THE SAAEE FRAGMENT: The Birth of a Crouus

She hit the massive pool of Cronux beneath the mountain. It swallowed her whole.

Saaee tried to scream. Cronux filled her mouth.

She tried to breathe. Cronux entered her lungs.

She thrashed in the glowing dark, her hands clawing for stone, for air, for anything real. The liquid light dragged at her limbs as if it had weight. As if it wanted her lower. As if it had been waiting.

Then the visions came.

She saw herself dragged by the raiders, bound in rope, carried east across the dunes until her name was beaten out of her. She saw herself die beneath the mountain, lungs filled with light, her body never found. She saw herself return to her tribe empty-handed and ashamed. She saw herself old, bent, and forgotten, telling children of the night she ran while others died.

She saw herself with a child in her arms. She saw herself burying that child. She saw herself kneeling before a Crosuu. She saw herself becoming Crouus. She saw herself worshipped. She saw herself feared. She saw herself cruel. She saw herself merciful. She saw herself hunted. She saw herself hunting.

A slave. A corpse. A mother. A coward. A queen. A Crouus. A monster.

Every possible Saaee screamed inside her skull.

They were possibilities from lives that could have been.

Cronux did not show her what would happen. It showed her what could happen.

And there were too many.

Too many lives. Too many deaths. Too many selves clawing for the same body.

Saaee sank.

Her body convulsed beneath the glowing surface. Her fingers tore against the stone floor. Her mouth opened again, and this time no sound came out.

She saw the raiders killing her. She saw herself killing them.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Saaee’s eyes opened beneath the Cronux.

Something inside her stopped begging.

She drove her fingers into the stone and pulled.

Her nails split. Her palms opened. Her lungs burned with impossible light.

But she pulled.

The Cronux moved through her wounds like cold fire. It entered every cut, every tear, every broken place. It did not heal her gently. It filled her like something claiming an empty vessel.

Her skin hardened, darkened, then bloomed with turquoise beneath the surface. The wounds across her body sealed, but not as ordinary flesh. Something new formed over them: smooth, living, stone-like, flawless and terrible.

Her hair paled from root to end.

Black became ash. Ash became silver. Silver became white.

The full fragment continues in the downloadable PDF.