There's a hunger that doesn't stem from the stomach. It's not physical or even instinctual. It grows when silence stretches too long—when your body heals faster than it should, when sleep becomes shallow, and your vision sharpens beyond what feels natural.
That's the hunger I woke up with the morning after the culvert incident, not for food, nor flesh, but for answers—or maybe just for witness.
The church was quiet. Marin had already left.
She pinned a note to the front altar—three clipped lines written in her clean, almost surgical handwriting: "Checking the firehouse. Will be back before the second sun arc. Don't follow." I folded the note and slipped it into the inside pocket of my jacket without a second thought.
Then I sat down beneath the broken stained-glass archway and tried to breathe. It didn't feel like my lungs were filling properly. They were too tight, too shallow—like I was borrowing someone else's breath.
I stood up and moved to the stone sink behind the pulpit. I turned the faucet off out of habit—no water, of course. Instead, I stared at my reflection in the burnished steel and didn't recognize what looked back. My face was still mine, mostly, but the lines were sharper.
My cheekbones were more prominent, and my eyes were darker, not in color, but in weight. It was as if something behind them had begun to watch me. I raised a hand to my jaw; the bone beneath felt dense, thicker than it used to be. Not swollen, not inflamed—just structured. More intentional.
Since the tunnels, I had only consumed once—one bite of raw meat taken from a mutant cat-dog hybrid that had wandered too close to the chapel's eastern trapline. But I hadn't felt the usual rush: no skill acquisition, no flash of memory—only heat.
And then… nothing. Just the lingering taste, as if it had been digested before I swallowed. Like something inside me was preempting my hunger.
The journal entries for the past two days had become messy, not in terms of grammar, but in tone. They felt detached, more analytical than I remembered writing.
Day 20: Behavioral pattern shift noted.
Gluttony no longer reacts solely to conscious feeding; passive absorption is possible—no fatigue post-engagement. Reflexes stable; speech patterns untouched. Possible secondary awakening underway. Implication: hunger is changing—not growing, but deepening.
I didn't know what that meant—not yet. But I felt it. Every time I sat still for too long, every time I let my mind wander, something stirred just beneath my thoughts. I spent the next hour rechecking the basement stock. Taking inventory wasn't just about supplies anymore; it was about distraction.
I counted water tabs, cleaned tools, sharpened three bone spikes, and tested their balance. But nothing felt right.
My hands were moving, my mind was moving, but I wasn't in control. There was a gap, a sliver of space between what I felt and what I was.
That's when I noticed the sound, not from outside or inside, but below—deep, dull, and slow, like something breathing from a hundred feet beneath the earth. It wasn't aggressive or loud, just consistent—like a heartbeat muffled through stone. And worse than the sound itself was the fact that I could hear it at all.
No one should be able to hear something like that—not unless they were meant to. I didn't tell Marin when she returned. She looked tired, with mud on her boots.
Her coat smelled of wet firewood and rust. She didn't speak right away; instead, she handed me a folded map marked with a red grease pencil.
"Another clean site," she said. "Same pattern?" She nodded. "Fresh supplies. No decay. Neatly folded linens in the back room.
A message carved into the stair railing." "What did it say?" She hesitated, then replied, "Cleanliness is next to godliness." That night, I sat alone in the choir loft, staring out through the gaps in the boarded window at the city below. I watched light play across the clouds, the pale shimmer of the ruined skyline, and the soft flicker of some distant, unattended fire.
But I didn't feel present. My thoughts kept circling back to the sound from beneath the chapel—the pressure of it, the pull.
I fell asleep sitting upright and dreamed for the first time in weeks—not of people or war, but of a mouth, circular and endless, carved into the ceiling of a vast obsidian dome—teeth of glass and bone, breath like gravity.
It didn't call my name; it simply opened. And when it did, I felt myself move toward it, piece by piece. I woke, gasping, sweat cold down my spine. My throat was dry—not from thirst, but from emptiness.
I didn't write that day; I didn't speak a word. I went to the basement, locked the door behind me, and stared at the wall for nearly three hours—not thinking, just waiting.
For what, I wasn't sure. That evening, Marin finally broke the silence. "
You've changed," she said, not accusingly, nor with surprise, just stating a fact. I didn't deny it.
"Are you still you?" she asked next. I didn't answer because I didn't know. Silence felt safer than pretending.
Day 21: Mutation may no longer be conditional. Identity boundaries are weakening. Dreamscapes are forming. Inner hunger is no longer directed outward; it craves presence, not flesh. Gluttony has begun watching back. I don't know who I'm becoming, but it reminds me—and that feels worse.