It devoured everything.
Tentacles the size of trees dragged the Blade-Mouth's corpse into its gaping, ringed maw.
Eyes. So many eyes. Watched every direction. Above, below, within. Each eye flickered with ancient knowing.
With hunger.
And I was broken, bleeding, still grinning.
Drifted in the current beside my kill.
It saw me.
I know it did.
And it swallowed me, too.
Not out of necessity.
Out of acknowledgment.
Out of challenge.
Like it was saying:
"Let's see if you can kill me too."
I died.
I woke again.
In hell.
Sloshing inside the creature's gut, naked and raw.
Stomach acid burned every inch of me. Skin peeled. Eyes wept blood. My mouth tasted nothing but rot and bile. The stench was alive. Like it crawled into my lungs and nested there.
I couldn't scream. My throat was too shredded. Filled with its gut acids.
I floated in blackness, dissolved and remade with every breath.
And still I laughed.
The creature's stomach was a world of pain.
No food. No light. No rest.
Just the slow, suffocating burn of dissolution. My muscles melted. My bones softened. My screams turned to gurgles.
And every time the sun kissed the horizon, I woke again.
Woke to melt again.
Die again.
Suffer again.
For days.
Weeks.
But there was one thing.
One sound.
Like a drum in the deep.
Feeding my mind with purpose.
A direction.
A heartbeat.
Dull. Slow. Massive.
Like a mountain's heartbeat. Like the ocean's breath.
It was calling to me.
Calling me deeper.
I began to move.
Not walk. Not crawl.
Climb.
I used what I had. Teeth. Nails. Broken bones sharpened like knives. I clawed my way up the walls of its stomach, through layers of twitching, regenerating meat. Each time I got a meter up, the walls healed. Tried to push me back down.
It didn't matter.
I died every night.
I came back every morning.
One death at time.
One inch at a time.
Movement. Progress. Purpose.
I found a tube. A passage. A twitching muscle that led somewhere else. I followed it.
Slid.
Crawled.
Fought.
Scratched. Bit. Kicked and punched.
I was digested a thousand times.
But always I rose.
I moved from stomach to esophagus, through pulsing walls and spasming flesh.
Swam through tubes and blood vessels, pushed down, sucked up, twisted, turned, broken and rebuilt.
I made a home in its lungs, sleeping in mucus, wrapped in healing scars. I learned how it breathed, how it pulsed. I tore holes in its windpipe, just to map the reaction.
Ripped through flesh, just to get a reaction.
Sometimes it convulsed, trying to crush me.
Sometimes it shuddered with what might've been pain.
But never enough to kill me.
And never enough to stop me.
Months passed.
Maybe years.
Time didn't matter.
I marked it in deaths.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
My body toughened. Adapted. Hardened.
The acid didn't melt me as fast anymore.
The walls didn't close as quickly.
I endured.
And every death made my mind clearer.
Sharper.
Stronger.
I began to remember more than pain.
I remembered who I was.
What I believed.
Rule One: Kill or be killed.
Always.
Forever.
If something can kill me, it must die.
No exception. No mercy. No compromise.
Rule Two: Understand your enemy.
Watch. Learn. Adapt.
I studied the beast from inside. I learned its rhythms. Its cycles. Its weaknesses.
Rule Three: Find power. Devour it.
This thing… this god-beast… was the strongest I'd ever met.
And I would kill it.
Not because I had to.
Because I wanted to.
It existed. It had strength. It wasn't mine.
Not yet.
Then I found it.
Its heart.
My heart.
Mine.
Buried deep beneath walls of bone and blood. Surrounded by heat and veins and twitching coils of muscle thicker than tree trunks.
It was a mountain of meat.
And I devoured it.
It took days.
I tore into it with everything I had.
Bit by bit. Chewing. Swallowing. Vomiting. Dying. Waking. Repeating.
Eating. Again and again.
The heart was too big. Too tough. Too soaked in power. It burned my throat. Shattered my teeth. Melted my tongue.
I kept eating.
I kept dying.
Kept coming back.
Until it something changed.
The rhythm shifted. Hearth hitched. Muscles jerked.
Until the beat began to slow.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump...
.
.
.
Silence.
I stood on the steaming remains of its heart, soaked in blood, muscles twitching, body trembling, and screamed my victory into the fleshy chamber. Echoes of meat and death.
And the flesh answered.
My veins surged.
My bones cracked.
My soul shifted.
This wasn't a new skill.
Not stealth. Not vision. Not breath.
This was raw power.
A string of force that pulsed through me. Coiled through my spine. Like invisible cords connecting my limbs to the world itself.
I clenched a fist.
Muscles tightened like rope.
My hand hummed with energy.
Not magic.
Not blessing.
Just Raw Power.
The physical manifestation of my will.
My kill.
My right.
Mine.
I looked up.
The tunnel of meat and vein above me stretched high. Too high. Too long.
Didn't matter.
I crouched.
I gathered my strength.
Jumped.
Punched.
Flesh ripped.
Bone shattered.
The tunnel exploded.
And I burst into sunlight.
The air was cold.
The wind screamed.
Water glittered.
And beneath me, the god-beast.
It floated on the surface of the sea, dead and still. Bigger than an island. Tentacles limp in the waves. Its thousand eyes closed.
And I stood on its back.
Victorious.
Born again.
No name. Killer. Monster. God.
I raised my fist to the sky.
Laughed like a mad animal.
And whispered to the ocean:
"What else you got?"