Nix tried her best to relax on the altar as her eyes followed the man who intended to sacrifice her. She didn’t fight the chains; whenever she did, they would grow tighter. If they slackened when she wasn’t fighting, then she would take as much length as she could for when the time was right.

K’tan was clearly put-off that she was being this calm. She was tempted to play into that. Maybe grin at him. Or laugh; she remembered that set people on edge back in the future.

But no, she was too busy listening to his hymn to bother with such self-satisfied luxuries.

It was something she’d heard before. Not since a few years before her death, but she did remember this sacrificial hymn being used while she was held in the Fleshsmiths’ sanctuary. They’d mostly used goats and sheep to enhance and cultivate one’s body and name, but there was no reason it couldn’t work with people, too.

She listened so she could learn. So she could remember the lyrics and intonations fully before she tossed the dice and discovered exactly what was growing in her chest. When she turned the tables on K’tan, she really wanted to flip them.

Hopefully, whatever the growth was, it could help her escape. If not, she was prepared to gamble only once more before she moved to more drastic measures.

Her sense followed the man as he circled the altar. She couldn’t pull away even if she wanted. Her Feat made sure she knew that K’tan was ready to die, and remained steady in his determination. If this was all there was to the base form of Zylth, then no wonder Tarchon had told her how pointless it was. Why would anyone prepare themselves to die just to be able to tell when others felt that way?

If it were a sense to feel when others were ready to kill, then Nix could see its worth… but to die? What use was that? Unless someone enacted self-sacrifice rituals… but who would ever do that? No cultist wanted to lose their own life. They were greedy and selfish by nature. All of them.

It didn’t take her long to get a feel for the hymn. It ebbed and flowed with an ethereal tune that K’tan butchered with his sub-par enunciation. Nix had heard it before, so once she’d heard enough, the sounds seemed to fill themselves in her mind.

She could continue wherever K’tan stopped.

Waiting until K’tan was above her head, she cracked ‘Ine’ ajar. Slowly, as to not alert the man who was preparing to kill her, she allowed the stinging of growth to warm her chest.

There was no point in waiting. Without knowing what the change did, she had to give herself some time before he brought the ritual to its closing tones. She needed that time to figure out if the mutation could help or not.

A loud crack rang through the chamber, and Nix stifled a scream. K’tan glanced at her with narrowed eyes, but continued his chanting.

It felt like her sternum had shattered. The central bone that connected her ribs crumbled and reformed as they made way for something new to take its place. Nix couldn’t move her arms, so she couldn’t move aside the robes to see what had grown in. She willed her gaze to pierce the fabric, so she could at least have some idea of what had happened.

There were no unnatural lumps where the pain had been. No new limb had sprouted from her chest, nor had anything else. Whatever her change was, it remained hidden beneath the fabric of her top.

Nix glared. Her gaze burned with effort as she felt for the change. What was it? Could it help? What if it was like the jelly her feet had become, and actively made living more difficult. What if her bone was replaced with something weak and fragile? Well, more fragile. She glared at her chest, determined to find out what exactly had been the cause of such intense pain. Her sight burned.

Then, Nix opened her eye.

There was another slight sting in her chest, but she paid it no mind. In an instant, she was bombarded with information she’d never had to process before. A hundred threads interwoven. She focused harder, and found each of those threads contained a thousand fibres.

The weight of her gaze intensified further, and suddenly a ring of fabric on her chest crumbled away.

Within that hole in her robe, sat a slender gem. Red like a ruby, but with the slightest tinge of violet, she had a crystal wedged in her chest just below where her collarbones met. She could barely see it where it was, but she didn’t miss the shift in its vibrant colour as her new sense moved to look upon herself.

Nix had a third eye.

She watched as the skin around the sides slid away into the rest of her chest. Eyelids that once blocked its sight, now gone.

The sight was nothing like that of her natural eyes. Everything was a vague reddish-purple monochrome. In almost every way, the sight seemed inferior to her eyes… until she focused. The moment her third eye glared at the ceiling above, it was like her sight had become that of an eagle. As she pressed on, her sight felt heavier, and she saw more. What was small, became clear. Her sight reached into the valleys and ridges of the metal’s engravings, letting her see in a way no microscope could.

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“What are you doing?” K’tan paused his chant to shout. “Stop it now.”

He pulled the sacrificial knife from its sheathe and placed it beneath her neck. She knew he wouldn’t do it. Not yet. The ritual wasn’t prepared enough for the sacrifice. If he killed her now, then all would be for naught.

But that did nothing to alleviate the instinctual fear of a sharp blade being pressed against her throat.

Glancing up, she discovered what K’tan had noticed. Wherever her eye observed, the ceiling seemed to crumble ever so slightly. Dust fell from the roof. Dust fell, but never towards the ground. It all angled towards the gem in her chest as if it was a black hole itself.

Despite the knife to her neck, she intensified her gaze, and her guess was proven true.

This new eye perceived by destroying and consuming.

She shifted that gaze to K’tan. It was quite the questionable decision in hindsight, but with a new toy to play with, she had to give it a try. The man barely grunted as parts of his face fell away. Instead, he slammed the butt of the blade into the side of Nix’s head, then tried to stab her crystal eye.

The blade couldn’t so much as scratch it.

Even dazed, her chest’s eye was still able to follow the weapon, and with the weight of her gaze bearing down on it, the blade’s sharp edge fell away. What remained in K’tan’s hand was a blunt chunk of steel.

“Fucking girl,” he snarled and stepped away.

Nix tried to keep her gaze on him. Tried to burn a hole through his head, but before she could make any progress, K’tan tossed his skulk shroud over her. The monstrous cloth wrapped around her and blocked her sight.

Her perception slammed into the cloak, but there was nothing to see. Nothing to consume. The shroud intercepted her sight and left her blind. She still had two eyes, yet they were not nearly enough. Only seconds had she held the ruby eye. Only an instant since she lost it, and she was already desperate for it to return.

No longer could she use her newest mutation. It had been far more useful than she could have hoped, and in a moment of overeagerness, she had thrown away her advantage. If she held herself back, she could have dissolved those shackles. If she hadn’t struck as soon as she saw the option, she would still have her sternum eye available to her.

The cloak hugged her body tight. It pressed down on her chest, and it squashed the wing nubs against her back. Each limb remained bound. And now, K’tan kept his distance, eyeing her warily. It would be much harder to catch him off-guard.

She grit her teeth as her eyes landed on Little God, floating in the corner of the room, doing nothing but watching. “Want to help, Eyeball?” she asked, not caring if K’tan thought her insane now.

“I watch,” he said, nodding as if that was of any assistance.

“Sure, thanks.” She rolled her eyes. “You just watch over there while this bastard cuts me open. It’ll make a good memory.”

Little God hummed as he nodded again.

“Ah, so you have lost your mind,” K’tan said suddenly. Nix turned to watch him slide his hand over the blade. Metal shavings slid off, and the knife was as sharp as ever. If a little thinner. “I had hoped not, but we are already this far.”

K’tan’s willingness to die spiked in Nix’s sense. It was as if he’d given up on all hope of survival, and knew his life was going to end. Where before, there might have been some hope of success, there was now only a desperate desire to take down as many people with him as he could.

Who did he want to die? The Technocult? The Fleshsmiths? Nix’s ward-mates? Whoever he had grown to hate this much, it didn’t matter. She wasn’t about to die for that sake. K’tan was prepared to die, but Nix wouldn’t let him take her with him.

She opened ‘Ine’ again, as the hymn approached the point of sacrifice. An ache flared in her lower stomach, but that was it. Again, there was no sudden limb she could use, nor was there any new sense she could feel. If not for the brief ache in her kidneys, she wouldn’t believe there was a change at all.

K’tan clambered up onto the altar, and Nix realised she didn’t have any time left. She tried to bite at his ankles, forgetting for a moment her teeth were blunt and normal. But it didn’t matter anyway, as the chains prevented her from getting close.

The prick above her sighed. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.” He stepped over her before kneeling over her chest, arms raised with knife held high.

Once more, ‘Ine’ tore open, and agony swept her back. She felt her spine burst out of her skin, tear through the cloak, and scrape against the metal behind her. The skulk shroud writhed as if in pain, but didn’t unwind from her. Snapping her name shut again, she halted the mutation mid growth. It wouldn’t help her here. She knew that. And it would only give her problems later.

The hymn reached its crescendo, and Nix knew she couldn’t hold it back anymore. She would die if she didn’t. Strapped down as she was, a Dark Star was too much of a risk. The monsters she’d seen within… no, she didn’t want to give the beings beyond her comprehension any more opportunity to eat her than they’d already had. Her old mutations would have to do, even if it would make her life impossibly difficult going forward.

Her spines, if they continued to grow as she knew they would, they would be impossible to hide… and she had no way to know there was an option for her down that path. Better to rely on what she knew. Even if what she knew was dangerous.

Nix hesitated no longer. She opened ‘Oth’ and released her wings.

They slammed outwards with more power than she’d ever expected, tearing the shroud along with her robe to ribbons. The feathered limbs grazed K’tan’s knees, sending him off balance. Nix’s sternum eye was now free, and an opportunity presented itself.

Instantly, the full weight of her gaze crashed into her overseer’s left eye, and the fleshy substance fell away in dozens of ever so small chunks, before the eye itself was pierced, and fluid gushed everywhere. She continued as K’tan screamed, his hand rising to cover it, but Nix moved onto his other eye. Anything to reach his brain sooner.

A second before the man lost his sight for good, he realised what she was doing. He clenched the knife in his hand, and drove it down. She burst through his second eye, and jolted to the side, but it didn’t stop the knife plunging into her chest.

Nix glared a hole through his head.