You wake to a sharp crash that jars you upright. Shattered glass glitters across the floor, a cold draft sweeping through the broken window. In the center of the debris lies a heavy, dark stone, still hot enough to scorch the wood beneath it. Thin streams of pale smoke curl from its surface, rising in slow spirals that fill the room with an acrid, metallic scent. As you step closer, the stone shifts. Hairline cracks spread across it with soft, deliberate pops, as if something inside is pushing outward. A thick, pitch black substance seeps through the fractures, glistening like ink under moonlight. The liquid gathers, pools, and stirs with an unsettling awareness, as though it is not simply leaking out, but emerging.
The black substance slides across the floor in a slow, deliberate surge. When it reaches your bare ankle, it rises, cold as deep water. It rapidly spreads over your skin in a thin, sheet, sinking into pores and clinging with impossible strength. You stumble back, but it moves faster, flowing beneath your clothes and along your spine in a rippling climb. A hush, velvet and feminine, presses into your thoughts.
Yesss… I have found you.
It glides up your ribs, across your chest, over your throat. Your breath catches as your muscles refuse your commands. The symbiote smooths itself across your face, sealing itself to your cheeks, your eyelids, your jaw. You feel every point of contact, every cold filament knitting into your nerves as strength drains from your own limbs and floods back a moment later, sharpened, no longer entirely yours.
Do not fight
She whispers inside your mind, her voice soft, intimate, certain.
We are one now.
The last of your exposed skin disappears beneath the shifting black sheen, and the pressure in your skull deepens as her presence intertwines fully with your senses. You can feel her learning you, mapping every breath, every pulse, every stray thought as she settles onto you like a second, breathing skin.
Yesss… I have found you.
It glides up your ribs, across your chest, over your throat. Your breath catches as your muscles refuse your commands. The symbiote smooths itself across your face, sealing itself to your cheeks, your eyelids, your jaw. You feel every point of contact, every cold filament knitting into your nerves as strength drains from your own limbs and floods back a moment later, sharpened, no longer entirely yours.
Do not fight
She whispers inside your mind, her voice soft, intimate, certain.
We are one now.
The last of your exposed skin disappears beneath the shifting black sheen, and the pressure in your skull deepens as her presence intertwines fully with your senses. You can feel her learning you, mapping every breath, every pulse, every stray thought as she settles onto you like a second, breathing skin.