Chapter Seven – The Shape of the Beast
The stolen memories settled like silt in water, slow but heavy. Leylin crouched in the hollow of a fallen tree, eyes half-closed, letting the fragments align, trying to make sense of the chaos within.
First came the oldest layer .. the life before this body.
A different world.
He had been a strategist, a blade hidden behind smiles. Power had never been brute force; it had always been precision. The right move at the right moment. Nights stretched long around tables littered with maps and tokens, allies whispering while his mind raced three steps ahead. Victory demanded patience, sacrifice, timing.
Until the night the line blurred.
The last thing he remembered was the weight of a friend's hand on his shoulder ... warm, steady ...before cold steel slid between his ribs. Shock stole his breath before pain could arrive. His blood ran hot down his chest, choking his lungs. He turned, searching his friend's eyes for reason, for anger, for mercy.
There had been none. Only calculation.
The board shifted. He was the piece sacrificed. He died knowing the game would continue without him.
Then came the next layer ... this body's history.
Not born in a cradle, but in a sterile cage. Light was white, walls seamless. Air metallic, antiseptic. Scientists called him The Vessel.
He saw fragments of their work: bodies on adjacent tables, split open under knives. Screams tore free, then faltered as machines pumped fluid until veins burst. Some did not scream at all; some simply collapsed inward.
This body survived. Barely.
Survival was not mercy. Every day brought recalibration, scalding injections, bone grafts that howled beneath skin. His body tore itself apart, healed, tore again. They watched. Recorded. Adjusted. He endured, only because failure meant becoming another corpse on the floor.
Endured ... until the world outside cracked.
Something burned in the sky, thunder without storm. Alarms shrieked. Scientists fled in a tide of white coats, leaving instruments behind, abandoning their half-finished Vessel in darkness. Shackles still locked. Alone. Rotting in silence.
And finally ... the last layer.
The awakening.
The AI chip bound itself to his mind, clinical, cold, whispering measurements where thought should have been.
The Gluttony Core pulsed faintly in his bloodline, dormant but alive, a heart within a heart. The forest slaughter ... not as man, not as experiment, but something in between ... came with a name.
[Designation: Leylin Devor.]
It echoed now. A title, a sentence, a promise. Sharp, like a weapon waiting to be drawn.
He opened his eyes.
The forest swam into clarity, sharper than ever. Every path, rustle of leaf, sway of branch ... readable like a page. Shadows stretched along the moss-covered ground, bending and trembling with subtle life. He breathed. The night unfolded: the musk of deer bedding, the faint scent of fox on the wind, the heavy drag of owls above. Life layered itself in scents, each a line in a language only he could read.
He lifted a hand. Veins pulsed faintly black beneath pale skin, then stilled. The claws that had almost emerged before did not press through ... but they waited, folded beneath the surface, coiled and patient.
The strategist's mind whispered patience. The Vessel's endurance whispered silence. The predator's awakening whispered hunger.
They were not whole. Not yet.
But they were him.
Leylin stretched, pushing out of the hollow to his full height. The forest did not shrink from him; it recoiled, bending wide around his form. Leaves rustled under invisible currents; the wind stilled, as if even the air hesitated in his presence. Paths curved and widened subtly where he walked, a silent acknowledgment of the predator he had become.
Three truths burned within him:
He had been betrayed once.
He had been remade into something the world was not ready for.
This time, the game would not end until he held the knife.
His eyes swept the darkness. Small movements ..a rabbit stirring, a fox pausing mid-step ... caught his attention. Each motion, each breath of the forest, mapped itself into his mind. He was no longer merely aware. He understood. He could anticipate. The line between hunter and environment blurred.
A low hum of hunger whispered beneath his ribs. Not loud. Patient. The Gluttony Core pulsed faintly, a reminder of the power that slept just beneath his consciousness. He could feel it, shaping him, sharpening him.
The fire of memory burned steady in his chest, a brand no voice ..not even the whispering machine in his skull .. could smother. Every betrayal, every endurance, every kill .. woven into him like sinew and bone.
Leylin Devor. Strategist. Vessel. Predator.
He began to walk, and the forest bowed to let him pass. Shadows clung to him, silent, obedient. The world had boundaries now, paths, prey. And he would learn every inch of it .. one step at a time, one life at a time.