The creature awoke with tense muscles, expecting the familiar urge to hunt, to flee, to survive.
But today… today there was something more.
A lingering echo.
The song of the dying still buzzed in his bones, like a loose tooth he didn't dare to pull. He remained motionless, listening to the sounds of the abyss:
— The constant drip of water on rock (was it water? Or tears from the stone?).
— The distant creak of something dying (or perhaps something being born?).
— His own breathing, slow, measured (since when had he counted his inhalations?).
Today, he would not hunt.
Today, he would observe.
The tunnel narrowed until it nearly crushed him, ribs scraping against stone—but a glow called to him. He crawled forward, emerging into an impossible cavern.
The ceiling bristled with crystal thorns, each one trapping droplets that glinted like pupils. When his claws touched the ground, it crunched—not stone, but the empty shells of tiny, translucent creatures, brittle as memories.
A drop fell onto his forehead.
Cold. Sweet.
Rain?
He had no word for it, but his tongue darted out to taste it. The walls whispered—not with sound, but with movement. Hundreds of crystalline beings writhed in the shadows, their bodies vibrating in unison.
One landed on his claw.
The creature held his breath.
The insect had six wings of living ice, its abdomen pulsing with bluish light. Is this… life? Or just another thing dying? Before he could decide—to kill or to protect—it took flight, leaving behind a trail of glowing dust that dissolved like a sigh.
Beyond the garden, the stone changed.
These walls weren't random. Someone—something?—had carved them. Spirals, Repeating shapes, Claw marks, not from battle… from intention.
He dragged his fingers over the grooves.
Something inside him resonated, like the hum of crystal insects.
This is a language.
Not of sound.
Of scars.
Of memories etched in rock.
The abyss was not just a place.
It was a grave of stories.
At the chamber's center, he found the bones.
They weren't scattered like prey. They were arranged.
A skull faced upward, its hollow sockets aligned with a ceiling crack where—
Light? No. Just darkness less dense.
Among the bones, artifacts:
— A fang bound in black fibers (ritual?).
— Pierced stones strung like vertebrae (decoration?).
— A slate marked with charred fingerprints (art?).
The creature lifted the fang.
And then remembered:
— Grass yielding under feet that weren't claws.
— The burst of ripe fruit (what was fruit?).
— Laughter (his? Another's?).
He dropped it.
These weren't victims' bones.
They were someone's.
For the first time, he knew fear—
not of death,
but of having once lived.
Something glowed ahead.
He followed the trail like a fallen star across the abyss, claws painted ghostly blue by clinging phosphorescence.
Food? Poison?
He licked a finger.
The taste was neither—only new.
He grimaced but swallowed, craving understanding.
The thing waited in a still pool.
No teeth. No claws.
Just softness, round and quivering.
When he touched it, the creature sang—a deep vibration that shook the cavern.
He recoiled.
But the sound… it was beautiful.
This time, he pressed gently.
The gelatinous mass gilded where they touched, shrinking but not fleeing.
A game?
The word escaped him, but not the feeling:
light as rising bubbles,
sharp as hunger,
yet softer.
For the first time, he didn't want to kill.
He tore a piece.
No blood. Only a tremor as the creature drifted away, trailing bioluminescence.
The fragment in his palm pulsed like a stolen heart.
He tasted it.
Now warm—
like sunbaked stone (what was sun?).
And then…
his skin remembered.
Where the creature's liquid touched his arm, the skin darkened, blooming into that same forbidden gold.
He turned his limb, mesmerized.
Is this me? Or is it him?
He didn't understand—but the warmth pooling under his scales felt like belonging.
Greedily, he smeared the liquid across his chest. A sound burst from his throat (laughter? A growl unraveling?) as his body ignited into a living constellation.
The feast ended when shadows moved above.
Humans.
No fear this time—only hungry curiosity.
One leveled a weapon. The other gripped his wrist.
"Just a kharis larva," the man spat. "Not worth the charge."
They left. The creature caught only fragments:
— The red flush of their throats.
— The blue tint of their nails.
— How their colors bled when they moved.
Can I be like them?
He stared at his own gilded claws. The feeling swelling in his ribs had no name—
something between wonder and wound.
That night, he returned to the glowing creatures.
This time, he didn't touch.
He sat cross-legged, observing how their bodies shifted with the sway of subterranean algae.
Slowly, almost reverently, he raised his golden arm.
Mirrored their dance.
The abyss had given him:
— His first toy.
— His first dream.
And now, whispering through the dark:
What other colors hide inside me?