The Serpent's Sign

A burning sensation covered my entire body. My face could feel the rough, coarse texture of sand and dirt as I slowly opened my eyes.

“Ugh… What happened?” I held my head in pain. My memories from the past hour or so started to flow back into me.

“That’s right… I encountered the suspect of the missing cases… And then…”

My hand immediately moved over my mouth to stop the nausea from bursting out. My throat was parched in an instant, pain ringing back in my arteries with each beat of my heart. My eyes widened in shock, while sweat poured even more from my forehead than ever before.

“Hah… Hah…” I tried to control my breathing. I was stabbed in the throat. That much was the undeniable truth. But then why would I still be fine now?

My hand slowly moved away from my mouth towards my neck. As soon as I learned there was nothing especially damped, nor was there any line on my throat, I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Was that a dream? Or…”

Having calmed down, I finally cast a look around me, trying to judge the situation. However, it was the biggest mistake I could have made.

How did I not realize it sooner? Even if it had stopped raining, there was no way that I could have felt this much heat coming from the city.

The scenery before me was no longer the city that I called home.

There was a clear, cloudless sky that stretched beyond the horizon. Accompanying it were bright yellow dunes, spanning as far as the eyes could see. An occasional wind blew, carrying nothing but heat and sand.

It was undoubtedly a desert. But the question was…

“How?” I asked myself. “Am I… dead?”

Maybe this was all just a dream, a hallucination as I was on my last legs, or perhaps a rendition of the afterlife that I had never heard of before. That must have been the only explanation.

“Agrh, this is insane!” I scratched my head in frustration. But only after moving my hand did I realize that the desert was in fact the least of my problems.

“Why do I feel… sticky?”

To be precise, I couldn’t seem to move my fingers like I used to. My index and middle finger felt like they were stuck together, while my ring finger and pinky felt the same way.

I raised my hand up, moving it closer to my face.

“Ahhhhh!”

This wasn’t my hand. It couldn’t be my hand. I mean, think about it, how could this be my hand?

It only had three fingers. On each one was a thick, rugged claw nearly half the length of the finger itself. On the front was a yellow-ish, thin layer of membrane-like scales, while on the back was a much tougher, harder layer of black and blue scales of the same nature, interchanging in color like the ocean at night.

I raised my other arm. It had the same kind of structure. A monstrous limb, instead of a regular human.

I took off my trench coat and threw it to the side. “Argh!” The sudden heat struck my skin unlike anything else I had experienced, prompting me to put my coat back on in an instant. It made no sense. This was undoubtedly a desert — wearing something as thick as a trench coat would have resulted in me being cooked from the inside, literally.

With the new knowledge in mind, I could only roll up the coat’s sleeve for a small amount. Gritting my teeth against the searing heat of the sun, I mumbled:

“Come on. Bear with it for a bit, Renji…”

I rolled up my shirt in the same fashion. And there it was — my suspicion and worst nightmare becoming reality.

I couldn’t observe my entire arm, but at least from what I could see — around a quarter of the length, halfway to my elbow — it was completely covered in scales. The same reptilian scales. But that wasn’t all. Peeking from within my shirt, going all the way up the back of my palm was a strange tattoo of a black serpent opening its mouth wide, as if attacking… or devouring something.

“What about other places?”

I took off my shoes. A sigh of relief could be heard even in this vast desert. Thankfully, my feet were the same as always.

“It doesn’t look like my tongue is any different either…” I said as I attempted to stick out my tongue, elated to see that there were no split ends… yet, at least.

I tried my best to lightly scratch my cheek with my giant claws, but this time, fate wasn’t so lucky for me. Instead of the usual soft touch of skin, it was a grinding sensation of hard scales. A couple even fell off despite my effort — now that I was aware of it, I had little experience in controlling this new “feature” of my body.

“So… let’s sum things up,” I said to myself. “Somehow, I’m alive. Or at least, I’m perceiving myself as being alive.”

There was still no confirmation as to where I was, after all.

“My neck is fine. My mouth is also fine, despite both suffering from a stab wound mere moments ago. But most importantly…”

Raising one of my arms forward, I used the other to pluck out a scale. A sudden and sharp pain ensued, but nowhere near unbearable — it was just like plucking out a hair.

“Now, for some reason, I’ve grown these… reptilian features. I have a three-fingered hand with claws, my arms now have scales, and I assume my face as well. But my lower half is still human for now.”

“And then, this.” Forming a fist, I raised my right arm. The snake tattoo was still present. In fact, it even felt like it was alive, pulsing along with every beat of my heart.

I had no recollection of having a tattoo of any kind, let alone something as… vivid as this one. Which could only mean one thing — either this was indeed an imaginary plane that I was walking on, or the encounter with that person ended up with this thing appearing on my arm.

“Though, now that I’m seeing it clearly, this doesn’t look too much like a regular tattoo. In fact, it looked more like…”

A sudden booming sound interrupted my train of thought. Dry lightning in deserts wasn’t exactly a rare phenomenon, but this one in particular was definitely not normal.

Namely, the sky had already turned pitch-black after a single stroke of thunder.

I let out a gulp and slowly turned around.

There she was again, in that same demonic black and gold armor, the same strange sword in her hand.

The only difference was that this time, I could understand what she was saying behind that mask. Her voice was warped, but still undoubtedly sweet and gentle… almost the same like Reiko, even.

“Almost”, because there was still an undoubted chill in it.

“Tatsumiya Renji… I’ve finally found you.”

“W-Who are you? Why do you look like my sister?”

“… Die.”