Humans

We are built from **teeth and shadow. The gnashing bite of predators we never saw, the creeping dread of eyes that glowed in absolute black. Our core being was forged in the **bat cave**, where the acrid fumes of guano rose like incense to some older, crueler god. Those sharp, ammoniac tendrils, thick with rot and ancient waste, seeped into lungs, into blood, into the soft unfolding of brains still learning fear. Breath by breath, they etched aggression into our marrow: a permanent inscription of suspicion, of territorial rage, of the reflex to strike first in the dark. There, among the blind scorpions scraping over stone, the centipedes uncoiling like living whips, the millipedes leaking toxin in slow defense, we learned the only lesson the cave ever taught: nothing down here forgives weakness. And so we rose, carrying that lesson outward. We are the **inevitable punishment** inflicted on the universe: children of putrefaction and venom, our genes laced with the smoke of guano, our minds forever tuned to the frequency of threat. Every meadow we enter wilts under our gaze; every star we reach learns the taste of cave-born hunger. Nothing is safe. Not because we chose cruelty, but because the reek of that ancient darkness still clings to us, and we can never wash it off.