I followed the shaman to the cave entrance. He stopped there. I continued. I didn't look back, but before crossing the darkness I saw something in his eyes: expectation. It didn't seem like worry. It seemed like… anticipation. As soon as I entered, the silence swallowed me. It was too much silence. There was no sound of bats. Not even the distant echo of dripping water. No insects. No wind. The cave didn't seem empty—it seemed dead. I moved forward slowly. The sound of my own footsteps echoed too loudly, as if denouncing my presence to something I couldn't yet see. The walls were dry. There was no moss, no signs of life. This wasn't just a cave. It was a tomb. The corridor suddenly opened into a gigantic hall. The ceiling disappeared into the darkness. And there she was. Oroti. Lying down. Momentary. My legs trembled, but I kept walking. Each step seemed heavier than the last. Her stillness was strange. Wrong. I moved closer. And then I saw. Something was sticking out of her back. For a moment I thought it was a bone piercing the flesh. But there was still blood flowing. One more step. Closer. It wasn't a bone. It was prey.Thick. Curved. Pierced from the inside out. Oroti was dead. And something killed her… brutally. It was at that moment that I felt something inside me awaken. It wasn't courage. It wasn't despair. It was something older. Primordial. The fear that dominated me began to dissolve. In its place, something else arose. Hunger. A hunger that wasn't just physical. It was instinctive. Savage. As if my body recognized it as an opportunity. With the last rational thoughts I had left, I understood: Oroti was dead. And that prey wasn't hers. Then I lost control. My body stiffened for a second… and then moved on its own. Automatic. Instinct took over. I wasn't thinking anymore. I was acting. And, at that moment, I realized that the true Awakening wasn't about confronting the monster. It was about discovering that perhaps… the monster had been inside me all along. I saw myself devouring that snake, using that tooth like a knife to cut through the body I couldn't tear apart. I felt unparalleled ecstasy; my hunger was endless as I devoured it. I felt my body tingling. First, like tiny needles under my skin… then, like fire coursing through my veins. My muscles began to contract and expand at the same time, becoming denser, heavier, as if something was being sculpted from within. My bones cracked. I felt them lengthening, strengthening, as if they were being molded to support something greater than I had ever been. My vision changed. The darkness ceased to be an obstacle. I could see every detail of the cave. Every crack in the stone. Every drop of blood on the ground. And then came the pain. It wasn't ordinary pain. It was absolute. It was as if my body was being broken and rebuilt at the same time. As if something was tearing my humanity away piece by piece to make way for something else. I screamed. Or perhaps the sound that came out was no longer human. I endured as much as I could. Now I understood why not everyone survived the Awakening. If the mind surrenders… you die. If fear wins… you are lost. And the bigger, stronger, and more feared the animal… the more brutal the transformation. And I was going through my Awakening with Oroti. The creature that haunted my nightmares since childhood. The being I feared.I felt the anger growing inside me. Anger at the shaman for sending me there. Anger at the tribe for treating me like a mistake. Anger at the fear they made me carry for so long. The pain fueled the fury. The fury fueled the change. My heart pounded like a war drum. My nails dug into the stone, leaving deep marks. And then… Everything became a blur. Sound. Blood. Darkness. But before completely losing consciousness, a single certainty echoed within me: I wasn't dying. I was becoming something they could never control.