The Day I Turned To Stone

I still remember the feeling of the page where his signature lay. I remember the tears smearing the ink as my mother tried to explain my father's choice. They called it The Passage Program. A bridge to the "New World." A chance for humanity to start again — or so they said. But bridges go both ways, don't they? I was sixteen when they strapped me into the chair. The air smelled like metal and rot, like something alive had died there a long time ago. They said I'd wake up somewhere beautiful, somewhere pure. I didn't. But I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself. I was an experiment. One of six participants, if I can even call us that. None of us were there willingly but we made the most of it. They called it Phase Six. The final test. We'd spent weeks in white rooms that never slept—constant light, constant noise. They said the hum in the walls was just the ventilation system, but I swear it whispered sometimes. The nurses wore masks that hid everything but their eyes, drawing blood for testing. I used to watch for a flicker of guilt, something human beneath the glass. There never was. We weren't allowed to see each other after the orientation. Maybe they thought separation would make us easier to control. Still, I remember their faces: the boy with the crooked tooth who wouldn't stop praying, the twins who spoke in code, the woman who never cried until the lights went out, and the goofy man who kept trying to boost everyone's moral. We were six strangers bound by signatures that didn't belong to us. They said the cryopods would take us to the "New World." That our bodies would be frozen until a set year, where we would find the future—safe and sound. I remember thinking safe and sound sounded like a lullaby for the dying. When it was my turn, they asked me to lie down. The pod was colder than the air, lined with a thin layer of frost that clung to my skin. I could see my reflection curve across the glass as they sealed it shut. Someone outside gave a signal. The hum deepened, became a heartbeat that wasn't mine. Then came the light—sharp, colorless, endless. It crawled under my skin, through my veins, into my teeth. My breath turned to steam, my body to static. But something was wrong. I wasn't falling asleep. I was watching. Through the fogged glass, I saw the scientist scramble toward my machine, their movements distorted by the frost. The light—it wasn't coming from the pod anymore. It was coming from me. A sharp pain tore through my chest. My body convulsed, reflex clawing for air that wasn't there. My lungs refused to expand. My throat locked. Why wasn't there air? The glass blurred, shapes moving beyond it like shadows in water. Someone slammed a fist against the pod, but I couldn't hear a sound. My vision tightened, tunneled. The light ate everything. The light was eating me alive. My lungs burned, my vision fractured. I could feel my heartbeat dissolve into static. Then— a sound. Not a human sound, not really. It wasn't heard so much as installed. A voice bloomed inside my skull, calm and precise, the way machines speak when they've already decided something for you. [Soul integrity: unstable.] [Neural signature preserved.] [Subject eligible for transference.] I tried to scream, but I didn't have a throat anymore. The air, the pod, the world—all of it was gone. [Error detected in Cryostasis Unit 06.] [Biological death confirmed.] [Commencing auxiliary protocol: Soul Migration.] I wanted to fight, but I didn't know what to fight. The voice wasn't asking permission—it was rewriting me. Lines of light traced through my mind, threading memory into something that wasn't quite human. [Analyzing final cognitive patterns...] [Analyzation Complete] [Assigning core aptitude: Adaptation.] [Assigning secondary skill: Resonance — absorb and evolve from external stimuli.] [Worldline anchor established.] [Transfer complete.] The static became wind. The cold became warmth. The hum became birdsong—real or imagined, I couldn't tell. And then I fell. The ground was hard beneath me. Not soft, not forgiving. Hard. Cold. I tried to move. My limbs... were heavier than memory allowed. Not mine. Not quite. A voice flickered in my mind. Calm, indifferent. System-like. [Subject status: Transferred.] [Form: Stone Golem.] [Core directive: Survive. Observe. Serve.] I tried to scream. Nothing. My mouth was stone. My teeth, harder than bone. But the voice... it didn't care about screams. [Skills assigned: Strength, Endurance, Perception—primary.] [Secondary skill slot available: Adaptation from inspiration.] And then I felt it. A tug. Pulling me toward a presence I did not yet know—a witch, I would later learn, who had summoned me before I had even opened my eyes. She had called me into being, and I had obeyed. Not out of loyalty, not yet, but because there was nothing else left to do. I was alive, but not alive. I was me, but not me. And for the first time since that metal room, I felt a purpose. And this? Well this is how it began: the day I died, and awoke as a stone golem.