Behind his ears, new slits opened with a sensation like being cut—gills, but more elaborate than his usual ones. These were edged with what looked like silver filigree, decorative and functional all at once.

Tears were streaming down his face uncontrollably, but when they hit the water, they didn’t dissolve. Instead, they solidified, transforming into perfect black pearls that sank to the bottom of the tub with soft plinks.

"What’s... happening... to me?"

The question came out between ragged gasps. His hands rose to touch his face. It still looked like human hands, but there were scales above it. His fingers encountered something on his forehead that definitely hadn’t been there before.

Neville froze, his breath catching. Slowly but carefully, he traced the shape of the protrusion. It was hard, textured like stone but warm. The structure branched and curved in patterns that his trembling fingers mapped with growing horror.

It felt like corals from the seashore, intricately growing on his forehead in a crown-like pattern.

"No," he whispered. "What the heck is this?!"

Another wave of pain cut off his thoughts.

The apartment’s environmental controls, already working overtime, kicked into another gear. The ventilation system’s fans whirred desperately, trying to dissipate the pheromones that were pouring out of him. Even through his pain-hazed mind, Neville could smell it.

If any alpha within a ten-block radius had a functioning nose, they would be going absolutely crazy right now.

Time lost all meaning.

He floated in and out of consciousness, each wave blurring into the next. Somewhere between the pain and the haze, Neville groaned.

"Damn it—! Ugh, this can’t be happening again..."

His voice cracked, hoarse from exhaustion. He tried to move but felt like his limbs were filled with sand.

Then the next wave of dizziness hit.

"Fck this world, fck this body, and f*ck—" He stopped mid-curse to gasp for air, then switched languages halfway through. "kuso... mierda... son of a—!"

Then, he suddenly remembered.

"Hana would’ve smacked me for that one," he muttered weakly, "and probably made me wash my mouth out with soap."

He buried his face in his arm, groaning. "This is all the system’s fault. The system, and the idiot who owned this body before me... and this damn world with its broken timeline."

Neville exhaled shakily, the edge of his curses fading into a bitter laugh. "I swear, if I die after this and wake up one more time in the middle of someone else’s mess, I’m suing the heavens."

When the pain finally began to subside, Neville had no more curses left to give.

The agony receded, leaving him gasping in the water with shed scales and blood and black pearls. His new tail hung limp over the edge of the tub, too heavy to lift. The coral crown on his forehead pulsed with a faint glow that he could see reflected in the water’s surface, painting his surroundings in eerie blue-green light.

"I didn’t die," he mumbled to himself, the words slurring together. His tongue felt too thick in his mouth, his fangs getting in the way. "That’s good. Not dying is definitely good. Not dying is... is..."

He lost his train of thought somewhere between "definitely" and "good." Exhaustion crashed over him harder, his body finally giving up the fight to stay conscious.

"If this is what full transformation feels like for mermaids," he mumbled, his voice barely above a whisper, "no wonder I’ve never met another one. They probably all died or were waiting to die. Maybe they went insane. Or both."

His eyelids grew heavy. Through the gaps in the curtains, faint moonlight painted silver stripes across the floor.

The Full Moon was complete.

But why was there no notification?

As consciousness faded, Neville’s last thought was a prayer to whatever deity watched over transmigrated souls that he would wake up in human form again, that he could go back to work right away.

His eyes finally closed, his breathing evening out into the deep rhythm of exhausted sleep. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Unfortunately, he didn’t wake up in human form.

...

In the absolute silence of the penthouse, bathed in the cool, blue light of Xylos’s twin moons, Grayson slammed to the floor. An excruciating, burning pain ripped through his chest.

His eyes began wildly changing from human-shaped into animal slits. He tried to struggle and stand up to move somewhere in comfort, but there was another burning feeling coming from the back of his neck.

He was unaware of the black mole-like dot on his neck, burning red like an infection. His body temperature rapidly rose, making the air around him feel thin and cold as slick sweat beaded and streamed across his skin.

He groaned, a sound that quickly dissolved into a ragged, guttural growl.

Then, scales with an obsidian sheen broke through the flesh of his arms and chest, climbing to his face. The groans intensified and turned into a desperate, strangled roar that was no longer human.

A massive, coiling shadow swelled, filling the space with the dark silhouette of a nightmare creature, its roar tearing silently at the heavens in a pure, agonizing scream of release. It thrashed around, ready to shatter the glass and wreak havoc on the world below.

But it was cut short. The monstrous shadow began shrinking, collapsing in on itself. It shrank and shrank until only a small, bewildered figure remained.

Gone was the massive, majestic beast. Only a juvenile, pitiful thing that could only writhe and squirm like a worm across the expensive marble.

As the physical pain finally subsided, a purely primal instinct took over. The beast subconsciously followed a familiar scent, a lingering trace of a pheromone hidden amongst the pile of microchips.

Somehow, it was etched and the most prominent in his memory than any other that he had. He coiled and sniffed the pheromones on the chip until it was all gone. Restless, he began to slither around, abandoning his penthouse, driven by nothing but the desperate need to find the main source of the pheromones.

His Mate.