The shell sealed shut, and the dark pressed in.

At first, there was only heat and the sound of my own pulse hammering against the resin. The cocoon held firm, a black cage of ash and blood that creaked when I breathed. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t stretch. Couldn’t scratch at the burning under my skin. The liquid inside thickened around me, hot enough to sting, heavy enough to slow every thought.

The first shudder came from deep inside my ribs. Then another. Then, too many to count. My bones felt soft, shifting in small jerks, flexing the way trees bend in the wind just before they snap.

I wanted to scream, but the resin swallowed sound.

Something crawled under the skin, hundreds of tiny hooks threading through the muscle, pulling it apart stitch by stitch. My chest seized as organs twisted against one another. The heart misfired, stuttering into the System’s rhythm before it found its own.

It hurt like drowning in boiling water.

The System broke through the noise.

[Metamorphosis Begun]

[Integrity 61% → 84%]

[Neural Mesh: Weaving]

The text burned behind my eyes. The words pulsed like veins. I could feel the code in me, thin filaments of light winding through nerves, connecting points that had never touched before. The body wasn’t rebuilding; it was being rewritten.

Teeth cracked one by one. Each break made a small flash of light inside my skull. New ones pushed through the gums immediately, sharper and longer, growing so fast I could hear the roots grinding into bone. The tongue split halfway down the middle, then fused again with ridges along its sides. I bit it by accident, and the blood hissed where it hit the resin.

My spine followed next. It folded, straightened, then folded again. Vertebrae stretched apart, widening gaps that filled with liquid heat. I felt something like nails drive through them, a metallic taste bleeding into the back of my throat.

The pain was total, no centre, no edge.

I clawed at the inside of the shell, but the resin didn’t give. It flexed and pushed back, moulding tighter against my body. The cocoon was alive, its walls breathing in counterpoint to mine.

My skin began to slough away.

It peeled off in thin layers, dissolving into the liquid until only the deeper tissue remained. Muscle shimmered faintly under the System’s pulse, bands of red turned gold by heat and static. New threads grew over them, black and wet, tougher, wired with faint luminescence that came and went like lightning behind clouds.

I gasped, but no air came. The cocoon breathed for me, drawing slow drafts of water through invisible seams and forcing them through the new gills. It was enough to keep me from suffocating. Barely.

The System’s pulse grew louder.

[Pain Index: 98%]

[Vital Retention Priority Adjusted]

[Continue Process: Irreversible]

A jolt ran through me, sharp, electric, and every muscle contracted at once. My body arched hard enough to crack against the resin. I saw nothing but white and sparks. When it passed, I was shaking. My heartbeat had merged with the machines entirely.

Then came the teeth of the process, the work behind the agony.

Tendons shrank and reattached in different places. Fins tore open along new seams. Nerves sprouted like vines, creeping through wet tunnels toward the spine. Each time one found a connection, pain flared so hot I nearly blacked out.

The System whispered under it all. Calm. Flat. Indifferent.

[Skeletal Density Reinforced +14%]

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[Cardiac Output Increased +9%]

[Respiratory Mesh Integration Successful]

Successful.

The word made me laugh, or something like it. A soundless cough that shook the liquid and sent fresh fire through my chest.

Then the real terror started.

My organs stopped acting like mine.

The stomach filled, emptied, then filled again with liquid that wasn’t bile. It was molten light, digesting pieces of me and stitching them elsewhere. The lungs melted into thinner sacs, wrapping around the ribs. The heart split into two chambers, one for blood, one for something thicker, darker. The gills opened wider and bled freely, flooding the cocoon with a dark shimmer.

Every beat made me less familiar.

It was no longer a body. It was instruction.

Break. Rewire. Repeat.

The resin squeezed tighter. I couldn’t move my head anymore. Couldn’t tell if my limbs still belonged to me. The pressure rose until the joints screamed, until bone sang like steel under strain.

I thought of the sea outside. The weight of it. The cold. The hunger waiting.

I wanted to see it again, even if it killed me.

The System heard that thought and answered.

[Integrity 84% → 90%]

[Neural Mesh: Active]

[Synaptic Overload Stabilised]

For a heartbeat, the pain stopped.

The silence after was worse.

No sound. No water movement. Not even heartbeat, just the hum of something huge and constant. It took me a moment to realise it was coming from inside the cocoon, through the resin, through me.

The shell was breathing.

Slow in. Slow out. A lung made of resin, muscle, and machine.

The first exhale rocked me back. The second almost tore the skin from my spine. The water shifted through in pulses that carried faint heat and pressure. Each one scrubbed the inside of the shell clean of dead tissue. I was being sanded smooth from the inside.

The pain came back, sharper, focused.

The shell exhaled again, this time with words.

[Neural Mesh: Weaving Complete]

[Processing Cognitive Fragments]

[Retention Protocol Engaged]

The dark broke open with flashes of memory, a storm-split sky, rope cutting into my palms, an old voice that said, thank the sea, boy.

The System whispered over it.

[Memory Anchor Detected: “The sea gives, the sea takes.”]

[Retention Desired? Y/N]

I held the thought, fought to keep it steady while the rest of the pain tried to drown it out. My body wanted to purge everything old. My mind refused.

The System waited.

I kept holding.

It kept the line.

The old words joined the new rhythm. For the first time, we agreed.

Then the pain shifted.

Something luminous pressed through the wall , the glyph from before. It wasn’t light or heat but feeling. A weight that knew me already. It passed through the resin and into my chest like water into cracked earth. Every cell it touched screamed.

It burned through muscle, nerve, and bone, cutting a path down my spine until it hit the tail. Then it climbed again, slow and certain, until it reached the skull.

The System’s voice cut clean through the static.

[Predator-Class Initialisation 42%]

[Exchange Persists]

[Keep Feeding.]

Feed? There was nothing left to eat.

The only thing left was me.

I bit down, and the teeth met resistance , resin. I gnawed it until blood ran down my chin. The System didn’t stop me. It let me struggle. It let me test the new jaws.

The resin didn’t crack, but it flexed, like skin resisting a knife. The shell’s pulse sped up, drowning mine.

The pain didn’t fade; it changed shape. Heat turned to vibration. It felt like my bones were humming, like something inside them was calling back to the System in rhythm.

Then came the tearing again.

My flesh burst in new places. Fins split open, letting spines push through, sharper, cleaner, edged with thin ridges that caught and held the faint glow. My ribs cracked outward. New ones grew underneath. Every fracture sounded like a gunshot inside the shell.

The gills bled a final time and stopped bleeding altogether.

Breath came easier.

It wasn’t relief. It was control.

I twitched. The liquid around me rippled, thick with threads of my own shed skin. Each ripple carried a faint pulse of light, bacteria feeding on what I had been. The water glowed faint gold, like a miniature sun was dying around me.

The System’s pulse steadied again.

[Integrity 90% → 94%]

[Neural Mesh: Stable]

[Motor Function Synchronised]

Every nerve burned one more time, as if the System was testing them individually. My muscles convulsed in waves. I felt my body mapping itself, signal by signal, muscle by muscle.

Then it began to slow.

The heat dropped.

The pain softened into a dull ache, deep and wide, the kind that never really leaves.

I floated, breathing with the shell.

For a while, there was only the rhythm: in, out, pulse, reply.

But the black wasn’t empty anymore. It shimmered faintly, outlines of movement, ideas pressing against thought.

Three shapes flickered through the haze.

The first was a mouth full of teeth, closing on the dark.

The second was a flicker of light swimming backward into shadow.

The third was a whisper of many voices layered together.

Fang-pressure. Cold light. Whispering minds.

They circled, merged, and sank into the same beat that filled the cocoon.

My heartbeat.

The System matched it.

The shell’s breath aligned to both.

[Integrity 94% → 100%]

[Neural Mesh Integration Complete]

[Metamorphosis Stable]

The last sound I heard before the dark took me again wasn’t the sea.

It was breathing, deep, even, patient.

The shell. The System. Me.

All three moving as one.

The pain lingered. The hunger waited.

The sea outside held its breath.

And the thing inside the shell kept changing.