Chương 58: Gluttony

The fever came without ceremony. Not like a wave. Like a decision. One moment, Zayn was lying against the wall, lips blackened by bile, one hand clenched around the short blade, his body shaking with tremors. The next, the whole chamber was burning. Not literally. The stone stayed cold beneath his cheek. The air stayed damp, motionless, pitiless. The creature's corpse still lay a few steps away, open, silent, too close. But under his skin, something had caught fire. The flesh he had swallowed was not going down.

It remained. In his throat. In his stomach. In his bones. In every place where his human body was still trying to draw a border. Zayn doubled over. A spasm tore a strangled cry from him. He clamped a hand over his mouth, as if that could hold back his stomach, his organs, his shame, and everything he had just forced inside himself. It held back nothing. He vomited again. Not much. Not enough anymore. His body scraped at emptiness, trying to expel something that had already begun to cling.

"No…" The word escaped him in spite of himself. He did not know who he was speaking to. To his body. To the flesh. To the hunger. To that part of himself which, even now, was looking at the corpse and wondering how much of it was left. He tried to crawl toward his canteen. His hand slipped on the stone. His fingers were shaking too hard. He nearly knocked over the satchel, finally found the leather, brought the opening to his mouth. One drop. Then another. Not enough. Never enough.

He let the empty canteen fall against his chest. The sound felt enormous to him. Too clear. Like a bell. The chamber answered. No. Not the chamber. His head. Numbers appeared in the dark. 107 Elias. The blade of light. The outstretched hand. The ridiculous certainty of a man who could become stronger by saving others. 75 Lena. The thread around his shoulder. The voice that told him to be careful. The eyes that had understood too early that refusing to kill a prisoner was not proof of goodness. 74 Mira.

The gaze that cut through excuses before they had even taken shape. 80 Jonah. The hard suspicion, almost honest. The voice that would have said, with an infuriating expression, that even he had predicted Zayn would eventually do something abominable in a hole. Then: 312 Maelor. Not a man. A summit. A number too large to hate properly. Zayn laughed. Or groaned. He did not know. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Come down," he murmured.

"Come… come count here." The numbers did not move. Of course not. Summits do not come down into holes to see how the people below learn to bite. His stomach clenched again. Pain rose all the way into his jaw. He had the impression that his teeth were vibrating. His tongue burned as if the flesh had left a mark there before he had even swallowed it. He brought his hand to his mouth. His fingers came back black with blood, bile, and something else. He stared at his hand. It was shaking.

Not enough to stop it from taking up the blade. He looked at the corpse. The creature's body was already less warm. The open wound looked darker. The flesh, heavier. More repulsive. Better. The more repulsive it became, the more he might still be able to stop. He remained motionless. One second. Two. Then he crawled toward it. Not with dignity. Not with the slow, stylized gravity a storyteller would have granted a man crossing a threshold. He crawled like someone sick. One knee dragging.

One hand pressed over his stomach. Breath filthy. Lips parted. Eyes too dry. When he reached the corpse, he rested his head against the stone beside it.

"Just…" He stopped. Just what? Just one piece? Just enough to hold on? Just enough not to die? Just enough to make the first time not useless? He did not finish the sentence. Because a sentence still requires that you lie properly. He cut. The piece was smaller than the others. Easier to bring to his mouth. No easier to swallow. This time, he barely chewed. He forced it down. He swallowed before his mind could fully reconstruct the texture, the taste, the smell. His body arched.

Zayn pressed himself against the ground, both hands clutching his stomach.

"Keep it," he spat through his teeth.

"Keep it, you piece of—" The rest was lost in a spasm. But this time, he did not vomit. Not right away. The burning went down. Then stayed. He had the impression that something was opening its eyes inside him. Not a consciousness. Not a voice. A refusal. His body refused the flesh. The flesh refused to be expelled. And between the two, Zayn was no longer really the master. Only the battlefield. The fever took him harder. The ceiling vanished. The chamber became the summoning hall. The circles shone around him.

The heroes stood upright, clean, confused, still almost beautiful in their ignorance. Elias was looking at his status window. Lena was searching for Zayn with her eyes. Mira was already observing the cracks. And him? He was kneeling at the center, his mouth full of black flesh, unable to explain why the world had looked at his soul and decided that light was a filing error. The Clergy whispered. The Crown stepped back. Maelor was writing something. Selka was saying: knife or infection.

Jonah, somewhere, was muttering: Both, probably. Bad day for cutlery. Zayn laughed. This time, he heard it. A broken laugh, too high, too dry. The vision shattered. He was back in the lower chamber. Alone. Still alone. The corpse in front of him. The blade in his hand. Pain everywhere. And the smell. Still there. The hunger, now, no longer spoke like a request. It spoke like proof. You've already started. You've already swallowed. You've already survived the first burning. Why die clean after choosing filthy?

Zayn laid his forehead against the corpse. He would have liked to cry. Maybe. Nothing came. His body probably no longer had enough water for that kind of dramatic luxury. So he cut again. This time, he no longer thought of Elias. Or Lena. Or what they would see. He thought only of his hand, which had to remain steady. Of his throat, which had to swallow. Of his stomach, which had to give in. Of his life, which, through pure stubbornness, had to go on occupying a place in the world. He ate.

The fourth bite went down less badly. That was the worst part. Not because it was good. It never would be. But because his body, somewhere between fever and exhaustion, had begun to lose the strength to reject every fiber. He ate a little more. Then fell onto his side. His body was trembling so hard that his teeth clattered. The dark around him filled with lines. Not the veins in the stone. Not the numbers. Thick black lines, rising from the back of his throat up toward his tongue.

He had the impression that someone had poured burning ink into his mouth. He clawed at the floor. The pain changed. It stopped being only in his stomach. It climbed into his face. His tongue. Zayn opened his mouth in a soundless scream. Something engraved itself. Not on the skin. On the tongue. A black mark, invisible to him but perfectly real, formed in the flesh of the very thing that had first tasted the forbidden. The burning became unbearable. Then the world froze. A window appeared in the dark. Cold. Clear.

Indifferent. [Condition fulfilled.] Zayn stopped breathing. The window remained. Then a second line inscribed itself. [Depravity recognized: GLUTTONY] The chamber seemed to move away. Or him. He did not know. The lock appeared in his mind: the black padlock, the seven lines, that thing sealed shut since the summoning. A second line split. Not with the sound of metal. With a wet sound. Like flesh accepting to be opened. [The flesh has accepted what it should have rejected.] Zayn trembled. Not with joy.

Not with relief. Something had answered, yes. But not like a reward. Like a forensic observation. [A second line of the lock has broken.] He raised a hand to his mouth. His tongue was still burning. His fingers touched his lips, then recoiled. The taste of blood was no longer exactly the same. Thicker. Sharper. Closer. [Derived skill obtained: Flesh Assimilation] The name entered his skull with the precision of a blade. No long explanation. No tutorial. Just an opening.

And his body, already too broken to refuse anymore, tried to understand. The hand braced against the floor contracted. Zayn looked down. In the dark, he could barely see anything. But he felt it. His fingers. The skin at their tips hardened. Not all at once. Not cleanly. Dark plates pushed beneath the skin, like organic shards. The nails distorted, thickened, curled slightly. A sharp pain shot through his hand. He muffled a cry. The transformation stopped at once. Then retreated. The skin split over two knuckles.

Blood ran. Human. Still human. Zayn remained motionless, his trembling hand raised before his face. It was not a miracle. It was an error that had learned how to repeat itself. He laughed. Slowly. A laugh lower than the others. Not joyful. Not hysterical either. Something between exhaustion, pain, and the discovery that a door had just opened in a wall he should never have touched. He ran his tongue over his teeth. Stopped. The mark on his tongue pulsed. He did it again. Slowly. From one canine to the other.

As if he were counting the edges still capable of cutting. Then his teeth clicked once. Not from cold. Deliberately. He tilted his head slightly. A thin, filthy, almost absent smile formed on his face.

"There's…" His voice was raw. He ran his tongue over his teeth again. Left to right. Up to the canine. His teeth clicked. Once.

"…still…" He looked at the opened corpse in front of him. Then at his own hand, still bloody, still trembling, but changed a second earlier. His eyes were too bright in the dark.

"…a part left." The silence did not answer. It did not need to. Zayn struggled upright against the wall, his mouth burning, his stomach ravaged, his body sicker than before and yet less close to shutting down. He was not healed. Not saved. Not strong. He had only learned that his body could betray its humanity to survive one minute longer. And in the depths of Rhel-Fosse, that was already enough to make him something new.