"Let me in, Lital."
"Let me devour the pain."
"You were never weak. Never insignificant. That's the lie they fed you, the poison they poured down your throat to keep you small."
Lital offered no verbal assent.
Words had long since failed her.
But in the cavern of her chest, a door creaked wide—an unspoken yielding.
And she invited her in.
The fusion was instantaneous, a surge that rippled through her veins like liquid shadow.
Every insect in the box—beetles with their gleaming carapaces, spiders weaving fragile empires, worms writhing in blind hunger, flies buzzing in futile orbits—froze in mid-stride, as if time itself recoiled.
Then the frenzy erupted.
Not in audible shrieks, but in a chaotic ballet of terror: bodies convulsing, legs flailing wildly as they bolted for the walls, the corners, desperate to escape the unseen predator now awakening.
The box quaked, wood groaning under an invisible strain.
