Chapter Six

The change comes slowly, like rot beneath the bark.

Or maybe like growth. It's hard to tell the difference anymore.

I wake in the cot, bones humming with tension.

The ache is different today. Not sickness. Not injury.

This pain is construction.

My limbs stretch as I rise—longer, leaner. Joints pop like breaking branches. My knees creak. My spine shudders as I stand too fast, the ceiling suddenly closer than it was the day before.

My hands shake. My fingers seem longer than they were. Nails taper to rough, crescent fangs as if my hands were hungry mouths. They gleam faintly in the dim light.

I stumble to the window. The light outside hasn't changed—still blood-colored, still filtered through an eternal haze.

But I see more now.

Not with my eyes. With something else.

A vague awareness of the room behind me.

Of the shack's walls.

Of the ground beneath the floorboards, the caked roots of dead things.

I blink. It fades.

But the knowing lingers, like a word on the tip of my tongue.

I step outside.

The ash is warm against my feet.

I do not cough anymore. I do not blink.

I breathe it in. Deeply. Greedily.

The manual waits on the table inside, open to the next chapter:

Movements of Embrace.

Crude drawings show postures. Arcs of motion. Poses that look more like worship than exercise.

I begin.

Stretching my arms to the sky, I feel the sinew pull taut. The ligaments protest. The pain is real, but clean.

The way a wound feels when it begins to close.

I bend backward, the air creaking in my chest like dry timber.

I squat low to the ground, fingers splayed. The earth accepts my weight as though I were its child.

Each motion strains the muscles in new ways. I feel them growing. Reweaving.

My skin has darkened—no longer pale, but a smoky, ashen hue.

Not grey. Not black.

Something in-between.

Something unnatural.

The flakes that fall from my arms are fewer now. The new layer beneath is smooth, strong, and strangely cold to the touch.

I press my palms into the ash and breathe again.

Inhale. Hold.

Exhale.

The wind shifts.

And for just a moment, I feel as though I am watching myself.

A shape, thin and tall, kneeling in a wasteland.

The wind circles him. The sky watches in silence.

Then it passes.

I am myself again.

But the memory lingers.

I return to the cabin, muscles sore and mind buzzing.

I eat a handful of ash and stretch again.

This is not hunger.

This is need.

Something is happening to me.

Do I Like It?