I will walk through the valley of shadows...
The mantra filling my mind evaporated the moment the darkness surrounding me was violently torn away, only to be immediately replaced by enormous teeth.
A scream erupted from my throat, strangled almost instantly by the moist darkness that swallowed me alive.
...
Dying may have been traumatic, but awakening to someone devouring you was indescribable.
The process of being swallowed was a living contradiction: quick yet eternal. I could feel my body sliding through a viscous tunnel that contracted and expanded, as if trying to destroy me, where every millimeter traversed seemed to last centuries, yet in less time than I thought, I reached my destination.
Throughout the journey, my body seemed to be reconfiguring itself, as if clay molded by an artisan's hands. I could feel something being infused into my being, while my body seemed to respond more and more to my commands.
Arriving at my destination didn't burn as I imagined. My body seemed strangely resistant to the stomach acid of the creature that swallowed me, yet it was odd as if my entire body were inside a wet sock stepping on the ground.
Standing up allowed most of my body to rise above the acid, considerably reducing the discomfort. Now the acid only reached from my navel downward—a small victory amid all this chaos.
Around me, the darkness seemed eternal, a black veil in every direction. With hands stretched before my body, I began walking toward one of the walls.
Every movement of my body made the liquid shift and bubble, movements that were slow because the liquid resisted each of my motions.
Touching the wall at least gave me footing, and something to grip before any other attempt to understand my body.
Touch became my hope. With hands trembling not from fear, but strangeness, I felt my body. Slightly muscular arms, toned legs and thighs, a narrow waist beneath long hair floating in the liquid, and an absence of beard or body hair—but there was something else... an unsettling fluidity beneath my skin. Elasticity?
No, it was something deeper.
Malleability. The word thundered in my mind. Perhaps my first impression while being swallowed hadn't been false. This body wasn't flesh and bone; it was living clay molded by what I believed was my true form.
A flesh puppet that obeyed a shape because my brain insisted it should be so.
Strangely, the revelation didn't shock me much. Maybe having been swallowed like in Greek tales made me resistant to the bizarre.
And so time passed.
One ineffective attempt after another to escape. Scratching or scaling pulsating walls, biting membranes that regenerated faster than I could wound, flying through the same tube I entered or searching for an exit tube, or any other methods that came to mind.
After countless attempts, I discovered a way to permanently devour parts of the surrounding stomach—minutes devouring the flesh of my devourer before hours digesting the body that tried to digest me. It was as if my teeth and claws had learned to "Kill" the flesh I tore away.
Amid these futile and not-so-futile attempts, I explored my capacity to shape my body. This Clay now part of my being seemed to have slightly hardened into my current form, creating a certain Base Shape.
Adjusting my body to mimic masculine or feminine forms was easy, requiring negligible concentration, with the change being perfect as far as I could "Observe" with my hands.
Approaching Angelic or Demonic forms—complete with horns, angelic or demonic wings—was simple but consumed very little of my concentration.
But animals... ah, animals were living enigmas. It was as if, unlike other forms, I needed to structure every bone, every vein and organ, and hold this in my mind throughout the transformation. As if there were gaps in my understanding of them, demanding far more from my mind to fill.
It was while seeking to understand these gaps that I noticed things I hadn't paused to consider.
It was chasing these gaps that I stumbled upon greater truths. But tell me, who would have the lucidity to analyze their own existence after being digested alive? I reincarnated. Or whatever people would call it.
I knew I wasn't dead, however much my body screamed I should be. I don't know how long it's been since I had water or food. I also realized breathing was something I did out of mere memory—a habit of a body that no longer needed air.
But what shocked me and made me sit in one of the small caves devoured into the wall was noticing:
I couldn't remember my name, only an echo of laughter full of joy when they called me by it.
Or my face, whose imperfections I'd observed for hours.
I could remember my chaotic and fun family.
My wife—sun-warmed kitten or world-ending tempest.
The world gutted by greed.
Working to fix incompetent bosses' mistakes.
People I hated, childhood memories I swore I'd forgotten.
Laughter filled the space around me, my own guffaw echoing through the chamber.
All this was strange. Stranger still was realizing why I didn't break down over it—Why hadn't I shattered? Why accept this so easily?
I was no longer Human.
This body was a conscious flesh puppet. The "Base Shape"? A way my mind found to normalize my surroundings' strangeness. I wonder how this body would manifest without that idea inside me.
The laughter grew, followed by the sound of my fists hitting the flesh wall near me.
The guffaws and punches were merely my body trying to interpret what I should be feeling according to my mind. And as this happened, I began to feel something—similar and strange, like when I discovered how to devour walls or when I molded my body perfectly: a hum, a certain static.
I froze in that instant. The sensation was concentrated in my head, inside my brain. I could notice energy being absorbed from my surroundings, converted into something before being absorbed by the electricity within my mind.
Electricity was the wrong word. What I felt was as if a magnet had been switched on in my mind, connecting and attracting my memories, my self—as if my mind were crystallizing, creating a diamond to store everything that was me, but expanding and mimicking the functions needed to fully feel emotions.
The first touch of a hot stove—sharp pain followed by crying.
Wind on my face, a cry of joy, my mother's radiant smile pushing the swing.
The green-eyed girl: the taste of the first kiss, the taste of hatred.
Sleepless nights before bluish screens, fighting to save others' jobs while my soul withered.
The late discovery of board games, camaraderie around the dice.
Her. The love that rewrote my world. Happiness so intense it hurt.
And then... the window. Night torn by an artificial sun. A white flash, hot, silent. So beautiful...
The last memory tore out a hoarse sigh followed by soft laughter. My eyes widened in the darkness. The missing piece to explain it all: There is no rebirth without death.
The answer was simple, obvious, brutal: I had died.
I never imagined the war would reach my little piece of paradise—so far from frontlines or involved countries.
I felt my eyes burning then—the first sensation beyond the mild acid discomfort or the despair right after waking. I brought my hands to my face, feeling saltwater trickle.
A low laugh escaped me as more and more emotions began to surface and swallow me. Perhaps this is the Fate for trying to be human again, to feel. Now I was feeling so much I couldn't move, couldn't even think—only laugh softly as tears flowed.
...
And so time, like something forgotten in an attic, lost its meaning.
I don't know how long I lay catatonic in that damp corner, or whether I was sane or insane, but when I came back to myself, I focused on understanding the process that led to all this.
My emotions were no longer silent. I could feel again. And along with that, I noticed something else that seemed to have returned:
The capacity to imagine, to create. Previously muffled by near-instinctual matters—as if imagining weren't necessary, just following instructions written in my new being.
Shaping my body was interesting and useful, but it didn't come close to what I was able to touch after the breakthrough.
Wealth. Treasure. Value. Singularity.
The concepts danced in my mind, luminous. I was no geologist, but now I knew gold's atomic structure like my own palm. And more: I could summon it from the air around me.
How did I know it was gold in the darkness?
What is worth more to a blind man than sight?
To one in darkness, what value has gold?
Light.
The answer sprang from a mix of divine instinct and mortal knowledge. Putting it into practice was more complex, but after several attempts, I created the answer to the question.
Not in metal or light, but in crystal—a transparent box with an inner chamber able to contain something. And so from the pulsating wall, a raw diamond the size of my torso sprouted.
With a snap of my fingers, energy united inside it, creating a miniature sun that pulsed, casting golden rays that swept the darkness, bathing everything in a warm amber dawn. The heat on my skin was ecstasy.
The "Sun" was nothing more than gold—superheated and compressed—feeding on my energy and creating something false, but functional as the real thing.
With light came self-recognition. Simply desiring was enough for a silver mirror to emerge from my palm. The face staring back was pale, sharp-featured, framed by a cascade of black hair reaching halfway down my back. Eyes red like aged wine shone above slightly pointed canines. Perhaps isolation and hunger had forged a vampire in my mind. But it was a noble, almost ethereal face.
Clothing was the next priority and challenge. Trying to "wish" that I needed pants or that having them signaled wealth wasn't enough to deceive my new powers.
Focusing another way, I concentrated on the first material I imagined as a symbol of Wealth: Silk, treated with gold and silver threads. Slowly, matter condensed around my body, and a robe appeared—black as the darkness that once surrounded me, with silver and gold threads woven through it like thousands of tiny stars.
With clothing and lighting temporarily resolved, the focus became a place to live above the acid.
Time was still unquantifiable, but I believe weeks must have passed before the stomach took a new shape.
Exploring materials that i could create, i learned that my belief in a material's rarity dictated the ease of its conjuring. Yet I felt a piece of the equation was missing, since some materials still drained me more than they should.
Titanium stakes formed the construction's foundation. Diamond for windows. Gold, silver, and emeralds for decoration. After untold time, I had my new home there:
With titanium fibers anchoring it to the stomach wall, there stood a castle—8 bedrooms (not recommended to sleep in the beds, as they were solid metal), each with a bathroom (even though my body lacked such needs, or running water), living room, parlor, kitchen, dining hall, a terrace, and my pride: the Closet containing Dozens of Robes (since apparently they're the most instinctive creation).
Looking at it all, a smile rose to my face. Perhaps I'd overdone it, but after living in shadows, things finally seemed to be moving forward. Now I just needed to create something to destroy my way out of this body.
As I walked toward the door, I heard the sound of something heavy hitting the acid behind me. The acid lake bubbled violently. After ages of silence, had the creature finally fed again?
Turning toward the sound, I instinctively felt my energy enveloping my body. Days? Weeks? Months? Building the palace gave me instinctive control of my abilities.
The robe wrapped me like a second skin, silk stretching and twisting around me like a Symbionte, gold and silver fusing into an alloy darker and stronger than the sum of its parts.
The diamond-sun darkened to a faint ember, plunging the castle into dancing shadows.
A blink was all it took for all changes to occur.
And then, she emerged.
From the amber acid rose a woman of overwhelming beauty. Hair gold like ripe wheat fields, honey-colored eyes, curves that sang of abundance and eternal life. A hymn to fertility made flesh. A Goddess.
This last revelation made my eyes widen as I felt a connection to her—as if the energy within me spoke to her and to our surroundings.
"Brother." Her voice echoed, sweet and powerful, filling the chamber—a place I now recognized as our Father's stomach.
Her energy seemed to fill the space—Fertility, Harvest. I stood before a true goddess, Deméter.
And she... stood before Hades, God of Wealth and the Dead.