The abyss was never silent.
It whispered without mouths, breathed without lungs.
Down there, where light dared not crawl, time did not flow.
Only instinct. Only the edge.
The creature was small.
Too thin to bite. Too fast to be bitten.
It had no memories. It needed none.
It woke. It hunted. It hid.
It slept, if fear allowed.
The abyss shaped her with teeth and scars.
Taught her there was no future for the slow, no rest for the living.
And yet… one night was different.
The air trembled.
Not with the growl of a predator, nor the scream of prey.
A new sound. High-pitched. Rhythmic.
As if something were laughing.
She froze.
She was hungry—always.
But something—a throb behind her skull, a twitch in her bones—held her still.
She didn't understand laughter.
But something in it burned.
Not fear.
Not hunger.
Doubt.
For the first time, she didn't follow the scent of blood.
She followed the sound.
Between rocks and roots she crept, leaving the safety of what she knew, drawn toward the danger of what she didn't.
And when she saw the tall, fire-bearing figures—humans—she didn't run.
She watched.
They spoke.
Shouted.
Laughed.
One kicked an empty nest. Another set fire to bones.
She didn't understand their words.
But she understood the look.
Contempt.
That was her first language.
When the laughter came again, it didn't awaken curiosity.
It stirred heat beneath her ribs. Something nameless.
Not hunger.
Rage.
And then—
A scream.
Not hers.
Not human.
From behind the rocks came the shriek of another—small, thin, fast like her. One of her kind.
Then another.
And another.
The humans had found a nest.
Her nest.
Their torches lit the crevice with cruel firelight. Blades flashed. Bones cracked.
Siblings—brothers? sisters? words she didn't know—were pulled out, stomped, burned.
A voice barked something.
A soldier laughed as he crushed a half-formed body under his boot.
She couldn't move.
Her claws trembled against the stone.
The warmth in her chest grew hotter. Wilder.
She didn't know why.
She didn't have the words.
Only this:
"They laugh... while we die."
Her eyes, pale as moonlit rot, locked onto them.
This time, she didn't want to watch.
She wanted to hurt.
She didn't know it yet, but her first thought had been born.