The dark hand drifted toward the Aberrant, slow as smoke, sure as a verdict. It did not strike. It only passed.

Then it stopped moving. For two heartbeats nothing else moved either.

Boots, breath, even the hanging dust seemed to wait.

The hybrid creatures, all its mismatched mutations and borrowed parts, went slack like the brain had been unplugged from the meat.

One of the masked men found his voice first.

"Is. Is it dead just like that?"

Diviners stepped in. Their fingers traced signs across their turtle shells. They peered inside. Some tuned in, reading whatever their divinizing could read.

Jekyll did not trust readings. He trusted what he specialized.

He checked blood. He pinched muscle, pressed along bone, watched for the little betrayals a living body could not hide.

He looked for the stubborn heat of hunger. It was still there.

Under their masks, the Diviners sweated, as if their own arts were accusing them of stupidity.

One swallowed, then spoke like he was spitting out a curse.

"Sir. This creature. It. It seems to be in a coma."

Jekyll's answer came fast. He would rather act now than rely on that unknown move from Eldric.

"What are you waiting for! Let put this creature back to the peak, clean up the swan and evacuate the rest of the folks! Go!"

The Aberrant heard the commands being thrown as if from far away, muffled and wrong.

It tried to snarl. It tried to flex tendrils. It tried to remember how to be itself.

The world tilted. Dizziness rolled through it and then sensation flared again, sudden and violent.

It stood in a new place, or thought it did. A grey and crimson sky hung overhead like bruised skin.

The ground below was littered with corpses of itself, ripped apart in every shape it had worn.

It dropped to one knee and tore at its own flesh, trying to eat, trying to turn meat into power.

The taste was familiar. The result was nothing. No warmth. No surge. No answer.

What more, there was no enemy in sight.

Then something snapped through the air. A white jade bamboo staff swung out of nowhere and struck its torso.

A sonic crack chased it as it flew. It smashed into a mountain with a thud that shook stone dust loose in sheets.

The Aberrant pushed itself upright, shaking grit from its teeth, and set its stance.

"Show yourself."

Silence answered. The creature pressed its head against the mountain anyway, thinking like a man, thinking robust meant safe.

The idea lasted a heartbeat. Gravity went absent.

The mountain pressed into its back, as if the world had decided the Aberrant was the only thing worth pinning.

The Aberrant roared, more confused than furious. It stiffened muscle, gathered what it had, and punched.

Rock burst. Dust billowed around it. It lunged forward through the dirt-filled air.

And the air turned into skin. All at once, it lost its robust body.

What it had now was frail and thin, a man's body.

It stared at its hands. Five fingers. Nails.

It tried to flare tendrils by muscle memory. Nothing sprouted. Not a twitch.

Someone stood in front of it, close enough to smell. A masked enemy with a sword held ready.

The Aberrant looked down and found a handful of soil in its own palm, as if dirt was the best weapon it could afford.

It raised both hands to cast the dirt. Too slow.

The world moved too slow, like it was drowning in syrup.

The swordsman grinned under the mask and moved too fast. The blade cut.

Both hands came off. Pain detonated behind the Aberrant's eyes.

Instinct made it squeeze its eyes shut. The pain stayed, refusing to fade.

When it opened its eyes, the light was wrong again.

It saw the world through senses that did not belong to it. The air was lower. The smells were louder.

People surrounded it, shouting, cursing, spitting. Every face wore the mask of Silent Severance.

It tried to lift a hand and found a snout between its eyes instead. Fur brushed its cheeks. It looked down.

Paws, bloodied and mangled.

The pain that had lived in severed wrists radiated through dog forearms, and the dog's trembling felt like its own.

Sharp stones started to fly. One struck its ribs. Another hit its shoulder. Another opened skin. Wounds piled up one after another.

Then a rock hit its head.

The blow rang through its skull. Dizziness spilled in. Blood trickled down into its eye.

The dog blinked, slow and helpless. The scene changed again.

The Aberrant woke sweating. A wooden ceiling hung above it, close enough that the grain looked like veins.

A woman lay beside it, turned on her side, white strands of hair spilled across the pillow.

Her breath was soft and steady, the sort of sound that belonged to peace.

It lay still, listening, and felt the blunt ache of something forgotten. Not a memory exactly.

More like a missing tooth, the tongue worrying an empty space. And yet, at the same time, it felt whole. It felt certain.

In this life, it was a small time vegetable farmer. It had lived honest. It had never earned anyone's ire.

People waved when it passed. People shared salt and gossip and laughed at its bad jokes.

The Aberrant accepted all of it because it fit like warm cloth. The thought came without effort.

'Should be just a bad dream.'

It sat up and reached for the pail. Water waited in the barrel by the wall. It dipped the pail, drank, and the water tasted clean.

Its hands were thick with callus. Its chest rose and fell like a man's chest should.

Then a knock struck the door. The sound was ordinary. The fear it woke was not.

It moved to the window. Outside stood masked men, still as fence posts. The masks were wrong for a farmyard. Too smooth. Too sure.

"You have been accused of stealing, come with us."

Heat rushed up its neck. Indignation. A farmer's pride. A man's anger at being treated like dirt.

It wanted to shout, wanted to swing the door wide and curse them back.

It looked once toward the bed.

The woman had stirred. One eyelid fluttered. She did not sit up, but the sight of her softened something in it.

Self interest spoke through the farmer's mouth.

"Do not bring danger to the house," the Aberrant murmured.

It calmed its heart and chose to follow.

The square was full by the time they reached it. Neighbors. Friends. People it had shared meals with.

All of them wore masks. None of them met its gaze with warmth.

The village chief began to speak.

The voice was loud, the gestures sharp. The words slid past the Aberrant's ears like water off oiled cloth.

It could not understand. Its wife stood to the side, hands clasped, watching as if she had been placed there as a prop.

Then the judge's mouth formed a few patched words that did not quite belong together.

"What. Are. His. Crime."

The words sounded artificial, as if someone had built it out of broken pieces.

The farmer's mind, a mind that did not read and did not question much, forced itself to accept the sound as normal.

This is how judges speak, it told itself. This is how law sounded.

Voices rose from the crowd.

"As. Si. Si. Mill. In the mill. Late. Ate. T. T. He did try to steal the cabbages."

"No, he cheated me when he," another man said, but a broken voice tried to interrupt the thoughts in its had. "Wo. Wo. Worm. Word. World..." The voice then normalized again. "Sold me rotten vegetables."

"He tried to kiss my way. Wife. Wives. Hive."

"Believe it or not. I do not want to. Vo. Vo. Vo. I. I. I. D. D. I do not want to voice out my concerns because he was my friend."

The accusations were nonsense and yet the masks nodded as if each lie was a brick in a wall.

The voices jumbled, overlapping, splitting, then rejoining in new wrong shapes.

The square smelled of sweat and dust and something faintly rotten, like fruit left too long.

The Aberrant lifted its eyes to the sun. The sun stared back. For a moment it felt it could pray to it.

But the glare blinded it, and the Aberrant cursed the sun for being unbearable.

Dizziness crept in behind its eyes. It felt again that missing thing, that gap that should have had a name.

But the human mind it wore filled the gap with other feelings.

Peer pressure. Injury. Rage. The need to be seen as good. The need not to be alone.

All of it hampered its ability to discern itself. The monster could not find its own edges through a farmer's shame.

The village chief stood at the front, mask turned toward it, posture cold and final.

"With all this people standing against. You. Re. Re. Return. Urn. Your sentence will be burning by the stake."

The Aberrant looked back at the sun again, squinting through the glare. It felt like it was something that could help it.

The dizziness thickened. It cursed the light again for not letting it think, for not letting it figure how to defend itself from the accusations.

"I cannot think clearly," it said. "What is going on?"

Hands seized its arms. It was dragged to the stake. Ropes bit into its wrists. Wood was stacked high against its back, dry and eager.

Panic rose. Then, as the knots tightened, something in it snapped into place. Rationale returned like a knife sliding into a waiting hand.

"I am innocent," it shouted. "This is wrong. I did none of those things."

The village chief stepped forward and tossed a torch.

Flame caught. Flame climbed. The skin of the man it wore began to cook and split. Yet there were no tendrils, no qi. Its mind was already forgetting what those were.

The creature screamed in agony and indignation, and under the scream was something quieter, something almost human.

It wanted justice. It wanted to know why such things were happening to it.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.