Chapter Seven

I am losing something.

Piece by piece. Quietly.

I wake with a mouth full of dust.

I don't remember eating it.

The ash clings to my lips like a kiss I didn't consent to.

My stomach groans—not with hunger, but with need. A sharp, scraping ache.

It coils inside me, clawing for more. More ash. More change. More transcendence.

I stagger to the jug of water.

I lift it with trembling hands. The thirst is there—remembered thirst. The kind I should have. The kind I remember.

I drink.

The taste—vile. Wrong.

I gag, spit it out, dropping the jug. It shatters, spilling precious liquid across the dusty floor.

I don't mourn it.

But I should.

I sink to the floor, cradling my head.

Who am I becoming?

What am I becoming?

I reach for the manual, flipping its pages with fingers I barely recognize.

"Ash is purity. Flesh is noise. Drink the silence. Become."

Become? Become what? What is happening to me?

No name. No author. Just scrawl.

Just madness.

Or truth.

…

I remember a man.

Tired eyes. Weak limbs. A body of pain and hunger.

He crawled through the ash like a worm.

He begged for breath.

…

I do not beg. I do not crawl.

I move like smoke.

I breathe the air that kills.

And it feeds me.

I do not know this man anymore.

I do not know this thing in the mirror shard I found behind the cot.

Thin. Elongated. Skin darkened like burned wood. Eyes… deeper. Reflective. Like a predator, but wide as if to swallow everything.

I try to speak my name.

The sound dies in my throat.

It feels false. Fragile.

I feel the pull again—

toward the planter. Toward the dead soil. Toward the open sky full of falling ash.

I resist.

I curl into the cot. I wrap the blanket tight around me, as if it will shield me from whatever I am becoming.

But I can feel it even now.

The ache in my stomach.

The itch beneath my skin.

The hunger that no longer wants food.

Just ash.

Just ash.

Just—

I sleep, but it is not restful.

I dream of walking through the wasteland.

My footprints leave no mark.

And something within me is catching up.

An ember that grows, feeding on the ash I breathe.