Rogue: Bound by Fate by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Rogue-Bound-by-Fate-1260246325

Rogue: Bound by Fate ANIMATION

The Hunger in Her Shadow

Rogue first felt it in the quiet hours between midnight and dawn—
that whisper beneath her ribs, a pulse that wasn’t hers.

The X-Mansion slumbered under a waxing crescent, long shadows stretching across the hallways like fingers reaching for restless dreams. Rogue stood at her window, gloved palms pressed to the cold glass, watching frost creep along the edges of the pane. Her breath fogged the surface. It trembled.

Because something inside her trembled.

She had absorbed power before—more power than anyone should—but never this. Never a presence that moved with a mind of its own. Never something that learned from her.

Tonight, it urged her outside.

Its voice was a sensation, not a sound—heat swirling in her veins, electricity tugging her limbs, a seduction as soft as a lover’s murmur and as sharp as a predator’s claws.

She exhaled, pulling on her coat.
“Ah know you’re here,” she whispered.
The thing inside her answered with a thrill of warmth.
Almost affection.

Almost.

I. The Silent Meteor

The crash had come three nights earlier—an emerald streak falling in the forest behind the mansion. She and Hank had found it: a half-melted sphere no bigger than a basketball, cracked open like an egg. The interior shimmered with slick black membrane. Organic. Warm. Pulsing.

Hank leaned closer with his instruments.
“Fascinating. Rogue, this is unlike any extraterrestrial structure I’ve catalogued—”

He didn’t finish.

The membrane unraveled like liquid silk and leapt at her face. She had time for a single gasp, then—

Darkness.
Heat.
A rush of memories.
Screams that weren’t hers, languages she couldn’t speak, fractal symmetries unfolding in her mind like monstrous flowers.

She woke in the medbay hours later.

The sphere was gone.

The shadow within her remained.

II. A Growing Thirst

Rogue reached the tree line and stopped. The woods were still, the air crisp, the moon pale. She closed her eyes.

This is your place, the inner voice murmured through her bloodstream.
Here the past is quiet enough that you can hear what you are becoming.

“Ah’m not becoming anything,” she hissed. “You’re leavin’ me right now.”

A ripple of laughter—velvet, mocking, intimate—rolled through her muscles.
You absorbed us. You opened the door. We only wish to help.

“Help with what?”

Hunger.

She staggered, clutching her chest. Her skin seethed with energy—other people’s energy. Storm’s lightning, Colossus’s raw strength, Psylocke’s psionic edge. Powers she had touched once and locked away.

Now they were unlocking.
Multiplying.
Swelling far too fast.

She dug her nails into the bark of a tree, breath shaking. “Ah don’t want this! You’re drainin’ me dry!”

Not draining. Using. You have carried fragments of so many souls. Let us show you what they can do together.

The ground vibrated beneath her feet. Roots writhed like serpents. The wind shifted, carrying sparks of electricity. Rogue snapped her head up.

Her powers were leaking into the world—

And the thing inside her rejoiced.

III. The First Witness

Branches cracked behind her.

“Rogue?”
Remy’s voice—smooth, warm, too perceptive for comfort.

She turned, hair whipping in a sudden updraft. He stepped into the clearing with cautious grace, trench coat swaying, red-on-black eyes narrowing.

“Chère… what in the world are you doin’ out here at this hour?”

“Go back inside, Remy.”
Her voice came too low, too strained
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