Chapter 2: Dreams of Hunger and Stone

The river, swollen with spring rains, hissed quietly as it brushed against the rocks. Mist hung low over the water like a mourning veil. On a smooth gray stone in a pool downstream from the shattered otter home, the serpent lay coiled.

Serathis.

Ancient. Star-fed. Watching.

The morning sun soaked into his scale-plated body, slow and steady. Blood had dried in fine lines along his neck and side, where claws and teeth had opened shallow wounds the night before. Minor things. Flesh would knit. Venom would burn through what remained.

Time was catching up to him, but he was not weak.

His coils tensed and relaxed in rhythm. His tongue flicked the air. He tasted the world. River silt. Bark. Metal. Duskwood pollen. The sour trace of old pain.

And memory.

He dreamt.

He could not remember how many summers had passed since the comet tore across the heavens. How many cycles of the moon had waxed and waned above the rivers and forests of this world. Yet the night of that celestial fire still burned clear in his mind.

The meteor had come like a god’s black blade, splitting the sky with a burning trail that cleaved the stars themselves. It was no ordinary celestial visitor-its tail flickered with shadows, its core whispered of hunger and cold voids. When it passed closest, the river beneath it had shimmered obsidian, as if the night had spilled into the water.

Serathis drank deeply from those waters, waters touched by dark matter older than time. He swam in their ink-black depths, inhaled their strange poison, and from that moment, his soul had shifted.

Something ancient and terrible had awakened inside him.

He was no longer merely serpent; he was something more.

A gift. A curse. An infection.

He remembered his youth… a time when instinct ruled, and the world was a tangled web of prey and predator. But the meteor had changed everything. It gave him names for the stars, a hunger beyond flesh, and a cruelty not born of need but of will.

He remembered the first time he shaped a kill with malice, the first fear he tasted from a trembling vole. The dark matter burned beneath his scales like living fire, a constant reminder of what he had become.

After almost three hundred summers, he had far outlived nature’s intent. He seethed at time itself, how dare it sap his vitality and mind. Reduce him back into a wretch of instinct, devoid of thought. He tried to relive past conquests, but only managed whispers of memories, old pain, old voices.

A scream.

A mother.

A child.

But it did not matter. He would hunt. Again.

A shadow passed over the stone.

Serathis paused. His eyes, slitted and cold, narrowed toward the sky. Something moved above the mist.

The eagle came like a thunderclap, wings spread wide, talons outstretched in a lethal arc. The air shrieked around it as it dove, feathers ruffling with savage speed. Its eyes, fierce and unyielding, locked onto Serathis’s back.

Before the serpent could coil fully to strike, the eagle’s claws dug deep. Dagger-sharp talons raked through scales and flesh, tearing a cruel line along his flank. Serathis bucked hard, muscle snapping with tension. The sudden assault rocked him, but he twisted sharply, his tail lashing like a whip.

His jaws snapped shut on feathered flesh, sinking venomous fangs into the eagle’s wing. The bird screamed, a wild, piercing cry that shattered the morning stillness. Wings beat madly in a desperate thrash for freedom, but Serathis held tight for a heartbeat longer.

Then, unexpectedly, the eagle released him.

Serathis was flung into the air, spinning out of control. Time fractured, feathers blurred, talons scraping the rock’s edge, before he crashed onto a jagged stone, bone and breath breaking violently.

Pain exploded through his body, sharp and relentless. Blood welled freely where the stone had bitten deep, his side and head raw and ragged. He lay stunned, the world tilting with every ragged breath, each one a knife through his ribs.

Above him, the eagle circled once, the wild cry fading as it disappeared into the misty trees.

Slowly, Serathis forced himself upright, every movement agony. His tongue flicked, tasting blood, earth, and the bitter sting of loss.

He was badly wounded, far more than before, but still alive.

The hunt was far from over.

His tongue flicked. New scent.

Earth. Bark. Nut-shells. Rodent-musk.

He followed.

Through roots, under thorns, into the dry dark of a narrow den. Warm. Close. Easy.

A chipmunk home.

They shrieked and scattered.

He struck fast. Two, maybe three, crushed in his fangs.

One escaped.

It bolted through a crack in the roots, streaked with panic and dust, and vanished into the wild.

He did not chase it.

He fed on the rest.

He slept.

And again, he dreamt. But not of conquests and glory. But of loss, of the inevitable.

He tasted the air.

No sound came from his mouth. Only breath. Only venom.

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