Relics of Decay: An Elegy for Function — an opening passage from the First Edition (2025), beginning with “The First Breath” and continuing through “The Nameless Dawn”. This text is from the original Word manuscript. A redesigned and revised Second Edition is in preparation, so its final wording and pagination may differ.
The First Breath
Darkness.
It was not the absence of light but something deeper, heavier · an all-consuming void that pressed against the edges of something fragile. He did not have words for it. Did not have thought. Only sensation.
Cold. A wet, slick cold that wrapped around his form, clung to his skin like something living, something that refused to let go. It seeped into him, gnawed at the raw, trembling thing he was. He had never been before, and now he was. The weight of that knowing crushed down on him.
A sound. A distant, shuddering pulse, like the dying heartbeat of something vast. It vibrated through him, echoing in the hollow places where thought had not yet formed. It was everywhere and nowhere. A rhythm, mechanical and organic all at once, a whisper of something he did not understand.
Then · the first breath.
His lungs, untested, filled too quickly, too violently. The air burned inside him, thick with the scent of damp metal, oil, something bitter and unclean. His body convulsed, choking on existence, the act of being a sudden, violent rupture in the stillness. His limbs spasmed, unfamiliar, unformed, weightless and heavy at once. Movement was chaos · his own body untrustworthy, foreign.
The space around him was not solid, not open, but something in between. A cocoon. A shell. Slick walls pressed against him, firm yet pliant, as though the world had tried to shape itself around him. It had cradled him, now it released him.
A tearing sound. Wet, ruptured flesh.
A rupture in the silence, and then · falling.
The impact jolted through him, sending a dull ache rolling across his form. He lay there, splayed on the cold, pulsing surface beneath him, his limbs useless, his mind blank save for sensation. His breath shuddered out in uneven gasps, his chest rising and falling with effort.
Something oozed around him, thick and warm, pooling beneath his fingers as they twitched, spasmed. Instinct drove them to curl, to grasp, though they knew not what they sought. His body, his own form, was an unanswered question. He could feel its weight, but it did not yet belong to him. It was a thing he inhabited, but not yet a thing he understood.
Light.
Not bright, not sharp, but dim and sickly, flickering above him like something alive, pulsing in slow, rhythmic waves. The light was wrong · too cold, too distant. He did not know how he knew, only that he did.
A new sensation · something stirring within him, a pull, a compulsion.
Move.
The thought was not yet a word, not yet an idea, only a force, raw and primitive.
Move.
His arm twitched, dragging across the surface beneath him, slick with the remnants of his emergence. Fingers curled weakly, pressing into something textured, grooved. A pattern. A surface with meaning, though it was lost to him.
His body resisted. He was weak. The weight of himself was too much, the world around him too vast. But something in him refused to remain still.
He turned, slowly, painfully, onto his side. His breath stuttered. The motion sent tremors through his limbs, his muscles unused to the act. The pulsing light cast shifting shadows across the space around him · long, spindly things that reached toward him, stretching across the uneven surfaces.
The void of silence pressed down, heavy and waiting.
Move.
Again, the compulsion. Urgent now.
A hand. Then another. A slow, struggling pull forward. His limbs trembled, his form barely capable of obeying the demand, but he moved. An inch. Then another. The world expanded, shifting with his motion, revealing more of itself in fragments of darkness and dim, dying glow.
The act of movement was a defiance. A rejection of stillness, of passivity. A choice. He did not know where he was going, only that to remain where he was felt unbearable.
He crawled, his breath ragged, the remnants of his birth trailing behind him.
And in the quiet, the first spark of something flickered inside him.
Not knowledge. Not understanding. But a question.
The Nameless Dawn
It began with a sharp hiss.
A violent, rupturing expulsion of pressure that sliced through the stillness like a jagged blade.
Then there was silence.
Not an absence of sound, but a hollow, pulsing quiet, like the final breath of a thing long since forgotten.
The pod spasmed as it released its prisoner, exhaling a noxious cloud of steam and particulate that clung to the stale air. Metal groaned and splintered, the sound vibrating with the anguish of overworked machinery pushed beyond its life’s purpose. The hiss became a whine, shrill and piercing, before falling into a final, defeated wheeze. The ancient machinery, tired from centuries of obedience, stirred one last time before falling silent with a last low groan. The machine had served its function. It had no more purpose. And yet · he remained.
He did not understand why.
The creature spilled out, slick and trembling, like a newborn wrenched unwillingly from the womb. Its pale, angular skin shimmered beneath a clinging, viscous amber fluid that pooled at its feet in thick, gelatinous ripples. The fluid reeked of chemicals and decay, a pungent tang that stung the back of its throat. Its limbs jerked involuntarily, puppet-like, as if testing the boundaries of a body it had never owned.
His body jerked, spasmodic and uncoordinated, as he attempted movement. The ground was uneven beneath him, slick with residual fluid pooling into shallow depressions. He pressed his fingers against it, forcing himself upright. His limbs felt wrong · too light, too heavy, disconnected from the will that compelled them to move. His first breath had been instinct. This · this was something else.
For the first time, he became aware of himself.
Not just his limbs. Not just his breath. But something deeper, something staring back from beneath the translucent shell of his skin.
Eyes cracked open, veiled by translucent lids, struggling to adjust to the dim, oppressive light. Shapes blurred and bled together in its vision, forming a chaotic tableau of corroded metal and shadowed ruin. The world greeted it with neither warmth nor hostility, only a suffocating indifference. It blinked again, harder, forcing clarity to emerge · a clarity it didn’t want. The lids were heavy, leaden with the burden of a new awareness.
The thought was small, fragile, like something drifting on the edge of dissolution. He lifted a trembling hand, watching the way the dim, feverish light overhead fractured through the pale surface of his skin. Dark veins threaded beneath it, shifting with the pulse of something unseen. He did not know what he was looking for. Only that the sight unsettled him.
It shivered, not from cold · the air was thick, humid, and stale · but from the alien sensation of being. An electric hum coursed through its muscles, faint but steady, as though its body were awakening to a current of existence. It raised a hand, trembling and dripping, to its face. The amber fluid clung to its fingers in threads, like cobwebs made of resin. Its touch was uncertain, exploring the contours of its angular jaw and ridged skull as if searching for something familiar that wasn’t there. Something rumbled beneath him, deep within the unseen depths of the structure, a slow, rhythmic grinding. It did not comfort him.
A sound · distant but deliberate · slipped through the stagnant air.
The creature’s head snapped toward the direction of the noise, his body flinching from the sudden awareness that he was not alone. But there was nothing. Only looming structures at the edges of his vision, their massive frames crumbling under the weight of abandonment. Shapes that might have been machines, or something else entirely. Shadows stretched long and uncertain, their jagged forms shifting with the weak flicker of dying lights embedded in the walls.
The pod behind it · a hulking sarcophagus of rusted steel and fractured glass · quivered as it collapsed into itself. Wires dangled limply from the open maw, sparking faintly, trailing dark fluids that mingled with the amber pools below. Inside, dim lights flickered erratically, struggling to illuminate their own obsolescence. The air around the pod was thick with the scent of burnt metal and ozone, a metallic tang that coated the tongue and clung to the lungs.
It knew nothing of where it was, only that it was. This truth, stark and unyielding, settled into its mind like a jagged shard. Awareness was both a gift and a wound, a paradox it could not yet comprehend.
A sound broke the moment · a distant, rhythmic grinding, faint but deliberate. The creature’s head turned sharply, its movements disjointed, driven by a primal instinct to listen. The grinding was joined by the dull thrum of machinery · not alive, but not quite dead. The echoes reverberated through the space, rattling against walls unseen, filling the void with a chaotic symphony of failing systems.
He tried to rise. His legs buckled. The attempt sent him crashing back onto his hands and knees, the impact sending a shudder through his already frail form.
Something hissed in the dark.
Not from a throat. Not from something alive.
A vent in the ceiling exhaled a breath of stale, metallic air, stirring the dust that had long settled in the spaces between things. The particles drifted, illuminated briefly by the flickering light above, before fading once more into the void. It was a slow, mechanical process · something still functioning, long after the world it belonged to had ended.
He pressed his palm to the ground, feeling the faintest vibration beneath it. The pulse of something vast. Something ancient. It resonated through the metal and stone, a heartbeat not his own.
He forced himself up again.
This time, he did not fall.
His limbs obeyed, though reluctantly, though awkwardly. He stumbled, his steps uneven, as though the gravity of this world did not yet know how to claim him. He moved forward, past the ruined pod that had birthed him, past the lifeless machinery, toward the unknown.
There were no markers. No signs. No indication that anything else had ever passed through this place. And yet, he felt drawn toward something just beyond his reach.
A question formed at the edges of his mind, not in words, not in sound, but in feeling. A small, flickering uncertainty pressing against the fragile surface of his new awareness.
Was he alone?
The thought was not merely a question. It was a weight. A presence in the absence. The silence did not just surround him · it clung to him, seeped into his skin, whispered in the spaces where memories should have been.
The thought sent a slow ripple through him, deeper than fear, colder than the dead air pressing against his skin. The loneliness of this place · of its empty corridors, of its silence, of its endless ruin · settled into his bones like an inevitability.
Around it, the room stretched into the obscurity of shadowed corners. Towering forms loomed at the edges of its vision, indistinct but menacing. Shapes resembling machinery · hulking, skeletal frameworks that slumped in quiet defeat. Overhead, faint lights flickered in uneven pulses, their glow casting fractured beams across the corroded floor. The walls seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting with an unsettling rhythm, exhaling faint mists that carried the acrid stench of rot and oil.
The creature’s gaze fell to its hands, trembling and alien. Veins of faint light pulsed beneath its translucent skin, a ghostly glow that ebbed and flowed like a fragile heartbeat. It raised its head to the distant grinding sound once more, its senses sharpening as something primitive within it stirred.
It did not know what it sought, only that it must seek. The void around it whispered promises of answers and horrors alike, each step forward a fragile rebellion against the silence. Behind it, the pod sagged into its final collapse, wires snapping, fluids spilling · its purpose fulfilled, its existence rendered meaningless. The creature did not turn to look again. It would not be remembered, and it would not remember.
The creature’s feet carried it forward, hesitant but determined. The grinding sound grew louder, a beacon of chaos in the stillness. It moved through the wreckage of what had once been, towards the promise of what might yet be. It did not have a name, a function, or a history. It had only this moment, and the next.
The world was waiting.
For what, he did not know.
But it was empty.
And so was he.
For now, that was enough.
End of the selected reading. The passage continues in “The Womb of the Forgotten”.