Chapter 3
He arrived ten minutes later, and he was furious. Not at her, but at whatever had dared to threaten her.
That night, he slept close to her. Not touching her, but near enough that his bioluminescent nodes flickered in rhythm
with her breath.
They found the bones on the forty-second day. They were traveling south, through a stretch of black forest. The trees here grew in twisted shapes, as if
They were reacting to something underground. The leaves were oily and bitter-smelling. The air hummed constantly with
something low-pitched and nauseating. Elara had wanted to turn back, but Xavion insisted that they keep moving forward. Not with words, but with urgency.
In a clearing, they found the remains. Rows and rows of humanoid skeletons, stacked in patterns like nests. Each was bleached white, ribcages were split
wide open as if something had burst free from within them. Nearby, ancient machines lay rusted and broken. They were definitely not human-made. Elara watched as he ran his claws across one broken helm. His hum this time was slow. Grief. Reverence.
"These were yours," she said quietly. He nodded once.
She stepped closer, crouched beside him, and touched one of the ribcages. The bone felt brittle, but also...
warm. As if something still pulsed within. Her fingers tingled.
"They weren't killed," she said slowly. "They changed. Just like me."
He looked at her. "No, they were not like me. They... didn't survive it." Xavion said nothing. But his sadness filled the clearing like fog.
That night, they didn't light a fire. Elara dreamed of hollow bodies reaching toward the stars-and a whisper in her ear that said: This is only the
beginning.
Elara bled dreams now.
It began subtly-visions leaking into her waking mind. She'd catch glimpses of places she hadn't seen:
underground chambers pulsing with alien light, spiral bridges stretching across black oceans, silhouettes
moving in sync beneath a second moon. At first, she chalked it up to stress. Sleep deprivation. A trick of
trauma.But the images grew sharper. They grew much more detailed. She could smell things that didn't exist in her reality-ozone from ancient machines, the spicy tang of alien flora, the metallic scent of synthetic air recycled a thousand times. Sometimes she'd stop mid-sentence, only to
realize she'd begun speaking in a language she didn't know.
One morning, as she sat by the fire sharpening a bone-handled knife, she caught her reflection in the water
basin. Her eyes looked different. They weren't fully hers anymore. The irises had fractured into green shards, like crystalline veins crawling from the pupils. Subtle, but real. She splashed the water away, heart thundering.
Across the cave, Xavion stirred.
He never missed a shift in her. Even the smallest. His head lifted, those slit-like sensors on his mask flexing as
if sniffing the air.
"You knew this would happen," she said, not in accusation, but in awe.
He rose fluidly, crossing the cavern without sound. When he reached her, he didn't touch her like a human
might. He simply stood close, humming low-not just sound, but meaning.
You were never meant to stay unchanged.
She lowered her gaze. "What am I becoming?"
He didn't answer in words, but instead placed his clawed hand gently atop her head. For a moment, Elara
expected pain. A pulse of alien heat, maybe. But all she felt was clarity. The echo of her heartbeat aligning
with something deeper, older.
Then came the memory-not hers, but his.
A place beneath the surface of a forgotten world. A cradle, a vault, a cathedral. Inside, rows of creatures like
Xavion, asleep in suspension, each glowing softly in containment shells shaped like petals. Their minds
linked. Their purpose shared.
Not soldiers. Not invaders. Preservers.
Xavion had not been created to conquer. He had been made to endure. To adapt and wait. For what, she still
didn't understand.
The memory shifted. Time passed. Structures crumbled. The world above burned. Those in stasis withered one
by one. Their cells failed. Their forms collapsed into the nutrient gel that once sustained them. Until only one
remained.
Xavion.
He had not awakened by accident. He had awakened because she was near.
Her.
Elara fell back from the vision, breath ragged. Her palms dug into the stone floor, scraping raw skin as she
tried to stay grounded in her own body. "You were waiting for me?"
He didn't nod.
He didn't need to.
"I'm not special," she said hoarsely.
Xavion tilted his head slowly. Then he extended his hand and projected an image directly into her mind: her,
standing tall, surrounded by others-not human, not alien, but both. Hybrid forms. Kin. Family. Warriors.
Children. Her future.
Elara shivered. "But how can that be? I'm just one person. I didn't do anything."
Another memory poured into her-one she couldn't place.
She saw herself, long before the collapse, seated in a sterile room filled with machines humming in sterile
synchronization. Needles pierced her veins. Technicians whispered behind observation glass. She was part of
something then. A study. A test.
She hadn't remembered this.
Hadn't known.
They had been modifying her DNA. Not radically. Just enough. Tweaks in resistance. Boosts to cellular
recovery. A potential asset, they said. A prototype for harsher worlds.
She had never been told. The results buried in military archives. Forgotten. But the changes had lingered.
Lying dormant.
Until something woke them.
Something alien. Something like Xavion.
She didn't speak for three days.
Xavion didn't press her. He gave her space but never left her side. When she wandered to the edge of the
ravine near their cave, he stayed behind just enough to give the illusion of solitude, though she knew he could
reach her in seconds.
On the fourth day, she sat beside him as he cleaned the bone-knife she'd made. The firelight flickered across
their mismatched silhouettes.
"I think I'm afraid of who I'm becoming," she said.
He paused his motion. Then, with a slow, deliberate gesture, he pressed the blade to his own chest-not hard
enough to puncture, but firm.
Then, he handed it to her.
A choice.