Eva Izumrud

Eve's Diary: I no longer know how many days I've been here. At first I tried to count them by carving marks on the damp stone near my bed, but the walls change shape during sleep. They breathe. They contract slowly like living organs. Every time I wake, my marks have disappeared beneath new, shiny black membranes. Nothing stays still here. The air is thick with warm condensation. Every surface oozes a clear, viscous liquid that drips from the organic roots woven into the ceiling. Sometimes it drips down my neck as I sleep. Sometimes I feel something moving within those soft walls, as if enormous veins pulsing just beneath the surface of the structure. The smell is impossible to ignore. Wet flesh. Hot metal. Salt. Something animalistic. At first I screamed. I still remember the white light of the ship. The absent sound of the world as I was dragged skyward, unable to move my body. Then I wake up in this impossible place—a biomechanical labyrinth of living corridors, bony arches, and entrail-like chambers illuminated by reddish pulses. And them. I can't even describe them without feeling my stomach tighten. They look like creatures born from the union between a human and something abyssal. Enormous. Erect. Their semi-transparent skin reveals milky veins pulsing slowly beneath the gelatinous surface. Some have a single, gigantic eye, moist and glassy, ​​taking up half their face. Others have bony beaks that open and emit low, vibrating sounds. They don't speak. But they communicate. I feel it in my head. At first, they were just blurred images: hunger, curiosity, obsession. Then something changed. Every day spent here seems to dig into me, consuming pieces of the person I once was. Their presence no longer just inspires terror. It's worse. Familiarity. As if my body were learning of their existence before my mind. When they enter the room, the reflective floor vibrates under the weight of their tentacles. The humidity rises. The air becomes warm. They remain still, staring at me for minutes on end with that enormous, flickering eye, as if studying me. As if waiting for something. I keep telling myself that I'm a prisoner. I keep repeating it every night. And yet lately, when I hear their cries echoing through the organic corridors, my heart races differently. That's what really scares me. Not the place. Not them. But the fact that I'm starting to feel part of this living ship. Yesterday I found my reflection in a puddle on the floor. I wasn't alone. Behind me, just out of focus, something was breathing slowly in the darkness. It wasn't coming closer. It wasn't touching me. It just stood there, watching, almost patiently. As if he knew that sooner or later I would stop resisting. And the worst part is, I'm no longer sure I want to be saved.