Altered beings were creations born from the fossils unearthed across the world.
These were not just any fossils, they were the preserved remains of ancient beasts that no longer roamed the Earth, creatures that had once dominated the land, sea, and sky completely.
Many of these beasts bore uncanny similarities to the animals humans knew today, scaled-up versions of wolves, birds, reptiles, and sharks. But others... others had forms that defied all explanation, shapes and structures beyond anything seen in the natural world.
With the discovery of what came to be called Next Crystals, the essence of these ancient beasts could be brought back into reality. The process allowed their physical forms, in some way, to be resurrected in the modern era.
Corporations like NIRV built entire industries around this. They hired specialists known as Retrievers, skilled Altered and humans alike, to track down and defeat these revived beasts. The crystals harvested from them were then used to develop the Altered serums that granted people fragments of the beasts’ power.
At least, that was how the new generation of Altered came to be, very different from the methods used in the old days.
Rumors lingered about those earlier times, especially from former employees of smaller, independent corporations outside of NIRV’s control. Those whispers told of processes so painful and invasive they left permanent scars, both physical and mental.
Back then, crystals weren’t always refined into serums. Sometimes, they were implanted directly into the body, forcing the transformation from the inside out. In even more extreme cases, human body parts were outright replaced with those of the beasts, in a desperate attempt to create a sustainable hybrid, a body that could coexist with the monster’s essence.
It was a dangerous gamble. Few survived the procedures.
Years later, the White Rose was formed. Though officially presented as a protective organization to handle Altered-related crises, its origins were deeply tied to the chaos caused by “troubled” Altered, those whose transformations had gone wrong or whose minds had fractured under the strain.
Yet even the White Rose, with its resources and authority, needed an edge. They couldn’t simply match other Altered groups, they needed to surpass them.
One of their earliest breakthroughs came from a discovery tied to a man named Chen.
Chen’s family lived on temple grounds high above the ocean, near a cliffside where wind and salt spray were constant companions. When fossils were first found near the cliff’s edge, researchers pushed their search further, down the cliff, into the jagged coastline below, and eventually deep into the sea itself.
Their persistence paid off.
They unearthed the remains of several sea creatures of staggering power. These fossils became the foundation for many of the White Rose’s most formidable Altered soldiers.
But researchers also noticed something else. Fossil sites often told a story, not just about the creature itself, but about the world it had lived in. By examining the damage, the arrangements of bones, and the surrounding geological layers, they could piece together what had happened there.
In this particular site, scattered among the fossils of powerful marine beasts, they found a pattern.
Many of these beasts appeared to have been prey, prey of the same predator.
The evidence pointed to one conclusion: a Leviathan.
The researchers theorized that countless strong creatures had been drawn to challenge it over time. And, as the fossils suggested, many had perished in that pursuit.
That left one burning question, what had killed the Leviathan itself? Why had it fallen here?
The answer came with further excavations.
Judging by the destruction in the surrounding area, the Leviathan had met something equally powerful. Something capable of wounding it fatally.
The researchers could only imagine the colossal battle that must have unfolded beneath the waves, a clash so immense that neither combatant had survived.
When the ocean settled, both titans lay dead. And it was from the fossil remains of the Leviathan’s killer that the White Rose created Adam Law.
When Ylva saw the man land in front of her, her instincts screamed at her to run. Every muscle in her body tensed, her pulse thundering in her ears. Something deep inside whispered that if she stayed, she wouldn’t walk away.
Adam Law wasted no time.
His body began to change.
His back arched violently, a sickening series of cracks echoing through the air as his spine realigned itself. His skin shivered, a wave of motion rippling beneath the surface before a sickly black sheen spread outward from his fingertips. It crawled up his arms and across his shoulders, swallowing his flesh in rubbery, abyssal hide.
Faint at first, tiny blue flecks dancing beneath his skin like constellations under a sheet of ice. They pulsed slowly, then faster, syncing to the rhythm of his heartbeat. The light spread, twisting into curling, ancient patterns that wound across his chest, his arms, and his legs.
He inhaled sharply, too sharply, and his jaw split wider than any human jaw should. The corners tore upward toward his ears before the lower half fractured into four jagged mandibles, each bristling with slick, needle-like teeth that glistened in the light.
From deep within his throat came a hiss, low and serpentine.
Then his skull shifted, the skin stretching as a crown of writhing tentacles erupted from the back of his head, each one twitching and tasting the air.
The transformation accelerated.
Ridges swelled beneath the skin of his forearms before splitting open, revealing rows of muscular, suction-cupped suckers that flexed greedily. His arms thickened, layer upon layer of muscle coiling over themselves, and from his elbows burst smaller tentacles that whipped through the air, tasting the salt and moisture.
His legs stretched unnaturally long, the joints bending with a predatory grace. Webbing split between his toes, nails blackening and curving into hooked claws. For a moment, his stance seemed almost unsteady, until his hips cracked apart, the bones reshaping into a writhing cluster of massive, muscular tentacles. They slammed onto the pier with a wet, meaty impact that made the wood groan.
When he finally straightened to his full height, he was no longer human. He was a towering, abyssal tyrant, a nightmare dredged up from the deepest trench of the ocean.
Adam Law, forged from the fossil of a legendary, mythical creature feared in sailor tales for centuries: the Kraken.
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