It was supposed to be an ordinary Saturday morning. I made my coffee and decided to enjoy it on the balcony, just as I had done countless times before. But the moment I slid open the glass door, I stopped. Something pale was lying near the railing on the dark gray tiles, and I was certain it hadn’t been there the day before.

It was only a few centimeters long, yet I couldn’t stop staring. It wasn’t a leaf, pebble, piece of food, or anything else I recognized. The strange curved shape looked almost translucent in the sunlight, and somehow it appeared soft and biological. I wondered whether it was alive, dead, or part of something larger. Then my imagination started producing increasingly disturbing possibilities. Maybe it was a caterpillar, a larva, or some strange fungus. But the longer I looked, the stranger it became.