The Distorter

The stone trembles beneath the parasite's feet.

Not a tremor. Not sound. A vibration without origin—rising from the deep like the heartbeat of something buried too long. The host body stiffens. Its jaw clenches without command. The parasite holds it still.

Stillness sharpens sensation.

Air grows thick, heavy like syrup. Pressure builds in the parasite's bones. It does not understand the concept of gravity, but it feels the world pull differently. The stone above feels closer. The ceiling stretches further away. The ground becomes untrustworthy, fluid, wrong.

A pulse ripples through the tunnel.

The walls do not move—but the light from the distant bioluminescent fungi bends as if refracted through water. Glows elongate into ribbons, then snap back. A high, keening tone buzzes just beyond the parasite's perception, too fast for sound, too slow for thought.

Something is coming.

The parasite does not know fear. But its tendrils tighten around the host's spine. Muscles brace. Breath halts. Stillness becomes armor.

The pressure peaks.

And the world… opens.

Stone twists. Not cracks, not shatters—twists, like skin pulled into a spiral. Air tears with a soundless scream. A slit of unreality unfolds in the far chamber ahead—an absence shaped like a wound, slick and humming with unseen force.

The parasite steps backward without realizing. The host's foot scrapes stone.

From within the opening, light emerges. But not color. Not flame. Not energy.

This light is memory—gold and blue and violet all at once, and somehow older than time. It bends the shape of space itself, drawing in darkness and spitting out shape. A shadow steps through.

Or maybe it was already there.

Or maybe it is always there.

The parasite sees it, and yet cannot. The being's form is not a form—it shifts between profiles. One moment, it is a great quadruped of bone and tendril. The next, a serpent of impossible length coiled through dimensions. Then, a burning star veiled in fluid. Then, nothing at all.

It does not speak. It does not move.

But the world around it reacts—stone weeps, light flees, air crystallizes.

The parasite's body buckles.

It drops to its front limbs. The host's spine arches unnaturally. Its throat convulses, the new organ shuddering as if trying to sing—but no sound escapes. The parasite feels compressed, like its being is a dot on the floor, smeared across dimensions it cannot name.

And then—

The being looks at it.

Not with eyes. With presence.

It sees.

And in seeing, it names.

Not a word. Not a thought. But a classification—a placement in the lattice of reality. The parasite feels itself categorized by something greater than understanding.

It is known.

And then, the distorter moves.

The chamber reshapes to make space. Not by shifting, but by deciding to be different. Walls stretch, fold, then unfold. The distorter drifts forward, and with each step, reality warps.

Stone curves inward like liquid reacting to heat.

Color reverses. Shadows peel upward. Fungi flatten themselves, lowering like worshippers in stillness.

The parasite watches.

It does not blink.

It cannot.

Its tendrils vibrate inside the host, picking up patterns in the distortion—measurable, repeating, logical. The distorter's presence is not random. It is structured.

For the first time, the parasite's system reacts without stimulus.

Something changes.

Internally, its network of bio-thread expands. A second organ begins to bud beneath the sternum. Nervous tissue wraps itself in a cocoon of hardened cartilage. Connections fire that did not exist momentsago.

The parasite is adapting.

Not just to survive—but to understand.

The distorter stops.

It stands mere meters away. The air between them fractures like glass in slow motion. One breath—and the parasite feels every cell inside the host jolt like lightning surged through marrow.

Then—motion.

The distorter reaches out.

Not a limb. Not a tendril. A wave of intention that flows like wind but hits like a flood. It sweeps over the parasite's host body—touching without touching.

The parasite's vision explodes.

The cavern disappears.

⸻

It is somewhere else.

Floating. Disconnected. There is no body here.

Only information.

The parasite sees strings—veins of possibility—webbing out from it in all directions. Each thread glows with a different light. Some lead forward. Some backward. Some sideways into things it cannot grasp.

It sees the distorter's lattice.

A structure of power. A conceptual shape that bends reality not through force, but through design. Geometry without form. Logic encoded into existence.

And in that lattice… is a space.

Its space.

A gap.

Empty.

Waiting.

⸻

Then, it ends.

The parasite snaps back into flesh.

The chamber returns. The distorter is already turning, drifting backward into the fold from which it came.

It does not speak. It does not attack.

It simply leaves.

And where it stood, the world is different.

Stone flows like melted wax.

Fungi bloom in unnatural shapes.

The air trembles with invisible hums.

A distorted zone now scars the cavern—permanently altered by the being's presence.

And at its center… the parasite stands.

Changed.

It does not understand what happened.

But deep within its system, new protocols begin to form. Connections between sensory input and distortion signatures are now mapped.

It remembers what it saw.

And more importantly…

It wants to learn.