Chương 59: The Body Learns Badly

Zayn did not sleep. He dropped several times into something that resembled sleep, but each time the pain threw him back out of the dark before he could sink into it. His tongue burned. Not like an ordinary wound. Like a mark. He could feel it without touching it. A dark line carved into the flesh, a seal placed where the first mistake had entered. Every time he swallowed, every time he breathed through his mouth, every time his teeth brushed his tongue, the mark answered. Not with words. With a cold hunger.

Zayn remained slumped against the wall, eyes open in the darkness, the creature's corpse a few steps away. The system window was gone. But the words were still there. [Sin recognized: GLUTTONY] He saw them again behind his eyelids. Gluttony. The word was almost insulting. The priests of Aurelis would probably have called it impurity. The Ashes would have noted active contamination. the College would have dissected every reaction of his body with clean instruments and calm hands. Elias would have clenched his jaw.

Lena would have gone pale. Mira would have understood too quickly. Zayn, meanwhile, mostly wanted to laugh. Gluttony. As if what he had just done had been excess. As if he had served himself one helping too many at a royal table. He had crawled to a corpse in a hole, swallowed toxic flesh while nearly crying from pain, vomited until there was nothing left to expel, then eaten again because dying cleanly no longer made any sense. And the world called that a sin. Fine.

The world liked to classify things after making them necessary. His tongue slid slowly over his teeth. Left. Right. Canine. Clack. He murmured,"There's always…" His voice was hoarse. He did not finish. Not yet. The silence around him seemed to wait for the rest. Zayn smiled in the dark. Not much. Just enough to make his face look wrong, even to himself. He raised his right hand in front of him. His fingers were still trembling.

"Flesh Assimilation," he whispered. The instant he thought the name, something opened in his mind. Not a complete interface. A cold, dry, almost clinical understanding. The skill did not explain itself like a teacher. It revealed itself through limits. Flesh Assimilation. Transform part of his body by reproducing an organic trait already ingested and retained. Not copy an entire creature. Not become a demon. Not gain its strength cleanly. A part. An element. Only one at a time.

And only if his body agreed to remember the flesh. Zayn looked at his hand. He thought of the creature's thick plating. Its tough hide. Its split claws. The fibrous texture he had chewed while trying not to vomit up his soul with the rest. The mark on his tongue pulsed. His hand answered. The pain was immediate. Not unbearable. But precise. Dark plates pushed up across two fingers, under the skin first, then above it, as if something were trying to come out without knowing how.

His nails thickened, curving slightly, then split along the sides. Zayn clenched his teeth. The transformation lasted three seconds. Maybe four. Then his body rejected it. The plates retracted brutally. The skin split. Blood ran down his knuckles. He inhaled in broken pulls.

"All right." His tongue passed over his teeth. Left. Right. Canine. Clack.

"One part. Not long. Extremely painful." He lowered his gaze to his open hand.

"Wonderful. Even my new powers feel like contracts written by people who hate me." He should have been terrified. A part of him was. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. But that part was speaking more and more quietly. Another part, newer, calmer, more damaged, was looking at the blood on his fingers with interest. Not heroic fascination. Not horror. Method. He had to understand. If he did not understand, he would die here.

And if he had to cut himself up morally into pieces to keep breathing, then he would take inventory later. He thought of the creature's thick skin. Not the claws. The skin. He placed his left hand on his right forearm, where an old bite had reopened. He imagined the dark plate, the density, the foreign tissue covering human flesh. The mark answered. This time, the transformation happened on his forearm. A dark organic layer spread over the skin, uneven, partial, like a sick carapace.

It only covered a patch the size of his palm. Zayn picked up the short blade. He pressed the edge against it. The plate resisted. Not perfectly. But far better than his skin. He pressed harder. Pain shot through the underside of his arm. The plate cracked. Then vanished. The blade opened a shallow cut. Zayn remained silent. Then he laughed softly.

"Weak protection. Unstable. But real." He repeated the gesture. Tongue over the mark. Teeth. Canine. Clack. This time, he finished the phrase:"There's always a part left." The words fell into the chamber. He liked them. Not like a motto. Like a diseased truth. There was always a part. A part in the corpse. A part in the enemy. A part in the pain. A part in what one swallows, what one steals, what one transforms. A part to take. A part to keep. A part to become. Zayn closed his eyes for a second.

When he opened them again, the chamber had not changed. But he had. He knew it. Not because he felt powerful. He was not. He was wounded, starving, dehydrated, feverish, nearly incapable of walking without bracing himself against the wall. But something in his gaze had stopped asking the world for permission to still be human. He crawled to the corpse. Not to eat immediately. To work. The flesh was already colder. Harder to cut. He sliced off pieces of thick hide, the strongest tendons, one split claw.

He laid them out before him, one by one, like tools. Then he stopped. He looked at the creature's open wound. His stomach clenched. The disgust returned. Weaker. That was the worst part. He had not gotten used to it. Not really. But the first impossibility had passed. A line had been crossed, and crossed lines never rose as high again behind you. Zayn took a tiny piece of flesh. Looked at it. His tongue slid over his teeth. Clack.

"There's always a part left." He ate it. The burning came back. He trembled, bracing himself against the corpse, waiting for the vomit. It did not come immediately. His body fought, but less violently. The mark on his tongue pulsed. Zayn smiled. Not joy. Confirmation.

"You're learning." He did not know whether he was talking to his body, the mark, or the dead thing. It did not matter. Something was learning. He stayed there until the fever dropped a degree or two, enough for the walls to stop bending in his vision. Then he forced himself to move. The chamber had no obvious exit, but the collapse that had thrown him here had opened several fissures. One descended farther, which was immediately an insult. Another climbed slightly, but it was too narrow. Zayn approached that one.

He passed a hand through the gap. Impossible. Even without the satchel, his shoulders would not fit. He stood there in front of the crack. Then looked at his forearm. No. Not the forearm. The fingers. He had reproduced plates. The beginning of a claw. Temporary hardness. But not enough. He thought of the creature's hand, its split claws, the way they caught the stone. The mark burned. His fingers changed. This time, it was not only a plate. His nails lengthened slightly, dividing into short, black, painful points.

The joints tightened. Zayn smothered a cry. The transformation was not clean. His fingers were not becoming the creature's. They were trying to imitate it with flesh that was not made for that. He drove the warped nails into the stone around the crack and pulled. Chips broke loose. Not many. But more than with bare hands. He pulled again. Pain shot up to his elbow. The transformation broke apart after a few seconds. His nails became almost human again, two of them split to the base. Zayn cursed. Then laughed.

"All right. Excavation by partial mutilation. Elegant technique. Maelor would take notes, then lock me up." He did it again. Again. Again. Each activation lasted little. Each time, the mark on his tongue heated. Each time, his fingers warped, clawed, split, bled. But the crack widened. Centimeter by centimeter. The body was learning badly. But it was learning. After an impossible amount of time, Zayn managed to clear enough stone to slide his satchel through first, then his body sideways. He got stuck at the ribs.

Panic rose. This time, he did not let it grow. Tongue. Teeth. Canine. Clack.

"There's always a part left." He activated the plate over his left shoulder. Not to protect himself. To force skin against stone, reduce the cuts, push. The pain was atrocious. He got through. On the other side, he dropped to the floor, gasping, shoulder burning, mouth full of a laugh he did not let out immediately. The passage climbed. Truly. Slightly, but the incline was clear. The air there was different. Not free. But less dead. Zayn got back to his feet, leaning on the wall. His ankle throbbed.

His wounded thigh protested. His hands were useless for several seconds, trembling, open, too sensitive. He looked at them. Then at the crack behind him. A normal human would not have fit through. Not wounded like him. Not without tools. Not without tearing up his own skin. Zayn smiled. This time, the smile stayed too long.

"Thank you," he murmured. He did not know to whom. To the dead creature. To the Sin. To the hunger. To the part of him that had chosen to eat. He moved on. The corridor was narrow, almost vertical in places. He had to climb with knees, elbows, fingers already destroyed. Whenever the stone became too smooth, he called the claws. A few seconds. Pain. Grip. Blood. Rejection. Then again. The skill was not a power of domination. Not yet. It was a knife turned against himself, with barely a handle.

And yet, with each activation, something in his mind grew quieter. More focused. Less attached to the idea that his body had a sacred shape that needed preserving. His body was a tool. A mediocre tool. A tool that could be corrected. That thought barely frightened him. That was what should have frightened him. Higher up, a value appeared. 6 Small. On a ledge. Zayn stopped. The creature, a pale animal with thin limbs, turned toward him. It had made a nest in the crack. Three tiny bodies were huddled behind it.

Minuscule values. 1 1 2 Zayn looked at it. It hissed. Not a threat. A warning. It was protecting. He could have passed it. Maybe. He could have conserved his strength. Probably. But his stomach contracted. Not only from hunger. From something else. The idea that even a creature at 6 could protect something while he crawled alone through stone displeased him in a way he did not want to examine. His tongue slid over his teeth. Clack.

"There's always a part left." The beast attacked when he set foot on the ledge. He caught it by the throat with his almost human hand, activated the claws too late, felt his fingers cover in irregular plates, then squeezed. The creature struggled. He slammed it against the stone. Not fast. Not cleanly. He looked at its young trembling behind it. For one second, something might have recoiled. Then he thought: Noise. Risk. Flesh. Maybe gain. He squeezed harder. The creature died. [Soul Strength absorbed: +0] Nothing.

Zayn stared at the message. Then at the dead beast. Then at the three young. A low laugh finally came out. Not loud. Not mad in the noisy sense. Worse. Lucid and misplaced.

"Not even an interesting part." The three tiny values trembled. He did not kill them. Not out of pity. Too little energy. Too little yield. Not enough flesh to justify the time. He only took the mother's body, slid it into his satchel, and kept climbing. The young stayed behind, alive, silent. It did not follow him. Not in his mind. Not for long. Higher up, the passage finally opened into a human gallery. Old. He knew it from the pick marks on the wall, the remains of a rail, and the smell of drier dust.

Not the surface. But a higher level. Zayn nearly dropped to his knees. Not relief. Not yet. He had learned. An exit could be a grate. A voice could be a weapon. A mark could lie. A human could be waiting with an order to bleed him. A victory could be a collapse. So this gallery was not deliverance. Only a new corridor with better odds. He braced himself against the wall, caught his breath, and looked at his hands. They shook less. Or he was getting used to shaking. Hard to tell.

He took out the Ashes' plate, looked at it, then put it away. Then he took out the piece of flesh wrapped in a dirty cloth. He should have thrown it away. He did not. He shoved it deeper into the satchel. Provisions. The word passed through his mind without resistance. Provisions. His tongue slid over his teeth. Left. Right. Canine. Clack.

"There's always a part left." In the abandoned human gallery, Zayn lifted his head. His eyes were ringed, fever-bright, too bright. He did not look like a hero. He no longer even looked like an ordinary survivor. He looked like someone who, at the bottom of a horror, had found not a reason to turn back, but a method to keep descending into himself without asking pardon from anyone. He took the direction where the air felt least dead.

And this time, when something living scratched in a neighboring tunnel, he did not think of the danger first. He thought of what might still be left inside.