A player in a new world.

The forest was breathing.

It wasn’t the sterile void she remembered falling into. That had been cold, silent, like being sealed in an oubliette of static. But this, this place pulsed. She’d died in that cradle, she had felt it, the implosion, the silence, the tearing away. She had been sure. Absolutely sure. But everything here was so vivid, so thick with sensation and scent and heat, that certainty began to dissolve. Maybe she hadn’t died. Maybe **** just looked like this now. And yet now she was standing again. Awake. Naked. Changed.

Not with lungs, but with mist. Thick pulses of vapor coiled between trunks like sighs exhaled from some unseen, living canopy. Leaves shimmered wet with dew and something sweeter, viscous, pale, and faintly bioluminescent. It was quiet, unnaturally so, save for the low rustle of flora shifting as if aroused by the breeze.

Hannah moved forward, naked and coated in fine digital residue, every nerve alive with the raw aftermath of impact. Her limbs trembled, her breath heavy. The EdenBody protocol had triggered. She could feel it. Not just in her skin, but in the way her blood moved, thick and slow, like it was being rewritten. She hadn’t activated it. It had activated itself.

Arousal twitched at the edges of her perception—not pleasure, not exactly, but a kind of heightened openness. Her nipples ached, and when a vine brushed her thigh, she gasped without meaning to. The briefing had said the Corrupted Forest altered perception. That its spores interfered with aggression response. That prey survived because predators forgot what hunger meant.

That wasn’t the same as safety.

Something watched her from the glade’s edge. Quadrupedal, muscular, ridged in coral-like spine. Its breath misted visibly in the chill air. It didn’t growl. It didn’t approach. It lowered its head, then disappeared.

A figure emerged.

Slender. Armored in organic weave that looked half-grown, half-worn. Her body seemed carved from living bark and velvet skin. Amber eyes pinned Hannah in place.

"You are new."

Hannah’s voice caught. "Yeah."

"And unclaimed."

"Who are you?"

"Kaelith. I tend the threshold."

A pulse beat through the soil. The glyphs on Hannah’s arms shimmered faintly. Her legs nearly gave again.

Kaelith stepped closer. "You’re burning already. Your system responds fast."

"It wasn’t me. The EdenBody protocol...I saw a mention in the dive manifest, some kind of adaptive interface. I didn’t think it would trigger on its own."

Kaelith smiled. Her sharp teeth gleamed like something meant for another kind of flesh. "It always wakes like that here. The forest touches everything. It doesn’t ask. It simply listens, and the body learns to answer. You were seen. Now you are being shaped."

Spores drifted from above. When they touched Hannah’s skin, her breath hitched and her vision blurred.

SERA’s voice slid beneath thought.

"You crossed the threshold. The engine is awake."

"What’s happening to me?"

"Adaptation," Kaelith said. "Not transformation. Not yet."

The charm Micah had given her pulsed hot against her thigh. Something ancient stirred. The glyphs responded.

Kaelith turned. "There’s a place nearby. A village. It’s safe, mostly. The forest does not feed on sanctuary."

They walked in silence. Creatures flanked their journey—glitter-eyed, twitching, but disinterested. Lust thickened the air like weather. Hannah's body itched with the pressure of it.

"Will it always feel like this?"

"Only when you resist."

The village rose out of mist. Aithlin’s Watch. Living walls. Bone paths. Air thick with fungal lanternlight. A perimeter shimmered with passive warding.

As Hannah stepped through the gates, her body pulsed in time with something subterranean.

"You’ll rest here," Kaelith said. "The steward will call for you."

Then she vanished.

Hannah stood at the edge of something not quite real. The forest hadn’t killed her.

It was still deciding what she was.

And she was starting to ask the same.

She found a place to sit, just inside the shadow of a fungal pillar. The warmth of the structure eased the ache in her muscles. Her breath slowed. For the first time since the cradle collapsed, she allowed herself to speak without direction.

"SERA?"

There was no hum, no flicker of interface light. Just a ripple in the glyphs on Hannah's arms, and then the voice—not external, not fully internal either.

"You are stable. Input permitted."

"What is this place? This forest? Kaelith, the spores... they’re changing me."

"Designated biome: Corrupted Forest. Mutation vector: atmospheric, biochemical, spiritual. The EdenBody Protocol interprets stimuli as transformation catalysts. This is expected."

"Expected by who?"

Silence.

"SERA, am I still in EdenCore? Or is this something else?"

"You are in EdenCore’s architecture, but standard logic structures are no longer in control. You have entered a divergent realm. Identity syncing in progress."

Hannah pressed her forehead to her knees. The glyphs shifted again, like breathing code.

"Why do I feel... this? Like I’m unraveling."

"Your current form is not your final iteration. Emotional state, arousal response, sensory flux—all are inputs. EdenBody is listening. You are becoming."

"Becoming what?"

"Undefined."

Hannah swallowed. Her skin tingled again, not with fear or sickness, but as if something dormant was being drawn upward through her nerves, waiting to unfold. It wasn’t ****. It wasn’t unraveling. It was readiness.

"Okay," she said aloud. "Then help me survive it."

The glyphs glowed softly. SERA did not answer.

But she was still listening.

Hannah blinked and drew a deeper breath, the warmth from the fungal pillar grounding her.

"I need to be absolutely clear. If I’m not dying, then what? What kind of changes are we talking about? What am I actually becoming?"

There was a pause. The glyphs on Hannah's arms flickered as if beginning to answer.

But the moment shattered.

"You may enter now."

Kaelith’s voice returned like a root cracking stone. Hannah looked up to see the threshold guardian standing at the edge of the fungal circle, eyes reflective in the low biolight. "The steward gives permission."

SERA went silent.

Hannah stood slowly. Her question still hung in the air, unanswered. But not forgotten.

She followed Kaelith through the threshold, deeper into Aithlin’s Watch.