Mathew staggered through the twisted remains of the forest surrounding the crash site, his breath rasping, uneven. The sun had risen fully now, bleeding gold through the shattered treetops. His body ached—not in pain exactly, but as if it was shedding limitations he hadn’t even known existed.
Each step felt heavier. His feet tore through the underbrush, wider and clawed now, the boots long since shredded. His hands had hardened—talons forming in place of nails. His forearms bulged with unrelenting muscle, cords of sinew writhing just beneath feathering skin.
Feathering.
It had started at his shoulder blades, prickling like static beneath the flesh. Tufts of black-gold plumage pushed free, fine and razor-edged, metallic in sheen. They spread down his back in a slow, creeping wave, his spine adjusting again with a crack-pop that brought him to his knees.
“Nghh… no, no…” he growled, teeth gritting. His voice—still his, but deeper, layered with a harsh avian edge—echoed in the clearing.
Mathew dropped to all fours, panting. His shirt hung in strips, his chest a slab of living marble, each breath causing it to rise and fall like tectonic plates. Beneath the surface, strange energies twisted through him. Every gland, every organ, every drop of fluid inside him was being rewritten.
His sweat glistened with a faint iridescent shimmer, burning tiny holes in the grass where it landed. He reached down, noticing the wetness clinging to his inner thighs. His body was leaking—not just sweat now. Everything excreted was… active. Alive. Mutagenic.
Even his arousal, swollen and throbbing beneath the tatters of his pants, was a vessel for the change. He could feel it, the boiling mutagen coursing through every drop, every strand of what he now produced. His entire being had become a vector.
“No. I won’t—I won’t let this—” he snarled, pounding a clawed fist into the ground.
But the power was relentless.
Veins bulged across his neck and chest. His pectorals surged outward again, engorged with strength. His shoulders widened, causing a second, sharper cascade of rips as the last remaining fabric gave up completely. Feathers spread across his forearms and down his sides, now black with silver tips.
A massive snap reverberated through his skull as his jaw pushed forward. His nose cracked and reformed, beaklike—still human enough to speak, but predatory. Piercing golden eyes opened wider, glowing with inhuman perception.
His scream turned into a roar. The air itself vibrated.
Then came the wings.
They tore from his back in a spasm of growth, unfolding with the sound of shearing metal. Ten-foot pinions, wrapped in flesh and sinew, unfurled wide. They twitched, testing the wind, instinct flickering behind them.
Mathew collapsed onto his side, half-writhing, half-ecstatic. His form was near-complete now. Eight feet tall, easily. Bulked beyond reason. Talons, feathers, wings, and yet… still undeniably masculine. Virile. Raw. A hybrid god straddling the line between beast and man.
The war inside him ended with a snap of clarity.
He stood.
He accepted it.
All the pain, all the resistance, melted beneath a tsunami of raw, unstoppable power. He flexed, and the trees around him shivered. He breathed in, and the air thickened with mutagenic pheromones. His sweat, blood, saliva—semen—were all alive with the potential to spread the resonance.
Not a victim anymore.
A carrier.
The first.
Above, the sky cracked with the shimmer of orbital movement—dark shapes watching. Waiting. Responding.
Mathew - no, the being he had become - looked skyward with a grin of serrated teeth.
Let them come.