SWNOVELXO Chapter 6: Woke Up Different
Pain wasn't the first thing Riven noticed.
It was the weight.
Heavy. Dull. A strange, bloated sensation pressed against his chest, arms, and legs, like someone had filled his insides with wet laundry and left him on spin cycle. His head ached.
His eyes fluttered open to blinding white lights and sterile ceilings.
"…Shit."
Tubes.
So many tubes.
He blinked again, trying to process the full horror of his situation. IV drips, mana filters, metabolic stabilizers, all snaking into different points on his body.
A pulse monitor hovered overhead in a soft blue hologram, blinking in time with the dull throb of his temple.
Air conditioning hummed in the background. The sheets beneath him were far too clean. The gown he wore? Standard hospital issue, thin, backless, and just humiliating enough to make a grown man consider spontaneous combustion.
Internally, Riven winced.
'This looks… expensive.'
Mana-threaded vitals monitors. An enchanted humidity regulator.
Is that a real-time genetic scanner at the foot of the bed!?
He swallowed dryly.
"Please let whoever saved me be rich. Or kind. Or dead. I really don't want to pay for this."
With great effort, he shifted, dragging himself into a half-seated position. The pain wasn't sharp, but his muscles felt weirdly uncooperative, like they weren't quite calibrated to his bones anymore.
"Ugh… stuffed. Did someone cram a corpse in me for insulation?"
He rubbed his temples and looked around.
Single room. No roommate. No windows, just a luminous panel simulating daylight. The air was too clean. Too quiet.
"…The fuck happened?" he muttered.
Then the memories hit, like a sledgehammer to the brainstem.
That thing.
The insect-woman. Her wings. Her voice. Her claws. Her bite.
"So hungry... must eat."
His body went stiff for a moment.
He yanked down the collar of his robe, his fingers trembling as he reached for his shoulder and neck.
His breath hitched.
The wounds were gone.
No bandages. No stitches. Just skin, unbroken, smooth, but for a faint crescent-shaped scar that curved just under the collarbone. He ran a finger over it slowly, disbelief sinking in.
"That isn't the work of a healer. And it most certainly isn't the job of a potion either. It's a scar…"
Which meant…
He looked up, searching the room.
There. Mounted discreetly beside the oxygen monitor was a digital wall clock, synced to the Central Union time grid. His eyes tracked down to the date display.
His jaw slackened.
[Current Date: 12.08.338 A.E.] (After Evos)
"No… that's not right. That's… three months."
"I've been here three goddamn months?!"
A million questions rose all at once.
Why was he still alive? Who brought him back? Did the insect-woman let him go? Did someone find him? Did he mutate into a human-moth hybrid and go comatose in a science tank?
Just then, the door hissed open.
Riven tensed.
In stepped a young nurse, brown-haired, blue-eyed, clipboard in hand. She was mid-step when she looked up, her gaze locking onto him.
She froze.
The clipboard slipped from her grasp, clattering against the tile floor.
Yep. That's not a normal reaction.
The nurse's lips parted like she wanted to speak, but no sound came. Instead, she quickly spun on her heel, bolting halfway back out the doorway.
"DOCTOR! GET THE DOCTOR!" she yelled into the corridor, voice cracking. "Patient C-99 is awake!"
The hallway was suddenly filled with rushed footsteps.
Riven flinched as the door hissed open again, wider this time. A trio entered.
The first was the nurse, now pale and breathing hard. Behind her came a tall man in a white coat, glasses, silver-streaked hair, a clipboard, and finally, a woman in a sleek black suit that absolutely did not belong in a hospital.
Riven's eyes lingered on her.
She didn't move like a nurse. Or a doctor.
More like a warrior.
The doctor approached, ignoring the tense silence.
"Vitals stabilizing… neural response within margin… metabolic rate low but climbing." His tone was clipped, clinical, as if Riven were more interesting as a collection of anomalies than a person.
"Remarkable." He said with an awed expression.
"Remarkable?" Riven rasped. "I wake up three months late, and that's your opener?"
The doctor glanced up, startled, and then offered a shallow nod. "Ah. Speech coherence intact. That's promising."
"Promising," Riven repeated, tone flat. "Doc, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not exactly winning the post-coma lottery here. Can someone please tell me what the hell's going on?"
Before the doctor could answer, the woman in black stepped forward.
Her voice was calm, smooth, and very, very practiced.
"You're safe, Mr. Cael. You've been… under special observation."
Riven narrowed his eyes.
"Oh good. I love euphemisms. Who are you?"
She ignored the question. "Do you remember what happened before you blacked out?"
Riven hesitated.
That clicking voice. That hunger. Those claws that should have ended him.
He nodded slowly. "I remember enough to know that thing should've killed me."
The doctor and the suited woman exchanged a glance.
Then she spoke again, this time more carefully.
"It didn't. In fact… it fled. The containment squad found you alone, covered in ichor, heart rate unreadable, temperature below viable human range. And yet…" She gestured at him. "Here you are."
The doctor adjusted his glasses. "We believe your body underwent… an unsanctioned metamorphic event. One that's still unfolding."
Riven blinked. "Metamorphic what now?"
"You've changed," the woman said simply. "And we don't know how yet."
A chill ran down his spine.
"Fantastic," Riven muttered. "So I'm a science project now."
The doctor smiled faintly. "No, Mr. Cael. You're a miracle."
The suited woman, however, did not smile.
"Miracles are unpredictable," she said. "And dangerous."
Riven pretended not to hear the suited woman's ominous remark.
Instead, he turned, slowly, stiffly, to the doctor, his voice hoarse but steady. "You called me a miracle. You wanna explain that without the dramatic pause this time?"
The doctor perked up as if someone had just offered him front-row tickets to a legendary dissection.
"Ah, yes! Wonderful question." He stepped forward with too much excitement for Riven's comfort and gestured toward the nurse beside him. "I'm Dr. Kel Varneth, Lead Bioarcanist and Head of Mutation Studies here at Sector Twelve's Observation Wing. And this is my assistant, Nurse Elira, though you already made quite the impression."
Elira offered a stiff, apologetic nod, still avoiding his eyes.
"Now then," Kel clapped his hands once, "prepare yourself."