Insect Prison Remake -v1.0- -eroism- -

Sess watched, her compound eyes recording every micro-spasm. “Good,” she whispered. “The first emotion to cultivate is longing . We’ll starve you of it for a week, then inject you again. You’ll crave the needle. You’ll beg for the resin. And then, we’ll introduce you to the breeding chambers.”

A whisper, dry and chitinous, skittered from the ceiling. “Ah. You’re awake.” Insect Prison Remake -v1.0- -Eroism-

He was in a cube. Ten meters each side. The walls weren't metal or stone, but a translucent, amber-hued resin. Embedded within them, frozen in eternal rigor, were insects. Not ordinary ones. These were specimens with too many joints, eyes like cut gems, wings that seemed to fold through dimensions. A praying mantis the size of his forearm, its scythes locked in a perpetual strike. A wasp with an ovipositor like a jeweled stinger, poised inches from a paralyzed, humanoid larva. Sess watched, her compound eyes recording every micro-spasm

The needle withdrew, leaving a droplet of iridescent fluid on his neck. He touched it, and for a fraction of a second, he felt a perverse gratitude. She was right. The old boredom—the safe, predictable loop of his human emotions—had been a prison of its own. We’ll starve you of it for a week, then inject you again

Kaelen clawed at the floor, his nails scraping against the trapped insects below the surface. He could see them now, not as fossils, but as fellow prisoners. Each one a perfected engine of instinct. They did not think. They desired . To hunt. To mate. To parasitize. And their desires, frozen for millennia, were now bleeding into him through the Eroism.

He was anticipating the next injection.