There’s no surge of adrenaline, no racing heart to explain it. My body just… settles. Perfectly balanced, perfectly still, as if it already knowsexactlyhow much force it takes to break something.
Panic rises again as the hunger sharpens, turning focused, predatory. The world feels too vivid, too fragile, like everything around me is made of glass, and somehow, I’m the dangerous thing in the room.
I’m not suffocating.
I’m not alive the way I was.
The thought slides in cold and undeniable, and something inside me answers with a low, satisfied hum.
Whatever I am now doesn’t need air.
It doesn’t need a heart.
Itneedssomething else.
And I don’t know how long I can go without it.
The ceiling above me looms vast and alien, exposed beams crisscrossing against concrete that seems to pulse with texture I shouldn’t be able to see in the darkness.
Except it’s not dark.
Not really.
Everything glows with a strange, silvery luminescence, shadows carved into sharp relief, every crack in the concrete standing out.
I try to stand up, and the movement comes too fast.
My body responds before my brain catches up, launching me upright with inhuman speed that sends my head spinning. The motion should be impossible. It should require effort, muscle coordination, and the slow gathering of strength. Instead, I’m vertical in an instant, my hands braced against cold concrete beneath me.
Where the hell am I?
The warehouse stretches around me, vast and abandoned, its emptiness pressing in from all sides. Graffiti mars the walls in violent splashes of color that seem to writhe under my gaze. Broken glass litters the floor, each shard catching impossible light, glittering like diamonds scattered across the concrete. The air smells of decay, old paint, rust, and beneath it all, something alive and copper-sharp that makes my throat constrict.
Blood.
Old blood soaked into the floor, the walls, the very structure of this place.
My stomach twists violently, but nothing comes up, just dry heaves that rack my body with a force that should hurt but doesn’t. Everything inside me contracts, every muscle seizing at once as if trying to expel something that isn’t there anymore.
Because something’s gone.
Something fundamental.
Something that made me, me.
I press a hand to my chest, searching for the familiar rhythm, the steady thump-thump that’s accompanied every moment of my existence since birth. My palm flattens against my sternum, pushing hard enough that I should feel bone give, but there’s nothing there except solid, unyielding stillness.
No proof I’m alive beyond the fact that I’m thinking, existing in this body that no longer knows how to be human.
Terror slams into me, ice-cold and absolute. My hand flies to my throat, fingers scrambling for the pulse point that should be there, has to be there, because hearts don’t just stop while you’re still conscious, still aware, still capable of movement, thought, and fear.
Nothing.
Not even the faintest whisper of circulation beneath my skin.
The realization crashes down on me with a crushing weight. Air sits stagnant in lungs that don’t expand or contract, that serve no purpose anymore, because whatever I am now doesn’t need oxygen to survive.
A scream builds in my throat, but it dies before it can escape because screaming requires breath, and breath requires a working respiratory system, and I don’t have that anymore.
