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The study room in the philosophy department library was all warm wood and hushed intellect, a sanctuary of ordered thought. Sunlight fell in soft diagonals across the oak table where Cassandra sat with three other doctoral candidates, debating the ethical implications of non-human sentience in deep-sea mining. Her voice was, as always, a model of calm precision. “The presumption of absence cannot justify ontological violence. If we cannot prove a being lacks interiority, the burden must fall to—”

It began as a low hum, a sub-auditory vibration that started in the roots of her molars and spread through the bones of her jaw, a tuning fork struck against the marble of her skull. Cassandra’s sentence died. She took a slow sip of water, the cool liquid doing nothing for the sudden desert in her throat. The others glanced at her, waiting.

Then the scraping started. Not in the room, but inside the architecture of her mind. It was louder, more textured than before—not a single sound but a symphony of them: the dry rustle of countless chitinous segments moving against each other, overlaid with a wet, rhythmic pulse-thud that synced perfectly with the rush of blood in her ears. Her fingers, elegant and usually so still, whitened around her pen. Not here. Please, not here.

But it was relentless. It teased. The sound coiled around her spine, a serpent of pure frequency that seemed to vibrate each vertebra individually. A phantom warmth, thick as oil, bloomed low in her belly, then pooled lower still, a private, gathering heat. Then came the pressure—a distinct, impossibly specific sensation of something slender, smooth, and unnaturally warm threading its way into her, parting her, not with violence but with a dreadful, deliberate certainty. She shifted minutely in her chair, her long, slender thighs pressing together in a futile attempt to crush the sensation. A fine tremor, like a plucked wire, traveled up her frame.

“Cassandra?” It was Michael, his brow furrowed. “You disagree with the Kantian framework?”

She opened her mouth, but a fresh, more devastating wave crested. The intrusive pressure deepened, curling upwards with a knowing precision, finding and stroking a place of raw, shocking sensitivity deep within her. It wasn’t a touch. It was an occupation. Her breath caught, strangled in her chest. A flush, hot and undeniable, swept from her décolletage up the graceful …