Chapter 2: The bedroom reeks of sweat and pheromones as Anya arches off the bed, her fingers elongating into claws while N's dark gift rewrites her DNA - Seraphina realizes with dawning horror that he's not just consuming women, he's turning them into something new.
The scent of Anya’s perfume hit Seraphina the moment the apartment door swung open, but it was wrong now. Cloying. Thickened by something underneath it, something metallic and sweet, like rust and spoiled honey. The soft lighting she remembered had been replaced by the harsh, clinical glare of the overhead fixture. The sanctuary was gone.
“Anya?” Seraphina’s voice was a low press in the heavy air.
No answer. Just a sound. A wet, rhythmic click, like a tongue working against the roof of a mouth, followed by a soft, tearing sigh.
She moved through the living room, her sneakers silent on the polished floor. The door to the bedroom was ajar. The hum she’d half-imagined before was real here, a low-frequency vibration that she felt in her teeth more than heard.
She pushed the door open.
Anya was on the bed. Not in it, but on top of the rumpled white duvet, her body contorted in a way that defied anatomy. Her back was arched so severely her head and heels were the only points of contact with the mattress, her spine a taut, straining bow. She was naked. Her skin, once smooth, was a landscape of turmoil.
Things moved beneath the surface. Not muscles twitching. These were larger, slower, like fists kneading dough from the inside. They pulsed with a dull, grayish light, visible through her flesh. One swelled just below her collarbone, a lump the size of a lemon, traveling slowly down her ribcage before subsiding. Another bulged in her thigh, distorting the shape of her quadricep.
“He’s… here,” Anya whispered. Her voice was a ragged thing, stripped of its earlier pride, reduced to raw need. Her eyes were wide, pupils blown, fixed on the ceiling but seeing something else entirely. “In the… wires. In the blood.”
Seraphina’s own blood went cold. She took a step closer, her reporter’s mind fighting to catalog the horror, to find the pattern in the madness. “Anya, what’s happening to you?”
Anya’s head lolled toward the sound. A string of saliva stretched from her lip to her shoulder. She didn’t seem to recognize Seraphina. “The garden… he’s planting his garden.”
A sharp, dry crack cut the air. Anya’s body jolted. Her right shoulder blade shifted under the skin, pushing outwards at a new, sharper angle. She let out a gasp that was half pain, half ecstasy.
“It doesn’t… hurt,” she panted, contradicting the tears tracking through the sweat on her temples. “It’s just… making room. For more of him.”
Seraphina’s gaze swept the room. The photos on the wall—Anya laughing with friends, her face bright and normal—seemed like artifacts from a dead civilization. Her eyes caught on the bedside table. The small, dark object N had given her. It was a book, bound in what looked like rough, dark leather. It was open. The pages weren’t paper. They were thin, translucent membrane, and the script wasn’t ink. It pulsed with the same faint, gray light as the things moving under Anya’s skin.
She took another step, reaching for it. Her fingers were inches from the cover when Anya’s hand shot out, faster than anything human should be able to move in its condition. Her fingers clamped around Seraphina’s wrist. The grip was immense, crushing. The bones in Seraphina’s arm ground together.
“Don’t touch it,” Anya hissed, her face suddenly lucid, her eyes blazing with a possessive fury. Her strength was impossible. “It’s mine. He gave it to me. It’s how he… prepares the soil.”
The pressure increased. Seraphina gritted her teeth against a cry. She could feel the individual tendons in Anya’s hand, hard as steel cables.
“Anya, you’re breaking my arm,” she managed, her voice tight.
The words seemed to register. The fury in Anya’s eyes flickered, replaced by a flicker of the woman she’d been. Confusion. Fear. Her grip loosened a fraction.
In that moment, Seraphina yanked her arm back, stumbling away from the bed. Her wrist throbbed, already purpling.
Anya’s body convulsed again. A series of pops, like knuckles cracking, echoed from her torso. She cried out, a full-throated scream this time, as her ribcage visibly expanded, the bones creaking as they repositioned themselves. The growths beneath her skin swarmed, converging on her core, pulsing in a synchronous, hungry rhythm.
“He’s coming,” Anya sobbed, her body writhing, the bed frame groaning in protest. “He needs me to be ready. He needs a vessel.”
Seraphina backed toward the door, her heart hammering against her ribs. This wasn’t just obsession. This was ingestion. Consumption. N wasn’t just changing these women; he was using them to change himself, to build that imposingly broad frame, and whatever else was growing. He was using them as raw material.
The hum in the room intensified, focusing around the pulsing book on the nightstand. The light from its pages brightened, casting shifting, organic shadows on the walls.
Anya began to chant his name, each repetition a gasp between the cracks and shifts of her own skeleton. “N… N… N…”
Seraphina didn’t wait to see what happened when the chant was complete. She turned and ran, the image of Anya’s transforming body, the sound of her breaking bones, and the feel of that impossible grip burning itself into her memory. She hit the street at a sprint, the cool night air doing nothing to cleanse the feeling of violation, the scent of rust and honey clinging to her clothes, to her skin, to the inside of her lungs.
He was planting his garden. And she had just seen what kind of seed he used.