Chapter 1 - Shattered (Patreon)

I want to sleep…to dream of something new…

The wind howled around me, tugging at my clothes as the city lights swirled ever closer. It drowned out my screams as those sharp, terrified sounds fell behind me with every story I passed. My stomach pitched violently as the world below surged closer and closer.

The neon skyline twisted, colors streaking across my vision like warped paint smears on shattered glass. It was beautiful in a way. Everything felt so sharp and vibrant. Time seemed to slow, granting me this final chance to see the world around me.

I was scared.

I was at peace.

The distant honking of horns warped into a distorted hum. The glass windows of a skyscraper guiding my descent reflected my plummeting form. Air burned and slashed against my skin, hot and suffocating despite the icy wind tearing through my hair. My limbs flailed, but nothing could slow me.

Then—impact.

A sickening crunch rippled through me. My body caved under the weight of gravity and its inevitable conclusion. A blaring horn sounded, followed by screams. The scent of burning rubber filled the air as tires screeched.

I felt and heard all that for only a second.

And then, silence.

White consumed everything. 

Shades of black ran across the white tint like racing birds in flight, twisting and writhing against the pale glow. Desperate and fleeting, they clawed through the light until the brightness swallowed them whole.

A lurching sensation overcame my body. The feeling of falling returned, but I wasn’t moving. My limbs tingled, my breath snagged, and the space around me seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting like a living being.

Then…nothing. Everything went away. I felt death consume me. Cold seeped into my bones, hollow and endless.

Suddenly, light slammed back into existence.

My body convulsed, my chest heaving as I sucked in a breath.

My skin pressed against something cold and metallic. The sharp tang of iron filled my nose. Overhead, a cage of silvery, glimmering bars loomed. Its vastness clawed at my senses. It felt ancient and…wrong.

“What…where am I?” My voice wavered, barely above a whisper.

Sweat clung to my brow as I pushed myself upright, my fingers scraping against the smooth metal floor. My legs trembled, weak and unsteady, as I took in the impossible sight before me.

An endless sky surrounded me, seeming to defy the very concept of distance. Wispy clouds moved about like colonies of fish amongst the blue that stretched far beyond what my eyes could see.

I walked toward the edge of the cage. Looking down, the view was the same. Every direction was like a reflection of the others. There was no ground, no sun, no life—just an endless, suffocating sky.

A prickling sensation skittered down the back of my skull like icy fingers running through my hair. My body seized with unease, my breath shallow as an unnatural silence swallowed the space around me.

Someone else is here.

Slowly, I turned my head.

A woman stood at the far edge of the cage, motionless, watching the sky-like abyss as if she could see far beyond what I could. Her back was to me, her posture unnervingly still. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t shift. Not from what I could tell. She just…existed, as though she were a statue carved into the cage.

Her hair was too long, cascading down her back in thick, white strands that pooled at her feet. It clung to her body, not like hair, but like something alive, possessing a mind of its own.

A God? A warden? Something worse?

I didn’t have the answer. I couldn’t even make myself breathe normally or stand without shaking, let alone speak.

The woman turned to face me. As she did, tens of thousands of people appeared. They floated outside the cage and encircled it. Their faces were distorted, yet I could feel them all staring at me. They observed me and judged me. They scrutinized me and the life I lived with great interest. I could feel it in my soul.

The world then distorted painfully. My hands latched onto the sides of my head as a piercing sensation assaulted my mind. Blinding lights like distorted color wheels violated my cognition.

I dropped to my knees.

“Pitiful girl,” said the woman in the cage with me. “Your mind’s shattering.”

I could feel pieces of my past tearing away—memories of my childhood, my pain, my successes, my failures, and even my name. Where were my memories going? Who was I?

A pair of warm hands wrapped around my neck. I felt energy flowing into me.

My memories ceased to shred apart, but I had already lost my past. I was nobody. I didn’t even have a name. Was I a terrible person? What kind of past had I lived? Why did I feel so…relieved?

The world trembled.

At first, it was subtle, like a faint thrum in the air. Then, the world trembled again. The second time, it felt more menacing, akin to a heartbeat, as if something colossal were stirring from its slumber.

The bars of the cage around me began to shift and warp into strange patterns, as if they sensed an unseen force.

Something was coming.

I could feel it down my spine. It was a primal level of fear, innate and ingrained.

A voice broke through the sky. “That’s where you were.”

The heavens tore apart.

A hand—larger than a planet, vaster than reason itself—punched through the endless sky, its sheer size reducing the world I once thought infinite into fractured, insignificant glass. It reached down with deliberate, crushing certainty, its fingers curling around the cage like a child picking up an insect.

The cage burst open suddenly like a blooming flower.

The woman immediately pushed me out.

Horrified, I stared fearfully at the Godlike being as I plummeted through the endless sky. She stood defiant, her gaze remained upward at the hand plummeting down upon us.

For some reason, though, I sensed the woman was…smiling?

Confusion wracked me. Eventually, my mind gave way to exhaustion, and everything went black.

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The darkness faded, and my body suddenly felt strange. Pain struck me. I couldn’t find its source, nor could I see, no matter how hard I tried.

Then, the world snapped into focus.

Before me, a giant man and woman appeared. The woman held me tight while the man lingered over her shoulder.

The man looked worried. His orange eyes examined me, deep in thought. The woman, on the other hand, gazed at me with pure, unfiltered love, as if I were the most precious thing in the entire world.

“What should we do with them?” the man uttered, his gaze fixed on the sides of my head. “They’ll notice the ears. You know what my people are like. They fear devils. Dammit! If she grows horns, she’ll—”

“Myros, look. Our baby,” said the woman. Her voice was ragged, but she was smiling. Thick black hair ran around her face, hiding her forehead and ears while highlighting his odd gray eyes. “Isn’t she perfect?”

“We need to do something about her ears,” said the man, Myros, hurriedly, as he ignored the woman. He fumbled with his belt and pulled out a knife. “I can shape them. She won’t remember. Maybe they’ll heal and look like mine. At least until she—”

“No!” The woman grabbed the man’s hand. “You’d mutilate our daughter?!”

“We can’t afford to wait! She doesn’t have hair to hide them!” Myros hissed, gripping the blade tighter. “If we want her to have the best chance at a normal life, shielded from all the dangers to come, we must do this. It’s only temporary. She won’t even remember. Please, I need to do it quickly while I still have the willpower.”

The woman clutched me tighter to her chest, her fingers digging into the blanket wrapped around my body. Blood stained the fabric. Her body trembled, but her resolve did not. “I don’t want to hurt our baby. Her looks should be a point of pride. Don’t touch them. N-Not…not yet. Let’s…let’s enjoy this part, please. O-Our child is alive and away from that wretched island. I just want her to be happy. Like I couldn’t. She doesn’t deserve that.”

“And I want her to live.” Myros’s voice cracked. He ran a hand through his sweat-matted hair, his jaw clenched so tightly that it shook. “Damn it, Melania!” He slumped slightly, his eyes defeated and raw. “You think I want to do this?”

Silence.

Melania’s gaze flicked to the knife. Her lips parted, but no words came out. Her breath snagged as she looked down at me as if studying something fragile and small. “She’s perfect,” she whispered, as if saying it aloud would make it real.

Myros exhaled sharply. “Melania—”

“No.” She lifted her chin, her grip tightening protectively around me.

Myros stared at the woman holding me, the weight of their conversation pressing down on him. At last, he let out a shuddering breath and shoved the knife back into his belt. “Fine.” He swallowed hard and ran a hand down his face, exhaustion ragging at his features. Then, hesitantly, he reached out and touched my cheek. His fingers were calloused but gentle. “My beautiful girl,” he murmured.

The room swayed vapidly, blurring my vision.

Boxes and barrels were scattered throughout the room. The walls, ceiling, and floor were made of wood. There was an unusual curvature to everything as well. Coupled with the peculiar movements, we were clearly on a ship.

Myros and Melania looked around, their faces etched with worry. Myros opened his mouth to speak, but—

The ship swayed violently again, far worse than before. All three of us were thrown into the air. I broke free from the woman’s grasp as she slammed into a wall. The man struck his head against the ceiling. Hard. I flew a distance away from them and became entangled in a mesh of ropes holding back barrels.

“Myros!” screamed the woman. She crawled over to the man once the ship had somewhat stabilized. It was easier to see her body now that I was no longer in her grasp. She was ragged and bleeding from her lower half, so much so that it stained the floor below her.

Blood gushed out of the top of Myros’s head, exposing the inside of his skull. The reason why was right above him. The roof had splintered, and sections of the wood pointed downward. One corner was chipped and looked like it’d been splashed with red paint.

“No, no, no! Don’t leave me!” The woman’s face glistened with tears. She shook the man’s body and hugged him. “Wake up, my love! Wake up!” she cried. “I can’t do this without you.” Her voice softened. “I don’t want to do this without you…”

My head and body ached. I wanted to throw up.

Tears streamed down the woman’s face as she made eye contact with me. A wave of determination washed over her as the boat rocked violently again. She looked at the man one last time, brushed her fingertips against his lips, and let him go.

The woman’s body shook as she tried to stand, but her legs buckled beneath her, collapsing like broken twigs. A strangled sob left her lips, but she did not stop. She crawled forward, dragging herself across the bloodstained wood, her fingers clawing against the ship’s splintered floorboards. She didn’t look at her wounds. She didn’t look at the body behind her. She only looked at me.

Her hands trembled as she reached out.

“I’ve got you,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around my tiny body. The warmth of her skin burned against mine, her grip tightening as she tried desperately to shield me from the tragedy happening around us. “I’ve got you.”

A sudden, violent lurch twisted the ship, throwing debris into the air. A barrel crashed somewhere behind us. Wood split and groaned, the whole world screaming apart at the seams.

Water burst through the walls. It was freezing, suffocating. It surged up, swallowing the floor, drenching everything in its path.

The woman’s arm squeezed me tighter. She was shaking—but not from fear. She held my gaze as the ship shattered around us, her lips parting as if she wanted to say something.

But she never got the chance.

The sea took us.

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I woke with a sharp, gasping inhale—like I had been drowning and only now breached the surface.

Sunlight stabbed through my eyelids, blinding me. My breath felt painful and ragged, sliding through my throat and past my lips. Something coarse and grainy pressed against my cheek, sticking to my skin.

Sand?

I tried to move. My limbs twitched, but they were sluggish and unresponsive. I willed my fingers to flex, but they barely obeyed, curling in weak, pathetic motions.

A heavy weight pressed against my tiny, fragile body, warm yet unmoving. My breathing came faster, more erratic. Panic coiled in my stomach.

Where am I?

I forced my eyes open.

Bodies were sprawled across the shore like discarded dolls, limbs twisted unnaturally, with faces frozen and empty. No rising chest. No shifting fingers. No signs of left.

Only me.

My heart lurched.

Agitated, I tried to move again, but my body refused. I was weak, unnaturally so, as if I’d lost something important I’d taken for granted. My limbs felt…wrong. Small. Soft. Unfamiliar.

Something was holding me.

My sluggish, trembling fingers brushed against what was pinning me. I turned my head. The effort was excruciatingly slow, like pushing through a thick fog.

And then I saw her.

The woman from the ship. Her long, dark hair spilled around her face, veiling her features like a mourning shroud. Her eyes—hollow, glassy, lifeless—stared down at me.

She wasn’t breathing, much like everyone else around me.

Fragments of memory from the boat swirled in my head, slipping between my thoughts.

The woman. The man. Their voices. Their desperation. They mentioned a ‘daughter,’ didn’t they?

I swallowed, my throat tightening as the scene from before replayed in my mind. Realization hit me as I put the pieces together, now alone and stuck in silence.

My limbs twitched, the weight of exhaustion still pressing down on me. Slowly—so painfully slow—I focused my gaze downward.

Tiny.

My hands…weren’t mine. Whatever that meant, that’s how I felt immediately. They were small, fragile, no longer the fingers of someone who had lived a long life. My fingers barely curled when I willed them to move.

A tremor ran through my chest. My brain, finally catching up and accepting reality, forced me to realize who I was.

This body was new. This life was new.

It wasn’t me anymore.

Baby.

I was a baby.

Not just reborn—reset.

Those people were my parents. They must have been.

The knowledge sat heavy in my head, pressing into my mind like a presence that didn’t belong. Everything before this moment—whatever life I once had, whatever name I once carried—was nothing but lost fragments I could no longer touch.

I was empty. A being made of echoes, filled with knowledge without a past to ground it.

I remembered falling out a window, a bird cage, a Goddess of some sort, a giant hand, and then…I was here. But I didn’t recall anything before that. There should have been something—people, places, a face I could call my own. But there was nothing. Only fragments of knowledge with no shape or meaning.

I knew things. I could understand language. I knew the names of things, their significance, science, math, and so much more. But I couldn’t remember why.

I had no name. No history.

Just a body too small in a world too large to fathom.

My head started to hurt, so I stopped thinking.

Instead, I looked up at the corpse of my…mother. I barely knew her, but I was still struck with a profound emptiness as I gazed into her cloudy eyes.

She never let go.

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•

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A thrashing noise nearby startled me awake. My mother’s body made it hard to see most of what was around me, but I could look straight ahead rather easily between the gaps in her arms and hair.

I stared at the vast landscape of death and decay until I spotted the source of the disturbance.

A corpse twitched. No. Seized.

At first, I thought I imagined it. The dead don’t move. But then, the bloated skin convulsed, rippling like something alive was struggling and bubbling beneath it.

A bulge pushed outward just beneath the corpse’s stomach. The skin stretched tight, veins bulging as though the body was pregnant with something violent. The thing inside pushed again, harder this time, its shape pressing against the flesh. A hand? A claw? A mouth?

The corpse lurched violently, its ribs snapping inward from the unnatural pressure.

And then, with a wet tearing sound, whatever was inside punched through.

Gray. Blood-slicked. Fingers curled into claws as they tore through flesh like wet paper. The belly ripped open, splitting wider, exposing the hollow cavity within. The body jerked as if resisting, but the thing inside was stronger.

A second hand followed.

Then shoulders.

Then a grotesque, emaciated form pulled itself free, dripping with viscera.

My breath locked in my throat. Every muscle in my tiny, useless body screamed to run, but I couldn’t. It was impossible. My limbs were weak, unresponsive, and slow. Even if they weren’t, I doubt I could have moved. My entire body felt as though it had been weighed down by the burden of my own terror.

The…thing…slithered free, dripping in dark, glistening fluid. I could smell it from where I lay. It overwhelmed even the stagnant corpse smell on the beach. It was wrong—source, metallic, festering. I wanted to gag, but even that would make noise I couldn’t afford.

The creature looked humanoid, but everything else about its form was a mistake. Its skin was pale and gray, and its legs and arms were too long and skinny. The creature was frail-looking, and its skin stuck to its bones.

Every nerve in my body screamed “danger” as I calmed my breath and body to a standstill. I didn’t know what the creature was and had no memory of seeing it before, but I knew in my heart that attracting its attention would mean my death.

The creature crawled over the corpse, its thin, spidery limbs bending at unnatural angles. Its face twisted open, revealing teeth too long, too many, and too jagged to fit naturally in its mouth. But they did. It lowered itself, pressing its face against the dead flesh, and inhaled deeply. A slow, shuddering breath, like a starving animal savoring its meal before the first bite.

And then—

Crunch!

Bone snapped like dry twigs underfoot. Flesh tore in wet, stringy strands as it ripped the head free, twisting, chewing, slurping. A sickening squelch followed as teeth scraped against cartilage, tearing muscle from bone with a wet pop.

It devoured with practiced hunger engrained within this newborn predator.

I watched in horror as the creature feasted. It stripped flesh and meat like a panda eating bamboo.

The final bites sedated the creature. It licked its lips and sat down on the ground. Its swollen belly jiggled against its taunt skin and thin bones.

Try as I might, I could not look away.

After an hour, the creature stood again. Its gaze cast over the beach before landing on the body closest to it. Slinking toward the potential meal like a cautious primate, it hovered over the body of a deceased man in his mid-forties. Like with the last corpse, it started with the head and worked its way down until it had its fill. Sated, it sat down again, though this time entirely on its back.

The creature began to snore. Gore caked its face. It was a few feet away, and there were many bodies between me and it. But given its appetite, unless something distracted it, its hunger would eventually fall to me, a mere snack ending in a bite or two.

All I could do was wait for that to happen.

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That thing fed in intervals. Not constantly, not mindlessly—but in cycles.

It would gorge itself until its stomach swelled, then retreat—a bloated, satisfied thing. It lay motionless in the sand for hours, rising only when hunger stirred it again.

I watched. I listened. Every time it moved, my breath caught in my throat, my muscles tense with anticipation.

At night, it was worse. I could only hear it—guess where it was.

With the morning sun, I finally saw it again to check its progress.

The wait was worse than dying.

My world had shrunk to the sound of chewing.

Bite. Tear. Swallow. Pause. Repeat.

The rhythm was unbearable. Each bite was a countdown, each pause a moment of false hope.

There were two bodies left.

One.

The creature stopped. It sniffed the air, its pupil-less eyes tilting in my direction.

I had nothing left. No power. No choices. My turn was coming soon. I should have cried. Screamed. Ended my misery. But even that was beyond me.

The creature lumbered over me. My mother’s body was in the way, but it did nothing to hide the sounds of the beast overhead.

Using what little strength I had, I scooted closer to my mother’s stomach in anticipation of the creature’s patterns. As soon as I did, a pair of hands gripped my mother’s head. They crushed her skull like fruit as hungered lips lapped up the aftermath.

I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t think. My brain shut down from the terror.

All I could do was watch as the body hiding me slowly got eaten and torn.

Rot. Blood. Death. The stench was thick—a rancid fog that sank into my lungs.

I could hear the monster breathing now, as if right by my ear. The sound was deep and ragged as it slipped and smacked wetly over its oversized teeth, which clicked together with hunger and anticipation.

Then it stopped.

My stomach clenched as something cold and wet brushed against my cheek—its fingers. It was reaching toward me.

Thunk!

A new noise pinged my ears. The creature yelped seconds after it sounded.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

The creature roared again, moving away from my mother’s body and sprinting across the beach toward the edge of a forest in the distance. Arrows jutted from its head and chest—mere annoyances rather than lethal wounds. My gaze followed it, connecting with the source of the sound.

Some distance away, a lone archer shot at the monster.

The creature twisted toward its attacker, snarling, its emaciated form moving with unnatural speed as it found the source of its pain. It dropped to all fours, its long limbs bending grotesquely as it launched itself toward the archer, mouth gaping wide to tear into him.

The archer didn’t move.

He exhaled a slowed, measured breath as his fingers tightened around his bowstring, pulling it back in one fluid motion. The air around him shifted, charged with something invisible yet heavy.

The moment he released the arrow, I felt it.

The shot was unnatural.

A tiny streak cut through the air like a line of pure force, concentrated and undeniable.

Splurt!

The arrow punched through the creature’s skull as if it were made of brittle paper, punching out the back in an explosion of bone and gray matter. It didn’t even have time to scream or contemplate its death as it tumbled forward, flipped, and laid motionless on the ground.

“Oh, thank the Gods.” The archer keeled forward with relief, wiping his brow. “If it were any stronger or closer, I’d be a dead man. Shit!” He stared at the corpse before dotting his eyes along the coastline, his expression slowly turning grim as he did. “Doesn’t seem like there are others around. I don’t know if I could do that more than once that well.”

A faint glow started to swell near the dead creature’s heart. Some sort of gem rose to the surface and protruded.

The archer smiled, plucked it from the flesh like a berry, pulled a small cloth sack from his side, and dropped the gem. “It’s a refined one. Only a few deformities. Should sell well. Or maybe Amalia can use it,” muttered the archer. His gaze returned to the beach again as he scanned it several more times. “No survivors.”

There was one, dammit!

For the first time, a sound tore from my throat—not a word or a scream, but a raw, instinctive cry.

The archer’s head snapped in my direction.

He stilled.

I could feel his hesitation, the moment of uncertainty before his boots crunched against the sand. His approach was quick but careful.

After a while, my mother’s body—what was left of it—shifted.

The moment the weight left me, cold air rushed over my skin, a stark contrast to the warmth that had shielded me until now.

I shivered violently.

Then—hands. Rough, warm, steady. Different.

Suddenly, I felt those hands tense as I stared at the man, his brilliant green eyes gazing into my own. “A devil?”

The word fell from his lips like a curse, sharp and bitter. His expression tightened.

I didn’t understand what he was saying. But I saw it—the way his eyes locked onto my head, his gaze flickering to my ears with something unreadable.

What’s wrong with me? My few moments with my parents flickered in my mind. My ears?

My heart lurched as I watched the man deliberate. Whatever kindness I saw initially was gone. Was he going to kill me? Leave me here? Why? What was wrong with my ears? Why did they make me a devil? What’s a devil? Why did that make me bad?

The silence stretched far too long before the archer exhaled sharply, rubbing his free hand down his face before cradling me against his body as gently as possible. I was so small, I fit in the crook of his arm like I’d never belonged anywhere else.

“It’s just a forest devil,” he muttered, his tone more tired than anything else. “It doesn’t have horns. What am I even thinking?”

The archer cursed under his breath. Reaching into his pocket, He pulled out a strip of cloth. Without a word, he wrapped it carefully around my head, hiding what made me different.

I didn’t understand. Not yet. But the way he hesitated told me enough. Whatever I was, it wasn’t something he wanted others to see.

 “I’ll bring you somewhere safe, little one,” said the archer as we slowly walked into the forest.