The reflection in the pool was a cruel joke.
I stared at the water, waiting for it to stop rippling, waiting for the face of a man to look back at me. I wanted to see the familiar lines of my own face—the tired eyes of an office worker, the messy hair I never bothered to comb, the small scar on my chin. I wanted to see a human being. But as the surface of the puddle turned into a clear mirror, my heart—or whatever was beating inside me—shattered.
There was no man. There was only a small tortoise.
The head sticking out from the mud was thick and blunt, armored with charcoal-gray scales that looked like layered shards of flint. The eyes were huge, dark pits circled by a thin ring of dull gold that seemed to glow in the dim light of the marsh. I tried to blink, hoping the image would vanish like a bad dream, but the creature in the water blinked back with heavy, leathery eyelids that moved with agonizing slowness. I tried to open my mouth to scream, to vent the terror that was clawing at my chest, but my mouth wouldn't make the shape of a human cry. I pushed air through my throat, and all that escaped was a dry, hollow hiss that barely disturbed the surface of the water.
No. No, no, no.
The thought looped in my head like a broken record. I tried to jump back, to scramble away from that horrible image in the water, but my body didn't move. I sent a frantic signal to my legs to "leap," but nothing happened. My center of gravity was inches from the dirt, and instead of jumping, I just tilted. My front limbs buckled, and my chin slammed into the cold mud with a wet, heavy thud.
I wasn't a man anymore. I was a tortoise.
I lay there for a long time, my face pressed into the dirt, watching a small, many-legged insect crawl past my eye. The smell was the first thing that really hit me. It wasn't the smell of the city—there was no car exhaust, no hot pavement, no perfume from people passing by. It was the smell of wet earth, rotting leaves, and a strange, sweet scent that made my skin tingle. It was the smell of a world that didn't care if I lived or died. It felt ancient, heavy, and terrifyingly alive.
I looked down at my "hands." They were gone. In their place were thick, heavy stumps covered in gray scales that felt like stone. They ended in blunt, black claws that were currently caked in muck and silt. I tried to flex my fingers, a reflex from years of typing and holding pens, but there were no fingers to flex. Just a solid, heavy limb that felt like a piece of seasoned wood attached to my shoulder.
Then there was the weight.
I had always thought tortoises were lucky because they carried their homes with them. I was such an idiot. It wasn't a home; it was a cage. I could feel the weight of it pressing down on my spine, a massive, unyielding slab of bone and dark scale. It felt like I was wearing a backpack made of solid lead that I could never, ever take off. My ribs weren't even ribs anymore; they were part of the shell. My chest was a fixed box. I couldn't even take a deep breath to calm my racing heart. Every time I inhaled, I hit the solid, unmoving wall of my own body.
Hiss. Puff. Hiss. Puff.
I sounded like an old, leaky tire. It was humiliating. I was a grown man, and now I was a slow-motion tank stuck in a swamp. Every breath was a manual chore, a struggle of muscles pushing against the walls of my own shell just to pull in the damp air.
I looked at the shell in the reflection again. It wasn't the kind of smooth, green shell you see in pet stores. It was dark, almost black, with deep, swirling patterns etched into the surface—patterns that looked less like natural growth and more like ancient calligraphy.
I looked to be about a year old. In tortoise years, that was nothing. I was sturdy for my size, but I was small. My shell felt like old oak, but as I looked at the towering grass around me, I knew I was just a snack for something bigger.
I tried to stand up. It was a struggle of pure physics. My brain was still trying to coordinate two legs, but my body had four. I'd push with my front left, and my back right would instinctively kick out, sending me lurching sideways like a lopsided table. I had to concentrate on every single movement, mapping the motor functions of a reptile onto a human mind.
Front left. Back right. Front right. Back left.
I repeated the pattern in my head just to move an inch. Every time I moved, my plastron—the flat, armored bottom of my shell—scraped against the earth with a soft shhh-thump.
The world around me was terrifyingly massive. A single blade of grass was as tall as a tree, its edges serrated like saws. I wasn't a hero in a story; I was a one-year-old survivor with a human brain that didn't know how to navigate the mud.
The air around me felt "thick," pulsing with a strange humming energy that made my lungs feel warm and my heart race. It was a world built for monsters, and I was at the very bottom of the food chain.
I forced myself to keep moving, dragging my heavy frame away from the water. Every step was a battle of will against weight. After what felt like hours of struggling through the thick, wet grass, a new sensation began to override my confusion.
It was a hollow, gnawing ache that vibrated through my belly. My new body was burning energy just to stay upright, and it was demanding a refill.
I pushed through a cluster of thick, red-veined moss and saw a patch of translucent, glowing berries. They grew low to the ground, shimmering with a soft blue light that pulsed like a slow heartbeat.
They smelled incredible—sweet, like mountain honey and cold rain. My human brain hesitated, but my animal instinct didn't. My neck shot forward—a movement that was surprisingly fast and precise—and my beak snapped a berry right off the vine.
As it crushed in my mouth, a burst of cold energy flooded my system. It felt like drinking liquid light, a surge of power that traveled from my tongue to the tip of my tail.
Tick.
The sound was tiny, like a pebble hitting a glass plate. It echoed right in the center of my mind. I froze, waiting for an explanation, but there was nothing. No screen, no voice. Just that one, solitary tick. As the warmth spread to my limbs, I felt a fraction stronger.
The leaden weight of my shell didn't seem quite so heavy for a second. My vision sharpened, letting me see the tiny, glowing veins in the leaves around me.
Was that a reward? I wondered. If I eat, do I actually get better?
I reached for another berry, but the wind shifted. The sweet scent was gone, replaced by a thick, metallic stench that turned my stomach. Blood.
I crawled around a jagged black rock, my claws digging into the mud. On the other side, the clearing wasn't a forest. It was a graveyard. In the middle of the black mud lay another tortoise. It was exactly like me, but its life was gone.
Its shell—the same bone I was currently living in—had been ripped open. Something had crushed it from the top down, snapping the thick bone like a dry cracker. There were deep, jagged puncture marks in the center, and the mud was soaked in fresh red.
The sight hit me with a wave of terror. This wasn't a sanctuary. This was a hunting ground. And the blood was still wet.
The marsh went deathly silent. The birds stopped shrieking. The insects stopped buzzing. The humming energy in the air turned sharp and cold, prickling against the soft skin of my neck.
Hide, my brain screamed. Run!
But I was a tortoise. I was slow. I was a target. I tried to pull my head into my shell, but my movements were stiff with panic. I felt like a man standing in an open field with nothing but a cardboard shield to protect him.
Then, I heard it. From the tall grass just a few feet behind me, a long, vibrating hiss emerged. It traveled through the mud, up through my belly shell, and into my very bones. It was a cold, rhythmic sound—the sound of a predator that knew I had nowhere to go.
I forced my stiff neck to turn toward the shadows. I didn't see a body. But deep within the darkness of the leaves, I saw them.
Two golden slits. Eyes.
They were watching me, tracking my ragged breathing, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
The grass parted, and the cold air of the marsh rushed in.