He perceived it...
....No, to call it "seeing" was a fundamental error, a pathetic approximation forced upon a consciousness stripped of all the faculties that made such a concept meaningful. It was a sensation that bypassed hollow eyes that did not exist, searing itself directly into the core of what—what was left of him?
An abyss. An infinite, all-consuming expanse of nothing that was paradoxically, terrifyingly full. It was a darkness that did not merely lack light; it was a tangible entity, a suffocating blanket of oblivion that stretched into an eternity his mind could not hope nor dare to measure.
—Where was this? When was this?
The questions were meaningless, juvenile protests against a reality that had long since discarded such trivial frameworks.
A violent, conceptual shake—a spasm of pure will against the stagnant void. He forced his awareness forward. Moving was not walking, nor flying. It was a wretched, laborious act, like trying to swim through a universe of solidified shadow, each inch of progress an immense effort against a resistance that sought to digest him into its eternal stillness. The weight was immense, a pressure threatening to crush a form that had already been erased.
—A form that was gone. Arms, legs, a chest to draw breath—all were memories belonging to a ghost. So how could he see? How could he feel this impossible weight? The contradiction was a white-hot needle lodged in his thoughts.
—Irrelevant. An irritating distraction.
The need was everything. It was a screaming void within the greater void, a missing piece that screamed its absence with a violence that dwarfed the silence around him. It was a craving, a desperation, a hunger—not for sustenance, but for completion. A drive to lash out, to violate the stillness, to seize the intangible something that pulsed just beyond the edge of his perception, the very reason for this agonizing sentience.
To grasp it. To clutch it and never let go. To make it his, to fill the hollow ache with its truth.
—But.
The instinct flared and died, quashed by a cold, dawning realization. A truth as absolute as the darkness itself.
His reach was too short. His time had not yet come to unveil it all.
This was not the place for acquisition. This was the place for waiting. And so, he would wait. Festering in the tar-like dark, until the moment he was permitted to grasp that something.
———————————————————————————————
Lacerta: ["——Haahkk..."]
In the space between one death and the next, consciousness was forcibly dragged back into its vessel. His eyelids peeled open, not with a gentle flutter, but with the jarring finality of a shutter snapping a photograph.
The image captured was one of oppressive green and choking humidity—a jungle, a sea of colossal trees whose canopy devoured the sky.
A phantom sensation, the memory of that all-consuming 'it' from the black void, still clung to the edges of his mind like a venomous residue. But that was a distant, abstract terror. The immediate, screaming inconsistency was something else entirely.
Pain. Where was the pain? There should have been pain.
A symphony of agony should have been screaming from every fiber of his being, a roaring crescendo conducted by the impact that had surely—surely—shattered him.
He knew it. He could see the proof. The earth beneath him was marred, a grave-shaped indentation carved into the soil.
A testament to his own demise. A crater left by a body that had met the ground with terminal velocity.
That was the absolute, undeniable truth of what had just happened. And yet, and yet, and yet—
His gaze drifted downward, landing on an arm bent at an angle that defied nature, a grotesque parody of a limb with a shard of bone peeking through torn flesh. It was a sight that should have elicited screams, or panic, or at the very least, a nauseating lurch in his gut.
But there was nothing. Only a profound, unnerving calm. It was a sensation alien to him; a chilling serenity, an epiphany born in the abyss of death.
He understood. He understood, on a level that bypassed logic, that it would be alright.
That he would not die here.
That this end was not his end.
And so, the instant his perception fully acknowledged the ruin of his arm—
——the world seemed to hold its breath, and then bend to his will.
It was not healing. It was an undoing. The intense crunch of bone resetting, not with a healer's touch, but with the unnatural violence of a film played in reverse. Torn muscle fibers weaved themselves back together. Blood retreated into his skin as the wound sealed itself shut, leaving not even a scar behind. The impossible became reality.
Lacerta pushed himself onto his feet. A wave of vertigo washed over him, but it was suppressed by a newfound, chilling certainty.
His gaze was dragged, locked, and seized by the cause of it all.
There, coiled before him, was a calamity given form. A monstrous serpent, its emerald scales shimmering with a sinister light. A single, spiraling horn grew from the center of its skull, a declaration of its supremacy. Its coils were thicker than the countless trees surrounding them, its length an obscene measure of primordial power.
Its maw tore open, wider, and wider still, unleashing not a hiss, but—
Snake Monster: ["——!!"]
—a shriek that tore at the very fabric of the air, a physical wave of pressure that sent trees groaning in protest and the world itself trembling in fear.
A single, sharp intake of breath. That was all Lacerta allowed himself—a fleeting anchor in the storm of sensation raging within him.
The feeling coursing through his veins was overwhelming, a perverse ecstasy born from the searing heat of a death he had just narrowly avoided. It was a drug, potent and terrifying, screaming at him to move, to act, to lash out. Yet, he was not so foolish as to succumb to its sweet poison. To rush in blindly was to spit upon the second chance he'd been granted.
[Lacerta: "What was that just now? That… 'perception' It saved me. That much is clear. But what is the cost? My body is restored, wounds gone as if they were never there. But... is that enough?"]
His thoughts spun, a frantic calculus of survival.
Flight? His body was whole, but could these legs outrun a predator of this scale?
Combat? A fanciful notion. What were the odds this beast hunted alone? To win here might only be to attract a larger, hungrier swarm lying in wait.
His hesitation was a luxury the world was not prepared to grant him.
As if to mock his internal deliberation, the serpent uncoiled. It was not a movement of muscle and scale, but the release of a colossal spring, a stored cataclysm unleashed. The forest air screamed as its maw yawned open—a gateway to a dark, digestive oblivion, more than wide enough to consume him and the space he occupied.
[Lacerta: "…Strange."]
The word was a soft murmur, a quiet exhale lost in the thunderous approach. The paralyzing fear that had frozen him before was… diminished. Not gone, but mastered, compartmentalized into a cold, observing corner of his mind.
....Why?
His body moved before the question finished forming. A simple bend of the knees, and the earth cratered beneath his feet. He launched sideways, a blur of motion, as the beast's crushing bite snapped shut on empty air. The force of it was monumental, kicking up a volcanic plume of soil and shattered stone that choked the clearing.
He landed, his senses screaming.
[Lacerta: "It's… so.. slow?"]
The thought was absurd, heretical.
Was it just playing with him? Toying with its meal?
He bent his knees again, propelling himself vertically this time as the massive head recoiled for another strike. He soared over the scaled snout, the stench of rot and venom filling his nostrils.
And the attack was not over. A shadow fell from above—not the head, but the whip-crack descent of the tail's bladed tip, intent on swatting him from the sky. A midair twist, a contortion that should have been impossible, and he felt the wind of its passage tear at his clothes.
He landed, not on the ground, but against the rough bark of a towering tree, crouched like some strange arboreal creature.
[Lacerta: "Is it just weak? Then why did those men flee in such terror? But they, too… they were so sluggish…"]
The pieces clicked into place with a resonance that shook his very soul.
[Lacerta: "Ah—"]
A revelation, cold and undeniable.
It wasn't that his enemies were slow exactly.
—It's that he was simply much faster.