It's been a week.
Seven days since the lab doors opened, and I was dumped into a bioluminescent fever dream designed by someone who took "alien nature documentary" way too seriously. My body's not the same anymore. I've been through three more evolutions, each more unsettlingly satisfying than the last. Turns out eating weird glowing wildlife supercharges your development.
Who knew?
SYSTEM LOG:
— Evolution Achieved: Stage 4— Traits Gained:• Kinetic Tendril Manipulation• Pressure Burst Movement• Sensory Filament Cluster
New Form: Amphibious Parasite Variant IV — "Slickback Crawler"Mobility: EnhancedStealth: ImprovedCharisma: Still a dumpster fire
Yeah. I'm still gross.
But now I'm gross with options.
I'm faster. Meaner. Trickier. The slick, rubbery sheen of my body now ripples with low pulses of energy when I get too close to something alive. I can shoot out tendrils from my back to snag food, pull myself around, or scare off the occasional predator with a "RAWR XD" flail.
Spoiler: most predators in here don't flinch. Everything in this place evolved to look like an acid trip had a baby with an anatomy textbook and then threw the textbook into a blender.
Still, I've been eating well. Small stuff mostly — glowing lizards with heat-resistant scales, a jellydog that bit first and then exploded (not recommended), and one mean-looking centipede the size of a baseball bat that screamed when it died.
Like, actually screamed.
Ten outta ten trauma.
I've learned to suppress my radiation better, only leaking when I want to — like turning off the oven light when I sneak downstairs for snacks. I've also figured out how to slingshot myself up into the branches, which is cool until you realize you've got no hands and you're stuck in a tree with a bad attitude and no plan.
Which brings us to today.
The forest shifts again. The air's different here. Colder. Quieter.
Even the bioluminescence is dimmer, like the trees are holding their breath. The terrain slopes down, and I slither-crawl over slick roots and mossy stones until I hear it.
Water.
Not the gurgly kind I've bathed in for fun. No. This is still. Echo-y. Like it's waiting.
I creep forward and then stop.
There it is.
A lake. Perfectly circular. Its surface so smooth it looks like glass. No ripples. No breeze. Just crystalline silence, like the world forgot to render physics here.
The water glows faintly from below — not with color, but with clarity. I can see all the way to the bottom, but also... not? It's like the lake is deeper than space, reflecting layers of something that shouldn't be there.
And that's when I see it.
Standing at the lake's edge.
Drinking.
It doesn't touch the ground.
Its hooves hover just an inch above the moss, delicate and deliberate, like gravity got turned off around its ankles and was too embarrassed to come back. The creature's body shimmers like refracted light through broken crystal — translucent skin wrapping over faintly visible muscle and vein-like geometry, but shifting with every breath like stained glass catching fire.
Its antlers aren't even antlers. They're fractals. Spinning, splitting, recombining with every twitch of its head, painting the air with rippling shapes I can't name. Colors that don't exist bend around it like it's warping reality just by being alive.
My mouth — if you can call this maw-thing that — waters.
I don't know what it is. I don't know what it's doing here.
But something in me knows I'm supposed to eat it.
Not just out of hunger. Not even for evolution.
This thing? It's a catalyst.
SYSTEM ALERT:
ENTITY DETECTED— ID: UNKNOWN— THREAT LEVEL: UNDETERMINED
CORE SIGNATURE: FOREIGN
CAUTION: CONTACT MAY TRIGGER PERMANENT SYSTEM ALTERATION
'Oh boy,' I whisper internally. 'Finally, a red flag so big it could be used as a blanket by Satan himself.'
Still.
I'm already moving.
The Prism Deer notices me.
Of course it does. I wasn't exactly subtle.
It lifts its head from the lake — slow, graceful, like it's checking in on a breeze that doesn't exist. For a second, we just stare at each other. Me, a twitchy mass of wet evolution and sarcasm, and it, a walking cathedral made of fractal light and divine indifference.
No sound. No wind. Just this weird mutual "you again?" vibe.
SYSTEM ALERT: STANDOFF DETECTED
WARNING: TARGET ENTITY INITIATING ESCAPE SEQUENCE
Then the thing moves.
Correction — it detonates into motion.
It doesn't leap. It doesn't gallop. It glides just above the forest floor, breaking every rule of physics as it zips through the trees like a living beam of light. The air around it distorts. The colors warp.
"Oh hell no, you are not getting away!" I roar internally, already launching myself after it.
My tendrils shoot out like grappling hooks, snapping onto thick branches. I sling forward, my slick body ricocheting through the air. Branches snap. Leaves scatter. Some poor glowing squirrel explodes against my side like a firecracker full of regret.
SYSTEM LOG: — Movement Boost: Pressure Burst Activated— Trajectory: Unstable
'I'M GOING TOO FAST OH GOD—'
I twist midair, barely dodging a vine-laced trunk, and bounce off a boulder, rocketing forward again.
The forest becomes a blur. A tunnel of green and bioluminescent veins. The deer stays ahead, always just out of reach — taunting, glowing, leaving shimmering afterimages like a living rave flyer.
And then, without warning—
Boom.
Something hits it.
No. Something obliterates it.
A massive black shape barrels from the side, its bulk wrapped in a sludge-like mist that swallows the light around it. The Prism Deer's grace vanishes in an instant, its body smashed sideways into a tree with enough force to splinter the trunk like matchsticks. The deer screams — a high, vibrating tone like a glass bell shattering in reverse.
I slam into the ground, skidding through ash-like grass, as the monster steps into view.
The Blight.
Massive. Hulking. Bear-shaped.
The same thing I glimpsed days ago from the safety of a treetop nest I called "Definitely Not A Death Trap." Its body is matte black, almost liquid, mist curling from its joints like toxic smoke. Wherever it steps, the plants just die — leaves shriveling, moss crumbling to dust, and bark sloughing off trees like rotting skin.
SYSTEM OVERRIDE:PATHOGEN DETECTEDSTATUS: BLACK BLIGHT INFECTION
IMMUNE SYSTEM RESPONSE: PARTIAL
REMAINING TIME BEFORE CELLULAR DEGENERATION: 1 HOUR 42 MINUTES
'Wow. That's comforting.'
I stay frozen.
I've seen it before. From a distance.
It's real now.
And it's worse up close.
The Blight lowers its head over the shattered deer, sniffing with slow, brutal patience. Its massive jaws open, and it bites — tearing off a chunk of the deer's refracted neck like it's pulling glass candy from a wrapper.
My heart — or, well, whatever I'm using for blood circulation these days — goes absolutely haywire.
SYSTEM UPDATE:INTERNAL SYSTEMS ON EDGE
THREAT CLASSIFICATION:"THE BLIGHT"
PREDATOR STATUS: SUPREME
'Yup. Thought so.'
And then — it looks at me.
Just a glance. A flick of those sunken, pale eyes.
It sees me. Assesses me.
Doesn't care.
It lumbers off, mist trailing behind it like smoke from a funeral pyre. Within seconds, it's gone — swallowed by the woods it's already half-killed.
I don't move for a moment.
Then I slither forward, slow, reverent, toward the remains of the Prism Deer. It still glows faintly, broken and beautiful. The light from its fractured body barely flickers.
And right there, nestled in its chest, pulsating with soft, kaleidoscopic color — is the heart.
The core.
It glows like a prison for every color that never made it onto a rainbow.
I don't hesitate.
I consume it.
The moment it hits my system, my body locks up. Every cell screams.
SYSTEM ERROR:ERROR 993: CORE INCOMPATIBILITY
— FOREIGN CORE CANNOT INTEGRATE— HOST SPECIES UNSUITABLE
SYSTEM OVERRIDE ATTEMPT DETECTED…
FORCING NEW LOADOUTCORE TYPE: LIQUID SINGULARITY [SLIME]
"Oh what the—"
REWRITING CELLULAR FRAMEWORKINITIATING STAGE 5 EVOLUTION
HOST SPECIES: AMPHIBIOUS PARASITE
NOW EVOLVING TO: SLIME-BASED LIFEFORM
My entire body convulses.
It's not pain. It's obliteration.
Every part of me begins to melt, collapse, and rebuild at once. Muscles become liquid. Organs dissolve. My bones — the few I had — fracture and vanish.
I scream without sound.
The system boots again, flickering with static.
SYSTEM STASIS ENGAGED
ENTERING COCOON PHASE
EVOLUTION LOCKED: THREE DAYS
STATUS: SLIME CORE SYNCHRONIZATION IN PROGRESS
And just like that—
I collapse into an egg-like mass, sealed tight, crystalline, and shimmering with the light of the Prism Heart I just hijacked from an alien deer's corpse.
The forest is silent.
And I am gone to the world — evolving in darkness.