**CHAPTER 2: THEY CALLED US CALAMITIES**
The first time I heard the Eclipse Cult's gospel, I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my cigarette. Their so-called prophet was a twitchy junkie in a bathrobe stitched together from old hazard suits, waving around a jar with what looked like a pickled squid tentacle. The crowd ate it up like it was the last episode of their favorite apocalypse drama.
"The Leviathan is divine judgment!" he screamed, spit flying. "We are the infection! The Calamities are the cure!"
I flicked my cigarette at his feet. "Hey, prophet. How much for the tentacle? I know a guy who turns 'em into chew toys for rich kids."
The crowd gasped like I'd just kicked a puppy. The preacher's grin didn't waver.
"Ah," he crooned, voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried over the Undercity's constant hum. "The Kaiju-child mocks his own blood."
My stomach turned to ice.
No one knew about Vritra. No one alive.
The preacher lunged faster than a starving mutt, grabbing my wrist. His fingers burned like dry ice against my skin.
*"See, brethren?"* He forced my palm up. The black veins under my flesh pulsed, writhing like worms in sunlight. *"The chosen host bears the serpent's kiss!"*
The crowd surged forward—not to attack me.
To worship me.
Rough hands yanked at my clothes. "Bless us!" someone sobbed. A woman shoved a screaming baby toward me. "Heal her!" A kid barely older than me tried to lick my shoes.
I kicked free, sprinting into the Undercity's maze of rusted pipes and flickering neon. Their chants chased me through the metallic corridors:
*"KAIJU! KAIJU!"*
I didn't stop running until my lungs burned and my legs gave out, collapsing in a drainage tunnel where the air smelled like piss and fried circuitry. That's when the pain hit—white-hot knives carving down my right arm.
Something was wrong.
My arm—it wasn't mine anymore.
Black scales gleamed under the flickering hazard lights, reflecting like polished obsidian. My fingers ended in claws sharp enough to carve steel. And the voice—
*"They fear what they cannot control."*
I screamed. The sound tore through the tunnel, shaking loose bolts from the ceiling. My reflection in a broken monitor showed one human eye wide with terror, the other slitted and feral, glowing the same eerie blue as the cult's neon signs.
Vritra grinned back at me from the shattered screen.
They found me at dawn.
Not the cult. Government. Black-armored soldiers with rifles that hummed like angry hornets, their visors reflecting my half-transformed face.
"Subject located," one muttered into his comms. "Stage-4 symbiosis confirmed."
I ran. They shot me in the back.
The dart burned, pumping liquid fire through my veins. My vision blurred—but not before I saw her.
A girl in a school uniform, watching from the shadows where the tunnel met the smog-choked sunrise. Aoi.
Her eyes glowed the same damned blue as mine.