The world does not begin with light. It begins with pressure.
Something shifts inside the shell. Not a thought. Not a decision. A quiet redistribution that turns stillness into strain. The space that held me stops behaving like certainty.
Wet warmth presses on every surface. Close. Constant. The only condition that exists.
Then it is not.
A seam yields.
A soft wall fails first and fluid surges into new spaces. Limbs that were folded are forced open. Not gracefully. Not evenly. One joint locks, then releases. Another follows. Everything grinds against resistance.
Feedback becomes the first lesson.I am moving.
The shell holds. Until it cannot.
A crack starts deep in the lattice and runs along a line that had always been meant to break under the right force.
Tick.
Air intrudes.
Thin. Cold. Sharp. It steals heat. It burns tissue that has never met it. Everything tightens. Muscles seize too hard. A new rhythm stutters into being.
The crack widens.
Light enters as fractured green, filtered through canopy layers and fungal skin. It is not bright. It is simply different, and difference is enough.
The shell fails in sections. Plates separate along growth seams. One segment collapses inward, then outward. Fluid spills onto fungus and rot. Shell fragments slide and drop with dull, heavy impacts.
Thud. Thok.
I spill with them.
The ground takes my weight. It gives under me, soft with decay, solid beneath, held by roots and old human metal. My body convulses once in the new medium, then stills.
Stillness sorts sensation.I do not die.
Breath happens by reflex.
In. Out. In.
Each cycle stings. Each cycle teaches. Air fills internal channels, leaves again, carrying heat and chemical traces with it. With each breath, the burning thins by a fraction.
Gravity presses down. The ground pushes back. Contact makes orientation.
I lift my head.
Heavy. The muscles supporting it have never worked like this. The effort pays in input anyway.
Above me is not open sky.
A ceiling: ruins of a collapsed structure braided into jungle growth. A partial dome. A corridor spine. A slope of compacted earth and vegetation that swallowed the facility and left ribs. Vines hang in loose nets. Fungal shelves cling to old composite. Light breaks through in fractured panes, green-shifted and restless.
I turn.
The egg lies broken across the rise at the center of the clearing. Even cracked, it is the largest mass here. Ridged plating dulled by years of fungal skin. Vines cinched tight where the jungle tried to make it vanish. Shell fragments rest against rot and human debris-heavy pieces that do not look like rock until I remember what they were.
Three service corridors branch away from the clearing's edge. Each offers depth for only a few meters before collapsing into curtains of vine.
At the lower edge of the clearing, downslope by a few body lengths, the old service path runs out as a streambed. Water runs through it in a thin sheet. It slides over dark metal. It carries sound.
A low, moving presence.
I do not know stream. I know movement. I know the difference between moving water and moving air.
I shift away from the broken shell.
Talons scrape against metal.
Skrrt.
The claws bite and hold.
My wings stay folded. Heavy. Present. Not yet useful.
A pressure tightens inside me.
Hunger.
Not a thought. A deficit that demands correction.
The nearest thing that smells like nutrition is behind me.
The shell.
I lower my head to it.
The exterior plating is ridged and thick, layered like horn. Fungal skins cling. Moisture beads along cracks. The shell smells of my fluids, my heat, my waste.
My jaws open.
Wider than expected. The mechanics align. Teeth interlock. Curved edges find purchase.
I bite into the shell.
Resistance, then fracture.
Snap.
A section breaks free. The taste is mineral and dense. Not sweet. Not clean. It does not matter.
My jaw contracts. The fragment crushes.
I swallow.
Heat begins to spread as digestion engages.
I bite again.
Shell fragments splinter and break. I tear sections free and consume them, working around fungal growth without avoiding it. The shell is thick enough to satisfy hunger, and consuming it is simple. No chase. No injury.
I feed until the sharp edge of deficit dulls.
Then I stop.The screaming quiets.
With hunger loosened, other signals sharpen.
Sound arrives from the streambed: steady flow, faint echo as water passes over hollow metal, and a drop deeper in at an uneven interval.
Plink… plink.
I move downslope toward it.
The path slopes away from the clearing where the ruins break into pieces. A section of wall. A collapsed corridor. Metal that has become terrain. Water runs down the lowest line in a thin sheet over dark plating.
I lower my head and drink.
Cold shocks my mouth. The taste is clean with a faint metallic trace. Not unpleasant. Information.
I drink again.
Then I raise my head and stare into the water.
At first it is only motion. The surface breaks shape.
Then the angle changes, and the surface becomes a mirror.
Color.
Black striping bands red and yellow. Blue crest elements catch the light, bright against the warmer tones. The pattern is not camouflage. It is a declaration. Built to be seen.
I lean closer.
Four eyes stare back.
Two forward-facing, aligned for depth and distance. The world through them compresses and sharpens. The other two sit farther back, nearer the rear of my skull, reading heat and peripheral motion as much as form.
Protective brow ridges above the eyes cut off a wedge of the world. When I tilt my head, I can see forward and down with brutal clarity. Directly above remains a blind slice.
I hold still and watch the reflection hold still with me.
Then I move one limb.
Six limbs answer.
The first pair are my main wing limbs, folded tight and heavy with membrane and finned members layered against my sides. In the middle of each folded wing, a talon rests against the ground—a rigid point for standing when flight is not the purpose.
The second pair of wings is smaller and positioned lower, mirroring the main wings in shape and membrane, scaled down to about a third of the main span, and built for control and correction. Each carries its own mid-wing talon.
The third pair are legs with three-toed, taloned feet that scrape metal cleanly and bite rot when I shift weight.
Something at the ridge of my head stirs.
A pair.
Two kurus begin at the crest line and run back along my neck, close to the spine, braided in muscle and sheath.
They flex.
Within them, fibrous tendrils move like sensitive roots, touch made into nerve.
I extend them cautiously.
They slide forward along my body line, not reaching far, but far enough. The tips brush wet metal at the edge where water sheets down.
Sensation returns in a clean, immediate thread.
I touch again, tracing the boundary where metal, fungus, and water meet. The paired kurus flex, retract, extend again, insisting on a map made by contact.
I withdraw them slowly, careful not to snag them on anything sharp.A new tool answers me.
Thrmm.
A faint vibration runs through the ground.
Not wind. Not water.
Something else.
I freeze.
It repeats, subtle but present, as if weight inside another structure has shifted. Not loud. Close enough to matter.
My head turns.
I track it first through the ground, then through scent as air currents catch it. It smells like the shell smelled before it broke. Warm. Dense. Interior leaking toward exterior.
Not deeper inside the ruins.
Outward.
I move toward the facility's access approach, where the wall transitions into a hillside and jungle presses tighter against the metal structures.
I follow the streambed down and out from the clearing. The old service path compresses briefly beneath a low overhang, then opens again near the outer wall.
Metal draws closer overhead for only a short stretch. The air cools. The sound of water tightens into a muted hush as it passes between surfaces rounded by roots and skinned by fungi.
Then the enclosure breaks. The ceiling splits into gaps where jungle has chewed through. Light returns in fractured panes. The air tastes less like damp metal and more like leaf and wet soil.
The scent is stronger this way. The vibration comes from ahead.
Then I find it.
Another egg lies against the outer wall near the access approach, a couple of meters from the port's buried geometry. Moss and fungal shelves camouflage it the way the jungle camouflages everything it intends to keep.
This egg is smaller than the one I hatched from. Small enough to register as difference without numbers.
It is intact.
It vibrates faintly.
It is waking.
Fresh warmth leaks through the shell. Interior pressure rising. I stand over it and listen.
Movement inside. Not rhythmic. Not calm.
The same beginning happened to me.
In another time, I might have ignored it. In another world, I might have recognized it as kin.
I see it for what it can correct.
Food.
I do not hesitate long.
My head crests are sharp even at birth. Not fully hardened, but edged. Built to cut. The crest beneath my lower jaw frames the mouth and protects the underside when I drive forward.
I lower my head and strike.
The crest meets the shell with force. The shell resists. The crest scrapes, then bites, and a fracture line forms.
Skree.
I strike again.
The second impact widens the crack. The shell gives in a shallow split. Fungus tears away.
A wet internal scent blooms into the air.
Hunger answers immediately.
I widen the opening with jaws and talons. Shell fragments break and slide.
Crk. Crk.
Inside is a body curled in stasis, membranes slick, limbs folded, eyes closed.
Alive.
Waking.
It resembles me in all but size.
That does not change what it is.
I feed.
The first bite tears into soft tissue and trapped fluid. Warm. Dense. It ruptures instead of resisting, releasing heat and a metallic richness that coats my mouth and runs down my tongue. Stored potential hoarded and never spent.
My jaws close again, crushing and pulling. Membranes split. Internal pressure vents in a wet surge. Fibers part under my teeth, slick and elastic, before giving way. My throat works automatically, swallowing matter still warm enough to twitch once before going still.
My body answers immediately. Heat blooms outward from my core as digestion locks on. Blood accelerates. Muscles draw tight, not in hunger now, but in recognition. Energy floods systems that had been waiting for it.
Hunger does not fade. It collapses, folded inward, replaced by dense satisfaction.The second deficit is erased.
I feed until nothing remains inside the shell but residue and collapse.
Shell fragments remain. I consume those too, crushing them and swallowing minerals and structure along with flesh.
Nothing is wasted.
When I finish, the perimeter is quiet again except for distant leaf movement and the constant hush of the breathing jungle.
My breathing slows.
The pressure in my core eases toward balance.
Only then do I move back upslope toward the clearing. Only then does the wider world press in.
I lift my head.
The forest crowds the ruins. Canopy filters light. Wind moves in higher layers and breaks into uneven currents near the ground.
I breathe.
Scents arrive layered and deep.
The jungle's constant is rot, leaves, moisture, fungi. Everywhere.
Beyond that constant are signals that point outward.
To the west, closest: hoofbeats. Many small bodies moving together. Quick stops. Short starts. A browsing rhythm. Their scent rides low, caught in broken angles of ruin.
Hexapede.
Close enough that sound reaches cleanly. Close enough that their movement inscribes itself on the ground.Prey exists within reach.
To the north: a thinning. Not emptiness. The air has a different texture. Grazing scent is diminished. Stripped vegetation is fresher. Bone-clean.
A hunter has been there.
Not in the clearing. Not now. Near enough to leave a mark on the wind.Something else is already working this ground.
To the far east: water. Not the thin sheet along the old service path. Something larger. The river does not speak loudly from here, only a low pressure when wind shifts just right. Cool mineral rides with it, faint and clean.
Not close.
To the south, farthest: something massive moves beyond my knowledge. Not visible. Not close enough to scent clearly.
But sound travels.
A deep trumpeting rolls through the canopy at long intervals, arriving as vibration more than call, as if the air remembers the weight of it.
Distant enough to mean one thing: something enormous exists that way, and it is not within reach.
I hold still and let the map form.
This is not full cognition. Not planned with words.
Pattern recognition, fast.
I am not a normal hatchling.
The body confirms it without language. My limbs carry weight too easily. My torso is longer. My head is heavier, and the neck supports it without trembling. When I shift, the ground yields more than it should under a creature my age.
Most hatchlings would emerge large but still fragile. Wings awkward. Membrane fresh. Built for growth more than dominance.
When I compare myself to what I just ate, I am bigger.
By roughly half again.
Not a number. Leverage. My talons dig deeper. My jaw crushes shell fragments without hesitation. My muscles answer exertion with less strain than they should.
Some part of what made me was excess.
I do not know that.
I only live it.My size arrives first.
Wind brushes my wings. I do not open them fully, but I shift them, feeling how pressure changes across membrane and over finned members.
The finned members can separate.
I test it.
A slight adjustment. The edges part like slotted segments, letting air pass between them. Pressure changes across each section. The world becomes measurable in currents.
I close them again.
I need to understand this territory.
I move.
Not in chaotic circles. In deliberate arcs.
The ruins remain my anchor. Human metal and collapsed walls provide cover.
I step outward from that anchor in widening rings.
First ring: tight to the clearing perimeter.
Second: into the forest edge until the ruin is half-hidden behind vines.
Third: along a slight rise where ground is firmer and the canopy thins by degrees.
Each ring returns me to center.
Each return sharpens the map.
Small life scatters as I pass. Arthropod analogs cling to bark and flick away. A darting creature with translucent wings vanishes into a leaf fold. None of it matters as prey.
All of it matters as signal.
Life density. Movement. Ambient patterns.
I pause near a damp patch where the ground sinks and plants grow thick. I lower my head and watch.
Something crawls along a vine. Smaller. Hard-shelled. It vibrates faintly as it moves.
I extend the paired kurus.
The tips brush it.
The creature freezes.
I touch again. It curls inward, defensive, then releases and crawls away.
Curiosity satisfied. Not because the creature mattered, but because contact matters. The paired kurus are built for it.Touch becomes a map.
Wind changes.
Hexapede scent thickens. Hoofbeats become clearer, steady rhythm interrupted by pauses as they browse.
I stop at the edge of a small open pocket where the forest thins. Not plains. A break where canopy and overhanging ruins loosen enough for light to reach the ground in wider panes.
From here I can see a little farther.
I raise my head.
The herd is not in full view. Trees interrupt the line. But movement shows itself: blue and red bodies shifting between trunks, a flash of pale fan structures lifting briefly before retracting.
They are alert even without seeing me.
Scent organs sample the air. Ears pivot. The herd is not panicked, but it is not unaware.
Prey survives by hearing danger early.
I do not rush them.
Hunger is not urgent now. Shell and the other hatchling have provided. I can afford patience.
So I watch.
Watching becomes rehearsal. I track the paths they favor. I note where ground is open enough for a strike, where trees obstruct, where escape routes funnel.
And their size.
Not massive. Relative to me, only slightly smaller. Built for grazing and quick weaving turns.They are killable.
I withdraw from the edge and return to the ruins.
The sun shifts in the canopy. Light breaks at new angles. The clearing warms.
I settle under a collapsed wall on the clearing's edge where shade holds. Metal beneath is cool. The boundary feels safe because it is known.
My body works on what I consumed.
Digestion is not passive. Heat spreads through my core. Nutrients break down and distribute. Shell mineral density becomes structure. Fresh flesh becomes concentrated calories.
The difference tightens inside me. Not growth that can be seen yet. Capacity that accumulates.
My eyes close for a short time.
I do not fall into deep sleep.
Rest.
The map holds.
Now it has to be used.