The crevice was narrow, its jagged walls biting into my shell as I pressed myself deeper into the shadows. My legs trembled, half from exhaustion and half from the oppressive presence just beyond the stones. The mantis hadn't moved. I could hear it shifting occasionally, the faint scrape of its serrated forelegs against the ground. It wasn't in a hurry. It didn't need to be.
I had nowhere to go.
My breathing slowed, each inhale shallow and careful. I didn't dare make a sound. The air was damp and heavy, clinging to my shell like a second skin. The smell of the mantis was overwhelming—a metallic, acrid tang that burned my senses. I closed my eyes, as if shutting out the world might make it disappear. But the hum of its presence filled my mind, echoing endlessly.
I was prey. That was the truth of it. A fact as inescapable as the walls closing in around me. I could run, I could hide, I could fight—but in the end, I was prey.
And yet, something inside me rebelled against the thought.
The first movement came slowly, deliberately. I felt it in the vibrations before I saw it: the faint tremor of the mantis shifting its weight. My antennae quivered as I picked up the sound of its forelegs dragging across the stones, testing the edges of the crevice. It was probing now, searching for an angle, a way to reach me.
I pressed myself tighter against the back wall, my legs curling instinctively. But the crevice was shrinking—or at least it felt that way. The rough stone seemed to close in, the shadows growing darker, heavier. My breathing quickened despite myself, the panic clawing at the edges of my mind. The mantis hissed softly, a sound so low it was almost a vibration. A warning.
It was waiting for me to break.
I closed my eyes again, my thoughts spiraling. What was the point of running? What was the point of surviving? The mantis wasn't just faster, stronger—it was something beyond me. It didn't just hunt; it consumed. It was inevitable, as constant as the ground beneath me and the sky above. What was I, against something like that? A flicker of resistance in an endless void.
But isn't that what we all were?
The thought jolted through me, sharp and electric. My antennae twitched as the realization dug deeper. The mantis wasn't unique. It wasn't even the enemy. It was just another piece of the same cycle. It hunted because that was its purpose. Just as I ran because that was mine.
The thought should have comforted me. It didn't.
Instead, it unraveled something deep inside me. If the mantis was inevitable—if survival was just delaying the next predator—then what did it mean to fight? My siblings had fought. They'd run, they'd burrowed, they'd hidden in the deepest parts of the bark. And one by one, they had been taken. Eaten. Forgotten.
Would I be the same? Would my shell become just another fragment in the soil, indistinguishable from the countless others that had come before me?
The thought twisted in my mind, dark and insidious.
And then, I felt the first touch.
The mantis's foreleg slipped into the crevice, its serrated edge scraping against the stone. My body jerked instinctively, my legs pressing harder into the back wall. The sound was unbearable—a metallic screech that seemed to reverberate through my entire shell. The mantis didn't retreat. It pushed further, its leg probing the darkness like a blind predator sniffing out its prey.
My mind fractured under the weight of the sound, the vibrations, the certainty of death. Images flashed through my thoughts—my siblings' shells cracking under the mantis's mandibles, the dark hollows of its eyes as it tore into their soft bodies. I could almost hear their screams, though I knew they had never made them. We didn't scream. We didn't have the voices for it.
But in my mind, I screamed.
The foreleg brushed my shell, its serrated edge grazing the shallow cut along my side. Pain flared, sharp and electric, and I bit down hard, forcing myself not to move. It wouldn't help. Moving wouldn't save me. The mantis's leg retreated slightly, repositioning as it scraped against the stone again. It was testing the limits of the crevice, calculating the angles, the distances.
It was toying with me.
I don't know when the shift happened. One moment, I was frozen in terror, my mind fractured and spiraling. The next, I was moving. Not out of desperation, but something colder. Sharper.
The mantis's leg shifted again, and I darted forward—not away from it, but toward it. My mandibles snapped against the edge of the serrated limb, my entire body coiling as I sank them into the soft joint where the armor gave way to flesh.
The mantis hissed, the sound sharp and piercing, and its leg jerked violently. I held on, my mandibles locking tighter as it tried to pull away. The force nearly tore me loose, but I dug my legs into the dirt, anchoring myself against the pull. For the first time, the predator faltered. For the first time, it was mine.
And then I let go.
The mantis's leg ripped free, its movements frantic and erratic. It backed away from the crevice, hissing loudly as it retreated. My body trembled violently, every muscle screaming with exhaustion and pain. My side throbbed where the serrated edge had torn me, but I didn't stop. I couldn't.
I scrambled out of the crevice, my legs slipping against the muddy ground as I emerged into the open. The mantis loomed above me, its injured leg twitching as it turned its alien head toward me. Its eyes gleamed black and unblinking, filled with a rage that transcended thought. It lunged again, faster this time, its forelegs slamming into the ground just inches from where I had been.
I moved without thinking, my legs carrying me toward the edge of the ridge. The ground beneath me was slick and uneven, but I didn't care. The mantis followed, its movements sharper, angrier. The wound I had inflicted had done nothing to slow it. If anything, it had only made it more determined.
The edge of the ridge gave way to a steep drop, the ground below littered with jagged stones and debris. I didn't hesitate. I threw myself over the edge, my body tumbling through the air as the world blurred around me.
The impact knocked the air from my body, my shell slamming into the rough stone below. Pain lanced through me, sharp and blinding, but I forced myself to move. The mantis hissed above me, its silhouette framed against the pale gray sky.
For a moment, I thought it might retreat. But then its wings buzzed, and it descended, landing with a thud that shook the ground beneath me. The predator's head tilted as it stepped forward, its injured leg dragging slightly but still deadly.
There was no escape. No more crevices to hide in, no ridge to leap from. Just the two of us, locked in the final moments of a cycle as old as the earth itself.
The mantis struck first, its foreleg slicing through the air with terrifying speed. I darted to the side, my shell scraping against the rough stone as I evaded the blow. Its other leg followed, cutting through the narrow space between us with surgical precision. I moved on instinct, my body reacting faster than my mind could process.
And then I slipped.
The slick ground gave way beneath me, and I tumbled backward, landing hard against the base of the stone. The mantis loomed above me, its eyes gleaming with cold, alien hunger. It raised its foreleg, the serrated edge gleaming faintly in the dim light.
I didn't close my eyes.
The leg came down, and I lunged forward, my mandibles snapping shut around the joint where its leg met its body. The mantis hissed, a sound that pierced through the air like a scream. It reared back, its movements frantic as it tried to shake me loose. But I held on, my mandibles grinding deeper into its flesh.
The predator staggered, its injured leg collapsing beneath it. I released my grip, my body tumbling to the ground as the mantis thrashed violently. Its wings buzzed, the sound sharp and discordant, as it tried to lift itself into the air.
But it couldn't.
The mantis fell, its body crashing into the stone with a sickening thud. For a moment, it lay still, its legs twitching weakly. I watched, my body trembling as I waited for it to rise again. But it didn't.
The predator was dead.
The silence that followed was deafening. My legs buckled beneath me as I collapsed onto the ground, the weight of what had happened crashing over me. I had survived. But as I stared at the broken body of the mantis, a terrible thought crept into my mind.
I was still here. And so was the cycle.
The world above was vast, filled with shadows and predators I couldn't imagine. The mantis was dead, but it wasn't the last. It never would be. Somewhere out there, another shadow was waiting, its hunger as endless as the sky.
I pushed myself upright, my body trembling as I turned away from the corpse. The chasm stretched endlessly before me, its depths shrouded in mist. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know if I would survive.
But as I took my first step into the unknown, one thought lingered in my mind.
It was my turn now.