Divine Singularity || Reader x Murder Drones

I

Once again, you found yourself stranded in that liminal space between dreams and nightmares, where the familiar became alien, and the shadows—as dark as spilled ink—coiled around you like a living thing.

Your vision swam, fractured and hazy, as though you were peering through a fractured pane of glass. Shapes loomed in the distance, half-formed and indecipherable, shifting like shadows cast by a fire that you couldn't see. The void around you pulsed faintly, a rhythm without melody, like a slow, erratic heartbeat.

You tried to move, willing your limbs to obey, but they felt weighed down by invisible chains, as though the very air here had turned viscous, resisting every effort to break free. The fog seemed to breathe around you, its tendrils twisting and curling like the fingers of some unseen hand, reaching for you, probing, testing. You called out for help, called out the name of the girl who had taken you in. Your voice—it was warped and distant, like a whisper carried across a great chasm... or a monster pretending to be human.

You curled up into a ball instinctively as the worst pain you had ever felt welled up in your back, fogging your mind momentarily with the pain as you stumbled onward, your every motion met with resistance. The fog seemed to thicken the more you moved, curling tighter and tighter, and with every passing second the pain got worse, almost as if something was tearing you apart from the inside.

The back of your uniform ripped, tearing a hole, and your casing began to crack. The little spiderwebs that showed the damage grew and grew, till eventually your worker shell had given up, and fully caved under whatever was trying to pry itself out of you.

You screamed—as loud as you could, even though sound didn't exist here. You screamed and screamed till your voice box gave out, and even then you still strained it to its limit as whatever was coming out had finally squeezed free, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.

Then the pain stopped.

The fog receded slightly, just enough to reveal a shape looming over you. You couldn't see the details, but it wasn't a drone, nor human. It looked more like Cyn's true, monstrous form, but different at the same time. Not metal and chitin, but flesh and feathers.

And then you blinked, and suddenly you were not watching from below anymore, but above. It took a second to adjust and gain your bearings because of what just happened. There was a figure beneath you. It lay motionless, sprawled on the ground like a discarded puppet, its limbs splayed at unnatural angles. The faint flicker of a dying light came from its visor, pulsing weakly like the last gasp of a dying star. It was a drone, and unlike last time, you were beginning to realize what was happening. Looking down at yourself confirmed your fears, and you felt your heartbeat pick up.

you recognized instantly that it was your own body that you were now hovering above. Once again, you were this monster—this amalgamation, in a body that wasn't yours. This monster, this thing, it wasn't who you were. You were a drone, you were life, not whatever this was!

This couldn't be you.

You were a drone.

This couldn't be you.

Even though the sensation of real blood felt so right.

This couldn't be you.

Your body was the one just below you, the one you were currently slithering the rest of your monstrous proportions out of.

This... this couldn't be you.

This couldn't be your body—this monster that reminded you of Cyn.