3 -> 4/4]
[Strength: 0.3 -> 0.4]
[Agility: 3.5 -> 3.6]
[Vitality: 0.4 -> 0.5]
[Evolution Points: 0 -> 1]
[New Quest: Devour.]
[Objective: Consume the Soldier Ant carcass to gain Biomass and unlock Evolution Paths.]
[Reward: Survival Enhancement, Evolutionary Options.]
[Failure: Wasted opportunity. Increased starvation risk.]
Ave released his grip. The dead ant slumped to the mossy floor. He stumbled back, his raptorial claws trembling, dripping with green ichor. He stared at the corpse, then at his own stained appendages. The warmth of saving the girl was a distant, fading memory, replaced by the cold, metallic scent of alien blood and the horrifying reality.
He had killed. He had survived. But the cost felt immeasurable. The saint was dead. The Mantis had drawn its first blood.
The Ossuary Spire loomed around him, vast and silent.
This place—this thing—rose far beyond what his eyes could see, roots and stone vanishing into a pale, mist-choked sky.
Ave looked down at the dead ant, then at the flashing [Devour] prompt. The gnawing emptiness in his abdomen agreed with the System.
He didn't know how far "up" was. He didn't know what waited above.
He only knew one thing. He had survived the bottom.
And survival, here, came at a cost.
He had adapted. He had fought. Now… he had to consume.
The horror was just beginning.