thief of fate-Chapter 78: Transform into a human

There was no clear path. Only darkness... alive, writhing like a crawling creature, pulsing with a warm heat. The air was suffocating with the scent of mold, laced with the ash of old corpses, scattered here and there.

Irkalos, despite the might of his presence, felt something stuck in his chest. It wasn’t fear, but an anxious anticipation... he knew he was about to enter something he couldn’t return from.

Beside him, Axel walked with calm, steady steps, showing no hesitation. His gaze was neither on Irkalos, nor on their surroundings...

"How much time is left?" Irkalos asked in a low voice.

Axel didn’t answer, but stopped at a wide opening, from whose ceiling black roots dangled, writhing like whips. From within, a faint light seeped.

Then came the laugh...

A laugh that wasn’t a laugh, but a demonic wail, coming from the depths of a woman who bore a history of death in her chest.

"Oh, here he is... the Predator."

"Mother of Curses..." Irkalos whispered, his legs resisting movement.

"I’ve heard much about you." she said, her voice flowing like a thread of poison, dancing through the senses and sending shivers.

She approached. Her long fingers, tipped with fine claws, fluttered in front of his chest without touching him.

"Your body..." she murmured with sinful admiration, "Made to be broken and rebuilt... over and over."

Irkalos stared at her, not afraid but tense. He knew her existence defied any logic or law in the world.

"Is he ready?" she asked Axel without looking at him.

Axel replied without hesitation, "He doesn’t need to be ready. He was made for this."

She chuckled again, and this time the laugh was closer to a terrifying sob.

"Then, proceed, Irkalos. Inside."

She gestured behind her, where another circular opening emerged from the ground, surrounded by glowing red engravings. Inside it, a whirlpool of black liquid, like living mercury, devouring light without reflecting anything.

"What is this?" Irkalos asked, his voice steady but deeply uncertain.

"This is what will change you," she replied with a smile that revealed small fangs behind her lips. "You’ll enter, and we’ll begin the process."

"What kind of process?"

Here, she fell silent for a moment. Then she approached him and whispered:

"I’ll make you into something that has never existed before."

Irkalos looked at Axel, waiting for confirmation... anything. But Axel remained silent, like a stone.

I’m not a coward... but this isn’t a fight. This is something else.

He stepped forward. Then again.

"I will not become a slave," he said as a warning, without turning back.

She laughed again, but not mockingly this time. Rather, with admiration.

"You will not be a slave, but a curse walking on two legs."

And without another word, Irkalos leapt into the whirlpool.

The moment he entered, everything changed.

The world tore apart.

Mother of Curses watched the engravings around the hole glow, dance, and shift.

"It will take longer than expected," she said to Axel.

"That’s fine. As long as he survives."

"He won’t come out the same as he entered, Axel. You know that, don’t you?"

Axel nodded silently.

"And he won’t obey you as he used to."

He looked at her finally, for the first time since they arrived.

"I don’t need his obedience. I need his presence."

She smiled viciously.

---

A change began in Irkalos in that place

There was no ground, no sky. Only a thick fluid surrounding him, enveloping without suffocating. No sound, no time.

Then the sensation began.

At first, it was like something crawling under his skin. Then it turned to burning... then to tearing.

He screamed.

But he couldn’t hear his voice.

And he began to see visions.

A small child screaming in the dark. A man with a burnt face laughing as he cuts up a corpse. Creatures with a thousand eyes floating around him, tearing out his heart and putting it back.

These are not my memories... these are memories of something else... or curses I’ve been forced to swallow?

"Do not resist." came her voice, in his mind.

She was with him.

"Let the pain split you. If you resist... you’ll melt."

"Why... why me?"

"Because you’re the only one who can survive."

Then the changes began...

The light wasn’t real, and the darkness wasn’t salvation.

Inside the whirlpool, when Mother of Curses ordered him to move forward, Irkalos didn’t expect to be stripped of his self before his body. He thought the transformation would be external... a change of shape, an enhancement of strength. But what he received... was a dismantling of the very essence.

At first, it all began with a sting.

As if a slight warmth tickled his limbs. Then, in moments, the warmth turned to embers, and the embers to fire.

His skin peeled.

His nails shattered, then regrew—human, soft, weak.

His bones shifted, as if a giant hand was rearranging his structure from within.

He screamed.

But the sound that came out was not that of a Predator.

It was the voice of a man... fragile.

What is happening... why am I being stripped like this? Why do I feel like everything I was... is being buried alive?

His guts twisted. His lungs shrank, as if they had never known real air before. His heart? It beat... for the first time. It beat with an unbearable force, as if every pulse was an attempt at rebellion.

Then came the worst part.

The skin... human. Warm. Too alive.

The pores... breathing, and hurting.

The nerves... as if they’d been reconnected with a hammer.

He didn’t know humans could feel this much pain just by being alive.

"Enough..." he murmured, but he couldn’t move.

Then came her voice, in his mind:

"You now taste their truth... true pain. There is no pain with power. Pain comes with weakness... the weakness you chose."

"I didn’t choose this..." he screamed into the void.

"You chose to know. And this is the price."

The memories exploded.

Scenes of humans screaming before him. Faces torn apart. Blood spilled.

In the past, he felt nothing. They were just targets.

But now... every scream echoed inside him.

Every eye that pleaded before death became a ghost whispering in his ear.

This... this is what they felt? All of them? This is what it means to be human? To break, to regret, to feel everything and be unable to stop it?

He fell to his knees in the inner darkness.

He was naked.

Not of clothes.

But of every armor he carried. Of every layer crafted by the cruelty of his race and the laws of survival.

Irkalos... was a man.

Then, suddenly, everything stopped.

The heat died down.

The screams silenced.

He opened his eyes.

And saw his hands.

Soft... with human fingers, with palm lines drawn in precise detail.

He didn’t feel his strength. There was no comforting weight in his muscles, no pulsing power in his bones.

He was fragile.

And yet, he was... alive.

He felt the air enter his lungs. Not as a gas. But as life.

He lay down.

The darkness was no longer terrifying.

It became familiar... like a new womb he was born from.

He closed his eyes.

And wept.

Not with sound, but with tears.

Is this... what it means to be human? To feel everything this deeply? Even pain... has become sacred?

Then, amidst his tears, he heard the whisper of Mother of Curses from afar:

"Welcome to the true hell, Irkalos... the hell of those forced to feel."

The body decomposes.

The muscles tear, re-form.

The bones break, melt, are rebuilt.

The screams became part of the fabric.

Then... a strange peace.

No pain. No sensation.

Only... existence.

Irkalos didn’t know if he was still himself.

Then came the voice: 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

"It is done."

---

He emerged from the hole.

Steam rising from his body, and new skin glowing.

He wore nothing, but the air did not touch his skin.

His face? Not as it was.

His eyes remained the same.

He stood.

Mother of Curses watched him, smiling the smile of a mother who saw her newborn.

"Look at you..." she said. "Beautiful... just as I imagined."

He looked at her, then at Axel.

"I..." his voice came out, but not as before.

"You are the beginning of the new generation of Arkanis, Irkalos," said Mother of Curses. "The generation that does not submit."

"I feel... hungry."

She chuckled.

"That’s natural."

Axel approached, staring at him without blinking.

"Do you remember who you were?"

Silence.

I am the Predator, the embodied horror that will destroy all.

We succeeded. But the price?...

He didn’t finish his thought.

Irkalos turned, cast one last look at the hole he emerged from.

Then sat down with difficulty, and touched his bare chest.

His skin was no longer stone-hard, but soft... human.

He looked at his hands, his fingers, his bones which seemed thinner, his muscles which were no longer tight dark masses but a familiar human shape.

He stood up, staggered slightly.

I’m... weaker. No doubt about it. Movement is heavier. The strength... lacking. If I fought my old self, I’d lose.

But still... there was something else.

He felt it as a flicker behind his eyes, a faint light in his chest.

He focused.

Something inside him... pulsing, not with body strength, but with sharp awareness.

The world around him seemed clearer. The sound of a drop falling from the distant ceiling, the vibration of the air with every breath, the heat of the ground beneath him...

But I... see more. Feel more. There’s... a new awareness.

He raised his hand to the wall, and touched it.

The cold transferred to him as truth, not as information. Emotions were no longer blurred. They were pure, painful, alive.