How did it all come to this?

It was simple, really. One bad day—that’s what it took to change the course of her life. To bring her here, caught in a place she never imagined, carrying burdens she hadn’t chosen. And yet, in Ginny’s mind, she’d had no other choice.

She’d been a teenager, desperate to escape a home where every kindness was fleeting and each act of cruelty left its mark. So when he came along, a young man who spoke to her gently, who looked at her like she was precious and held her hand like he would never let go, she’d believed in him with her whole heart. Doe-eyed, infatuated, she’d followed him into a better life, one she barely dared to believe could be hers.

Life had felt too good, sometimes, almost like a dream. Those nights when he held her close, she would lie awake, fearing that any moment it would be taken away, wondering if it was all too perfect to be real. She’d lived a life where the good was always punished, stripped away just as quickly as it had appeared, and she couldn’t help but wait for the other shoe to drop. And though he had warned her, more than once, that he wasn’t innocent himself, that he too had a past he was running from, she’d held on to the hope that they could escape it together.

Still, he stayed, holding her tight, faithful and true, until the end.

The end. How quickly it had come, and how mercilessly.

It had happened in a place so ordinary, so public. They’d been walking together, his hand in hers, his laugh echoing through the street. Then two loud shots had shattered the air, and his body had crumpled beside her. Ginny had been frozen in shock, then fell to her knees, pressing her hands to his chest, trying desperately to stop the bleeding. She’d screamed for help, her voice breaking as she begged for anyone, anyone, to come save him. As his blood soaked through her fingers, the cold shock of reality set in. This life, this happiness she’d thought was real, it was all slipping away, leaving her alone again.

When they’d taken him away, she’d known there was no going back. The realization sank deep: she had nothing. No one. She was alone, like before, only now she knew what it was to love and lose. That first night, she dreamed of him, the pain still fresh, the yearning inescapable. But in that dream, she saw something else, something foreign and strange. A vision of a different self, a different life.

She woke up changed. Scaled and strong and inhuman. The anger, the emptiness, they gave way to a burning readiness to inflict pain. She would visit upon them ten times the cruelty they had unto her.

The next few days were a blur. She hardly remembered what she did or why, only that blood stained her hands, her claws, her teeth, and venom seared through her veins, seething with every strike. The same people, the same gang that had taken him from her, now lay dead, and she was alone with her grief and rage. Books she’d read as a child, movies she’d seen, they’d all said revenge would leave her empty. But she wasn’t empty. She was sick, overcome with nausea, but it wasn’t because of the lives she’d taken. It was because she felt that this… this was a beginning. She wasn’t just Ginny anymore.

She was carrying a legacy. His legacy.

Her anger began to fade, replaced by something worse. Anxiety. A kind of deep, gnawing dread crept in. She couldn’t let it end here; she needed something lasting, something real. She would build something for their future. Not just hers, but for the child she’d discovered she was carrying only days after he’d died. The only thing she had left to love, to care for.

She turned to her power, assuming her other form, bringing the remaining gang members to heel. She gathered them up and remade them, piece by piece, building her own operation with each day. It was all for him. Soon, she told herself, she would leave this life behind. As soon as she had enough money saved, she would take her son and run far away, leave Viperia behind. But then the complications began.

Her child had been growing within her for months when she began to notice the pain. It started as a quiet ache, then grew sharper, sometimes waking her at night in a panic. Nothing she did as Viperia should have affected her pregnancy. She couldn’t believe it was happening. But her worst fears were confirmed. Doctors, ones she’d consulted in secret, in her civilian guise, told her that her child was showing signs of severe mutations, multiple birth defects, and a congenital disease. Her heart felt like it had been ripped from her chest. They told her that he would likely never be able to live without constant care, that it was a wonder she hadn’t miscarried already.

Genevieve would rather die than lose her baby, her last link to the life she’d lost. She was desperate, desperate enough to do anything, and Viperia’s network was vast. She leveraged her resources, looked for healers, people with the power to help, but none would. Most didn’t have the ability, and the handful that perhaps did were unavailable to someone like her, gang leader or no. Her hope faded with each passing day.

Then one night, after a heist that should have gone smoothly, she returned home, exhausted, only to see a man in her apartment. His gray hair jutted out in untamed wisps, and his suit was practically bursting with pockets. He looked as though he could have been carrying a whole convenience store in there, and his iridescent eyes followed her every movement. He pointed at her belly, saying he could help, and she didn’t know what to think.

Asking who he was got her an answer she couldn’t believe. Wanderlust, he said. Founder of Aegis Corp.

Before she got the chance to think of another question, he placed a small vial of black liquid on the table and walked away, disappearing as if into an invisible door.

She’d been horrified by the thought of drinking it. She had no way to verify any of that man’s claims. But later that evening, when she noticed a warm wetness on her legs, and red stains leaking through her underwear, she knew there was no choice. She drank the vial’s contents, forcing it down even as the taste of rot and decay made her gag. She kept it down, her heart pounding as she waited, hoping it would work.

A warmth spread through her, something calm and steady, and by the next day, the bleeding had stopped. She dared to hope. She sought out a doctor that wouldn’t ask too many questions, and for the first time, she saw her son on an ultrasound, healthy and whole.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

She thought it was over. But life, as always, had other plans.

Months later, she gave birth to her son without complications, only to learn that the changes she’d sensed in him hadn’t stopped. Over time, the mutations became more pronounced. She kept him hidden, concealed him from the world as best she could. But in those first few years, as his health began to fluctuate, she realized that whatever had kept him alive also twisted him, altered his behaviors. She’d done all of this to protect him, to give him a life he could survive. But even that gift, it seemed, came at a terrible cost.

She devoted time and energy to tracking down Wanderlust again, to no avail. Even if she had been able to find him, it would’ve been too late, as the man had died not long after their meeting.

Years passed, and Viperia’s resources became more plentiful, she collected items, artifacts, anything that would potentially be able to help her little boy someday. The Venin expanded, she recruited a specialist who seemed to be her best bet. She never stopped. Viperia couldn’t retire, because her family was in need.

Her son, on the other hand, kept mutating as he got older. Changes were small and gradual, at first, until he started sleeping longer and longer. After that slumber, he would sometimes get visibly worse. He would begin his metamorphosis into some unknown creature. None of that was counting the measures she took to keep his actual ability contained.

It all added up to her spending all the waking hours that she wasn’t using to act as Viperia, settling some matter or other for him. Tiring as it was to keep up, she kept going on being a mother and a criminal.

Genevieve tried to give him as much of a normal childhood as she could manage, creating makeshift classrooms at home, bringing in tutors she trusted to never speak of his condition. She bought him books and toys, anything he could need to foster his mind while his body became something even she, with her venomous powers, couldn’t fully understand.

However, she didn’t need to understand, only take action, regardless of what form that took. The moral concessions she made to get closer to a cure seemed trivial, both when she made them and in retrospect, be it a dead security guard or a civilian caught in an accident during a chase. She was aware of the road she was going down, but where she ended up was irrelevant. This wasn’t about her.

Whenever those black eyes looked up at her with affection and curiosity, that conviction became stronger.

But she was having a rough go of it. Especially in the present.

Here and now, amidst the tons of rubble and scattered frost, she watched her whole life fall apart for the second time before reaching the age of thirty.

On some level, she had always known. Winning just wasn’t a possibility when the odds were so ridiculously stacked against her. The reason she didn’t surrender was that it didn’t matter if she was outmanned and outgunned, she was never going to give up on her child’s future. There would be nothing left to live for if she let someone take that away, after all.

That jester, she might have been able to overcome with the aid of Grimoire’s drug, but the district captain? She’d never bested him in the past, and the side-effects of the serum had started setting in earlier than she’d hoped. As a result, she got tossed around like a ragdoll, then they imprisoned her like some rabid animal.

Nar and Mistral combining their efforts to take her in. Two heroes who were frankly more powerful than her. It was unfair. They were going to put her away for good and leave her powerless to stop what was going to happen to the one she was doing this all for.

So Genevieve Remy began to cry.

How could she not?

For all the control and poise she'd had to cultivate in her Viperia persona, none of it mattered now. Everything had come crashing down. It was over, she had been caught and defeated, her gang was done. This was it.

Yves was at the mercy of those bastards who would see him as nothing more than a problem. Who would take her baby and—

No…

NO!

She refused. Who cared if she was trapped in ice? What did it matter if she couldn’t move her body? She was breathing. Her eyes were still open. She was not dead. For someone she held dear, she had become a monster to take revenge. Now, that was no longer enough. Now, it was time to become something more.

Time to shed her old skin.

And then, it happened.

*******

Hidden by uncountable dark, looming trees was a lake. Not of water, but of green, bubbling liquid releasing noxious fumes. From the lake, a pristine girl surfaced, nourished by her bath. Her eyes opened. The lake went placid.

In a single deliberate step, she covered the whole distance from the center to the dry grass. The earth beneath her foot cracked, sending veins of dark green spreading like roots through the withered grass. A tremor rippled outward, warping the world around her with its pulsing energy. Shadows clung to her, eager and waiting, as if summoned by her emergence. She stood, taking in the dense forest before her, the trees bending ever so slightly, their twisted branches reaching toward her in quiet reverence.

Whispers sounded around her, the indistinct susurrus having no discernible source. Or having all discernible sources. It came from everywhere. Omnipresent, like before.

Yes, she had been here before, she realized. It may have been a long time, but the environment was familiar to her. More real than anything she knew.

Her first time waking up in this place, she had walked into the pool of venom to draw on its strength for times ahead. Now, she was here for strength once more, and a mere part would not suffice.

This world was hers.

Fangs of gleaming white shot up in the horizon, rising further from the ground along with impossibly massive jaws. They closed, breaking the two tilting halves of the forest together like crumbling stone, grinding trees and earth into dust beneath their incomprehensible weight.

Swallowing, the girl surveyed the crater where her resting place had once been. Her eyes narrowed in disapproval. Not enough.

With a flex of her will, her lake expanded into infinity, submerging greenery, trees, and grass. It consumed everything, dissolving all traces of life and reclaiming the land, sweeping aside any hint of resistance like an unstoppable tide. She felt the surge of power growing, dark and vast, filling her veins as the boundary between her and the lake vanished. The venom's essence became her own, her being merged with its depths, stretching to contain more than she’d ever thought possible.

Soon, she started changing.

Later, the whispers were gone.

*********

When Genevieve came to, she was not the same. It was a fundamental truth. As much as the inevitability of night following day, an unspoken law etched into the fabric of her being. She could feel it, a transformation that had altered her down to the marrow, the very essence of what made her her.

She was untethered. She was…

Unbound.