Chapter 2: The Transformation
The wind had picked up by the time Arin rose to his feet, the land now quiet, save for the rustling of the trees. His hand throbbed where the fragment of bone had pierced it, a strange heat radiating from the small wound. He looked at it, his fingers trembling slightly as he pressed them against his palm. The skin around the puncture site had begun to darken, turning an unnatural shade of violet, and the blood that had flowed from it had pooled, not in the usual red but in a shade that could only be described as unnatural. Arin blinked, unsure of what to make of the strange sight.
For a moment, he thought it was just the fatigue of the day playing tricks on his mind. His body had been worn down from hours of labor, his muscles aching with the strain of the work. But something was different now, something he couldn't quite place. He had always prided himself on his ability to understand the world around him, to break down complex ideas into simple concepts. Yet now, standing alone in the vast, silent field, he felt disconnected from everything, as though something had shifted within him. He glanced around, half-expecting the world to look different—but it was the same. The same distant hills, the same towering trees, the same stillness that had wrapped itself around him like a blanket.
But within him, everything was changing.
Arin staggered backward, feeling the ground tilt beneath his feet. The cool evening air, once so soothing, now felt like ice against his skin, sending shivers through his bones. His heartbeat had slowed—slower than it had ever been before—and his head spun, the world around him beginning to blur. He dropped to his knees in the field, his hand still gripping the soil as though it could ground him, stop the dizzying sensation that threatened to consume him.
But it didn't stop.
His skin felt colder by the second, the warmth of the sun now long gone, replaced by an almost unbearable chill that seemed to radiate from within his very core. He could feel something pulsing through his veins—something alien. His heart, which had always beaten steadily, had become erratic, like a machine struggling to turn over. His breathing quickened, but each inhale felt hollow, as though the air he was drawing in wasn't enough to fill the emptiness inside him.
He looked at his hands, the fingers trembling violently, the bones and muscles underneath shifting with an odd, almost unnatural fluidity. The flesh felt thinner, the veins more pronounced. The sensation was both foreign and familiar, like an ancient memory trying to resurface, one that he had buried deep inside him.
The world began to spin faster, and before he could comprehend what was happening, his vision darkened. He felt his body growing heavier, the ground beneath him rising to meet him, pulling him deeper into an abyss he couldn't escape. His thoughts became fragmented, fleeting moments of clarity replaced by a deep, gnawing hunger that tore at him from the inside out. It was like a beast, clawing at his chest, demanding to be fed.
Arin opened his mouth to call out, but his voice was a mere whisper, lost in the swirling storm that had overtaken his senses. His body, once strong and sturdy, now felt like it was made of glass—fragile, brittle, ready to shatter at the slightest pressure.
And then, through the haze of his thoughts, something else emerged. A voice—low, guttural, echoing in the back of his mind. It wasn't his voice, and yet it felt like it belonged to him. The voice whispered his name, pulling him from the abyss and back to the surface of his consciousness. It told him things—things that made no sense, yet at the same time, made all the sense in the world.
"Feed," the voice crooned, "Your hunger will grow until you do."
The hunger that had been clawing at him intensified, overwhelming every other sensation, every other thought. He didn't understand it—couldn't understand it—but the call to feed was undeniable. It was as if something ancient, something primal, had been awakened deep within him. His blood, now coursing with the strange fluid that had seeped into his body, seemed to scream for release.
He stood up, his movements jerky and uncoordinated at first. But as he straightened, the dizziness receded, and he was left with an overwhelming desire to move, to find something—someone—to satiate the insatiable hunger that had taken root inside him. His mind raced, images of people, faces, bodies—anything that could quench the thirst that burned in his chest.
Arin's thoughts flickered back to the village, to the people who lived there. He had known them all his life, their faces were familiar, and yet now they seemed distant, like strangers. He couldn't explain it, but he knew, deep down, that his connection to them had changed. He was no longer just a man—he was something else, something older.
He staggered toward the edge of the field, his legs unsteady beneath him. The world around him seemed to warp and shift with each step, the landscape now darkened by the encroaching night. But Arin didn't care about the night. He didn't care about anything except the hunger—the gnawing, relentless hunger that demanded to be fed.
And in that moment, he knew. He knew that he could never go back. That whatever he had become, whatever he was about to become, would forever change him. There would be no turning back from this path. The hunger was too strong. The transformation was too far along.
He would have to feed.