The moment the venom hit my bloodstream, I knew I had made a mistake. I had wanted to be strong, to be like her—to be the version of myself that Seraphina would be proud of. But nothing, nothing could have prepared me for the torment that came with the transformation.
It began slowly at first, a dull ache creeping through my veins like fire licking at dry wood. I tried to brace myself, gripping the edges of the stone table beneath me, but the pain intensified too quickly. My entire body seized up, as if every muscle had been set alight. I gasped for air, but each breath felt like swallowing broken glass, sharp and raw as it clawed its way through my throat.
And then, my gums—oh, God, my gums. It was like they were being torn open from the inside. I felt a stabbing pain as my teeth began to shift, pushing through the soft tissue in slow, excruciating increments. It was as if tiny shards of glass were being driven into the flesh, over and over again, with a relentless pressure that made me want to scream. I could feel my fangs emerging, inch by agonizing inch, sharp and alien in my mouth. I pressed my hands to my face, trying to steady myself, but the pain was unbearable. It was like my jaw was being pried open by invisible hands, stretching and contorting in ways that felt unnatural.
I tried to breathe through it, to focus on something else, but the pain radiated outward, burning hotter, sharper.
And then the light—oh, the light. It seared my eyes like a thousand needles stabbing into my skull. I clenched my eyes shut, but even that wasn't enough. The dim glow of the chamber seemed to cut straight through my eyelids, piercing my brain with a white-hot agony. It was unbearable, like staring directly into the sun after being trapped in darkness for too long. My head pounded with each pulse of light, every flicker feeling like a jagged blade twisting deeper into my brain.
I clawed at the sides of my head, trying to block it out, but it was relentless. The burning was everywhere now, flooding through my entire body, sparking in every nerve. My skin felt like it was being peeled away, layer by layer, as the fire worked its way through me.
My legs began to tremble uncontrollably. At first, I thought it was from the pain, but then I realized—it wasn't just trembling. They were shaking with a force I couldn't control, the muscles twitching and flexing, as if they were learning to move in a new way. My knees buckled, and I collapsed to the floor, but even that felt wrong. The ground was too hard, too solid beneath me. It was like the world had shifted, my sense of balance utterly destroyed.
My body felt different. Strange. I could feel the strength surging through me, raw and primal, but it didn't feel like power. It felt like something was breaking me apart from the inside. My muscles twitched, spasmed, and then locked up, the new speed in my veins making it impossible to stay still. I wanted to scream, but my throat was too raw, my mouth too full of fangs and blood.
I tried to stand, but the floor seemed to move beneath me—too fast, too slow, all at once. My feet stumbled over themselves as I tried to find my balance, but I couldn't. The speed coursing through my body felt unnatural, like my legs were moving faster than my brain could process. Each step felt like I was being yanked forward by an invisible force, and my bones screamed in protest with each movement. My entire body shook with the effort of trying to control it, trying to contain the surge of energy that threatened to tear me apart from the inside out.
And yet, through all of this—through the burning pain, the searing light, the tremors in my legs—I felt a strange, terrible sense of awareness. As if I was waking up for the first time, seeing the world through new eyes. My skin felt hypersensitive, like I could feel every gust of air, every shift in the atmosphere. My hearing sharpened to a degree that was painful, every sound amplified tenfold. The faintest creak of the door, the softest breath of wind against the stone walls—it all grated against my senses, too loud, too sharp.
I wanted to claw out of my own skin, to rid myself of the sensation that was overwhelming every inch of my body. I could feel the bones in my hands shift as I clenched them into fists, the tendons stretching unnaturally beneath the surface of my skin. The sensation was maddening, like my body was no longer my own, like I was trapped in a shell that was slowly cracking open.
I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, the rhythm growing slower, heavier, as the transformation took hold. It was a steady thud, almost mechanical in its coldness. Each beat felt like a hammer driving into my chest, reverberating through my bones, echoing in my head until it became the only sound I could hear.
And then, the cold.
The burning heat was replaced with an icy numbness that seeped into my bones. My skin felt tight, as if it had been stretched too far over my frame, and my veins seemed to pulse with frozen venom. I felt hollow, as if every part of me that had been human was being drained away, leaving only a cold, monstrous thing in its place.
I wanted to cry, to scream, to beg for the pain to stop, but I couldn't. The sound lodged itself in my throat, trapped behind the sharp new teeth that filled my mouth. I was drowning in it—the fire, the cold, the pain, the power. It was consuming me from the inside out, and I didn't know how to stop it.
And yet, even through the agony, there was something darkly alluring about it. Something that whispered to me from the depths of the pain, telling me that I was being remade, that I was becoming something greater.
But all I could feel was the agony—the relentless, all-consuming agony.