The Hollow Moth: Reincarnated as a Caterpillar

The tunnel feels even quieter after the ghoul's body hits the ground.

Not peaceful quiet — no, more like the kind that settles just before something worse decides to show up.

Tessa is walking a step behind me now, ears still flicking, her tail low and tense. The fleshling, as usual, doesn't care. He strolls ahead like nothing happened, one claw idly tracing patterns along the stone wall, still muttering about "clocks" and "threads."

I keep glancing back at the ghoul's corpse. Making sure it stays dead. So far, no movement.

Good.

We keep moving deeper.

The air here is colder. Not just temperature — it feels… thinner. Like every breath has to claw its way down your throat.

The fleshling suddenly stops.

He places his claw flat against the wall, tilts his head at some impossible angle, and whispers, "The strings are tighter here. So many little hands pulling, pulling. We're close."

Tessa gives me a look that says Don't ask.

So I don't.

But my instincts are starting to hum again — faint, uneasy.

Something ahead of us is waiting.

And I'm not sure if it's better or worse than the ghoul.

The fleshling drags his claws along the wall as he moves, tracing invisible patterns into the stone. Sometimes he presses his face right up to it, like he's listening to voices buried inside, then shuffles along, muttering about "knots" and "threads under the skin."

Then he stops, taps a spot with his claw, cocks his head, and moves on.

Then stops again.

Then circles back.

Like there's something alive in the wall and he's just waiting for it.

I glance at Tessa.

She's watching him with that half-bewildered, half-annoyed expression she's perfected. Her ears are tilted, her mouth opens like she's about to say something smart — but what comes out is just:

"…This guy, huh…"

She gestures vaguely at him with her paw. "Like… what's his deal? Does he even have a plan? Or is he just… y'know… being all… wall-y?"

I can't help it. I snort.

"Wall-y?"

She nods with absolute sincerity, tail giving an awkward flick. "Yeah. You know. Wall-y. Touches walls. Talks weird. Finds… uh…" she waves a paw vaguely again, "…ghouls and strings and… stuff. Wall-y."

I cover my face with my leg and sigh. "You're impossible."

The fleshling, completely ignoring us, keeps running his claws over the stone, whispering
"Almost… here. Almost unraveled. Almost…"

We're still exchanging looks — me trying not to laugh at Tessa's "Wall-y" and her pretending that's a perfectly normal description — when suddenly, his voice slams into our heads.

No warning, no build-up. Just—

"IT'S HERE! IT'S HERE! THE CONCLUSION HAS ARRIVED!"

I flinch so hard my spines almost fire.

Tessa yelps, ears flattening. "Okay, okay, okay, what now—?!"

He presses his mismatched body against the stone, but this time it's his human-looking hand that reaches forward.

Fingers splay against the wall, and… it starts to glow.

A faint, eerie violet light seeps out from the cracks where his hand meets the stone — not blinding, but sharp enough to carve patterns into the darkness around us. The glow spreads outward in jagged, spiderweb lines, lighting up strange runes and circles that I swear weren't there before.

He tilts his head back, eyes wide, bulbous and slit alike shining faintly as he whispers:
"Ahhh… the door breathes again."

Tessa leans toward me, her voice low.

"…So, bestie… wanna guess how bad this is gonna be?"

I don't answer.

Because I'm already pretty sure the answer is: very.

The wall… starts to move.

Not crumble, not crack — move.

The glowing lines pulse brighter, and the stone splits down the middle, edges grinding aside like jaws opening for the first time in centuries. The faint violet light spills out, outlining a passage beyond.

I can just make out the faint impression of steps descending, the air inside cooler, thicker.

And beside me… Tessa's tail is wagging.

Actually wagging.

I glance at her, deadpan. "You look way too excited for this."

Her ears perk, eyes glinting in the glow as she grins at me.

"Why wouldn't I, Nur?!" she barks, practically bouncing on her paws. "It's a door!"

I raise a brow. "Uh-huh."

"A frigging secret door! Into who-knows-where! This is like… prime dungeon stuff! You don't just not open the secret door!"

I sigh, flicking one of my spines idly. "One of these days your curiosity is going to get us both eaten."

She just beams at me and mutters, "Would be worth it."

As Tessa's still practically wagging herself into a frenzy over the magical mystery door, the fleshling suddenly stiffens.

His mismatched eyes snap open wider, his claws digging into the stone frame like he's afraid it'll vanish.

And then, in that odd, quivering voice of his, he shouts:

"The Human… it should be! It has to be! They are here—she told me they are here!"

His words echo down the newly opened passage, bouncing off the walls like they're alive.

I blink, his meaning sinking in as his rambling finally aligns with reality for half a second.

"…Wait. So what you said before… about humans… was true?"

I glance at Tessa, who's frozen mid-tail wag, ears swiveling toward him.

"So they're here? Humans? Here-here?"

The fleshling just keeps muttering to himself now, his human-shaped hand still pressed to the glowing doorframe.

"They told me… she told me… the strings pulled me here because they are here…"

Tessa shoots me a look that's equal parts nervous and thrilled.

"…You know," I mutter, "I hate how this is starting to make sense."

She just grins faintly, whispering, "Told you. Secret doors never disappoint."

I just… stand there for a second. Watching the glow pulse and the stone grind open wider, while the fleshling keeps muttering about strings and humans and she told me so like some prophecy-spouting nightmare doll.

And finally, I say what's really on my mind.

"Alright. Look. I know I said we should deal with the humans before they could spell trouble—"

Tessa glances at me, ears twitching, tail swishing behind her, already giving me that look.

"—but isn't this…" I gesture at the eerie glowing secret staircase of doom, "…kinda dangerous?"

Tessa huffs through her nose, tilting her head with a crooked grin. "Uh, yeah? Dangerous is, like… the whole point, Nur."

I narrow my eyes at her. "Dangerous doesn't mean smart, mutt."

She shrugs, leaning just close enough to be annoying. "Since when have we been smart?"

I groan, and she flashes all her fangs in a grin that's way too excited for this situation.

Ahead of us, the fleshling spins on his heel, grinning wider than ever, and gestures toward the glowing stairway like he's hosting a party.

My stomach sinks.

Tessa's tail thumps the ground.

This is absolutely going to get stupid fast.

The fleshling suddenly jerks forward, both arms outstretched like he's about to drag us down himself.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

His voice cuts through the air, unsteady but full of urgency — that same broken, theatrical rhythm:

"Come. Come! We need to go, the strings won't wait. They are here, yes, not just humans —"

He stops, claws curling tight against the glowing stone as he presses his twisted face closer.

"—me."

He shudders, then slams his palm flat on the doorframe again.

"I am here. And I… need to get to me."

The words drip out of him like they're not even his — heavy, strange, and final.

Tessa whispers out the side of her mouth, "…I feel like we just got promoted to whatever level of crazy he's on."

I mutter back, "I don't even know if that's a promotion."

The fleshling doesn't even hear us anymore. He just stares into the stairwell, chest heaving, fingers flexing, like he's being pulled down by invisible wires.

And then he starts walking.

I watch him take those first, uneven steps down the glowing stairwell — his spindly frame swallowed little by little by that eerie violet light — and for a second, I actually consider letting him just… go.

But no.

Of course not.

Tessa is already padding after him before I even make up my mind, her tail swishing like this is some grand adventure instead of a likely death trap. She glances back at me once, smirking faintly.

"Well?"

I sigh, flex my claws, and follow.

Because apparently that's what we do now.

We follow the lunatic.

One step. Then another. The faint glow clings to our shells and fur, and the air grows cooler as we descend.

Tessa keeps her voice low, almost playful. "You know… if we die down here, I'm blaming you."

I snort. "Fine. As long as you admit you enjoyed the trip."

Her grin widens just enough to be annoying.

And ahead of us, the fleshling mutters to himself: "Closer now… me… me is waiting… very rude to keep myself waiting…"

Yeah. Definitely going to regret this.

We keep descending, the air growing colder and thicker with each step. The fleshling doesn't slow, doesn't even glance back — just keeps muttering about "me waiting" and "rude clocks".

Then… the stairs open out.

And we step into it.

A room.

No — bigger than a room. A whole chamber.

Bright.

The walls are lined with glowing crystals — the same kind we saw in the Third Zone, but here they're… cultivated. Arranged. Forming archways, pillars, even faintly etched patterns in the floor that catch the light and scatter it across the ceiling like tiny constellations.

It's empty.

Surprisingly, eerily empty.

I half expected humans to come screaming out of the corners the second we crossed the threshold — arrows, blades, shouting.

But no.

Nothing.

Just… silence.

We stood there for a long moment.

The fleshling stops dead in the center, staring up at the crystals with his head tilted too far to one side.

Tessa pads up next to me, her voice dropping low.

"…What do you even call this place?"

I don't answer right away.

Because I don't know.

It's… a scene of civilization.

The first time I've seen anything like it since I woke up in this world.

Not nests, not tunnels, not survival.

But something made. Something deliberate.

Something human.

And it makes my stomach knot in a way I can't explain.

I take another step in, claws clicking softly against the carved stone floor.

And that's when I notice—

The tables.

Not just the crystal-lit walls, but tables, lined neatly along the sides of the chamber. Some are piled with papers—yellowed and curling at the edges, covered in that strange human script. Others are cluttered with glass tubes and jars, the kind I've only seen smashed in the aftermath of a fight before.

Test tubes. Beakers. Even a few strange instruments that hum faintly in the glow.

Tessa creeps closer to one of the tables, sniffing. "…This is definitely human. Look at all this junk."

But it's the center of the room that really pulls me in.

A cage.

Huge. Thick metal bars reinforced with crystal inlays that flicker faintly, like whatever they were containing needed more than just steel to hold it.

And now—

The door is bent open.

Warped outward, like something inside forced its way out.

Deep gouges mar the floor leading away from it.

Tessa exhales, ears flat. "Whatever they had in there…"

I finish for her, staring at the twisted bars.

"…It's not here anymore."

The fleshling finally speaks, his voice unusually calm this time.

"The clock struck. The guest left. The dance floor is waiting."

And that knot in my stomach just keeps getting tighter.

I glance around the room, the faint hum of the crystals filling the silence. My claws tap idly on the stone as I mutter, loud enough for him to hear:

"Hey. You said there were humans here, remember? But this—" I gesture at the empty tables, the abandoned cage, the scattered papers "—is pretty much empty, you know?"

The fleshling freezes mid-step, his head jerking slightly like a puppet on a bad string.

Then his voice threads into both of our minds again, soft at first, then climbing into something brittle and frantic:

"Yes… empty now? Empty forever? No. No no no. That's not what she said. She said humans here… and me… and me—"

His mismatched eyes widen.

He spins suddenly, scanning the chamber like he's just realized something's missing.

"Wait. Where's me? Where's… me? I… I need to find me!"

He lurches toward the far side of the room, claws scraping across the floor as his voice rises higher and higher, cracking.

"I NEED TO FIND ME!"

Tessa and I exchange a look—hers somewhere between nervous and incredulous, mine… just tired.

"…Bestie," she mutters, "your friend's having another episode."

"Yeah," I sigh, watching him scrabble toward the next door like his life depends on it.

"Nothing new there."

I let him scuttle off in his frenzy — not like I could stop him if I wanted to — and turn my attention back to the room.

The papers catch my eye first.

I pick one up with the tip of a claw. The script spirals across the page in loops and cuts, nothing I've ever seen before. Definitely not from Earth. Probably the native language of this world.

Tessa leans over my shoulder, squinting. "Can you even read that?"

I shake my head. "Not a clue."

I set it back down and moved along the table.

The beakers come next. Some empty, but others—

My mandibles tighten.

One of them has something floating in a faintly glowing liquid.

An eyeball.

Still intact, still staring.

Another jar further down has… something like a lung, dark and veined, suspended in amber fluid.

I glance toward the cage again, bent and broken like a trap that couldn't hold its prey.

The papers.
The cage.
The beakers with… organs.

It hits me all at once.

"…Wait," I murmur under my breath.

"This place… is what I think it is, isn't it?"

Tessa doesn't answer.

Because she's staring at the same things I am, and her ears are flat now.

I don't know the word for it yet. But I know what it is.

This is where they make things. Or… unmake them.

And the more I stare at it… the more familiar it feels.

The faint hum of the crystals. The air, thick with that sterile cold. The smell — faint copper, faint rot — clinging under the glow.

It clicks.

Back in the Third Zone.

Orbed's prison.

I can see it clear as day now — rows of mycelium cages, slick and alive, holding monsters behind their tangled bars. Most of them were already gone when we got there — bodies half-rotted in place, eyes cloudy, like they'd been forgotten long before we showed up.

And then him.

The Spikeward Mothkin.

The biggest piece of that nightmare. Spiky found him in one of those mushroom cages, frail at first but still alive, and somehow he clawed his way back to being a powerhouse — one of the few allies who could stand beside us without flinching.

And now here I am, staring at this cage.

Sure, it's metal and crystal instead of mushroom and mycelium. Human-made instead of fungal.

But the feeling is the same.

Something — or-someone was kept here. Something dangerous.

And now it's loose.

Tessa notices me staring and whispers, ears flat, "…Looks the same, doesn't it?"

I nod slowly, claws resting on the bent bars.

"Yeah," I murmur. "Too much the same."

I keep my claw on the cold, twisted bar, staring into the emptiness where something—something was.

And the thought just won't let go.

This can't be a coincidence.

The cage. The paper. The jars of organs. The same quiet, clinical horror that clung to Orbed's prison.

But then again…

What's a myconid like Orbed even doing with humans?

I try to connect the dots in my head.

Orbed had monsters locked up. The mycelium cages weren't just holding cells — they were feeding on what was inside. And yet he kept the Spikeward Mothkin alive, barely, as though they were waiting for something.

Here, though… everything screams human.

Steel. Crystal. Ink.

But the same idea.

Capture. Starve. Experiment.

Why would Orbed and the humans be… working toward the same thing?

I drag my claw slowly down the cage door, and Tessa steps closer, her voice quiet.

"You're making that face again," she mutters.

I don't even look at her.

"I don't like this," I say flatly.

Because the more I think about it… the more it feels like this whole dungeon isn't just some survival-of-the-fittest hellhole.

It's starting to look a lot more… deliberate.

And then… it clicks.

My breath hitches.

There's one thing that started the whole mess with the myconids.

The thing the Spikeward Mothkin fell to. The thing that nearly wiped us all out back in that fungal hell.

The artifact.

The artifact.

The one Orbed clutched like it was part of his body. The one that rotted everything it touched, that pulsed with that wrong, heavy power.

And this cage — this whole room — feels just like that place did.

My claws dig into the metal bar.

Wait—

WAIT—

Before I can say it aloud, a scream rips through the chamber.

"I FOUND IT! I FOUND ME!"

It's the fleshling.

His voice is shrill and echoing, like it's tearing straight into my head.

I spin around just in time to see him, kneeling at the far corner of the room, claws clutching something on the floor — something faintly glowing, jagged and pulsing.

Shit.

That's it.

That's the other artifact.

Like the one Orbed had.

And he's holding it.

"Wait—don't hold that thing! It's dangerous—"

But I'm too late.

Just like before.

The artifact — this one faintly blue instead of that sickly rotting green Orbed held — is already in his hands.

And it starts to glow.

That eerie, liquid blue light crawls out of the cracks, bleeding into his claws, into his warped arm, and then through him.

His whole body stiffens, his mismatched eyes wide and unblinking as the glow spreads. Veins of shimmering blue carve across his flesh, lighting him up from the inside like a cracked geode.

I watch in a strange, nauseating kind of déjà vu.

Just like that… bob of flesh thing.

The one we saw was disguised as a myconid. The one that absorbed the artifact Orbed used and twisted itself into something else entirely.

The realization hits hard, dropping into my stomach like a stone.

This… confirms it.

This fleshling—this twitching, muttering, impossible creature we've been following—

It's the same thing we saw back in the Third Zone.

The one that survived.

And it's still evolving.

Tessa's voice cuts through the heavy silence, low and uncertain.

"…Nur… what should we do?"

I glance at her.

She's frozen there, her ears tilted back, eyes locked on the fleshling as the blue veins spiderweb through him. She looks genuinely lost—tail low, paws shifting like she can't decide whether to fight or run or just… watch.

And honestly?

Can't blame her.

Because I'm standing here too, feeling… exactly the same.

Confused as shit.

I watch as the light pulses brighter, his warped silhouette trembling like it's barely holding itself together.

What can we do?

Stop him? How?
Run? From what?
Just stand here? And let him finish whatever this is?

I grit my mandibles, trying to keep my voice steady even though my claws are already digging into the stone.

"…I don't know," I finally admit, quietly.

"But I don't think we've got much choice but to find out."

We just… watch.

What else can we do?

The blue light crawls up his arms, his neck, his chest — filling every crack, every jagged seam of him. It pulses through him like it owns him now.

Neither of us moves.

Tessa's claws scrape faintly at the floor next to me, but she stays put. Her tail is stiff, her ears low, but she doesn't speak.

And me? I just stand there. Watching.

The last vein of blue leaks out of the artifact and sinks fully into him, leaving the crystal dull and dead in his claws.

For a second… nothing happens.

He just stands there in the center of the room, bathed in that eerie glow, like he's waiting for the rest of him to catch up.

And then —

Collapse.

His knees give out first. Then the rest of him crumples to the floor in a heap of twitching limbs and silence.

Tessa mutters under her breath, barely above a whisper:

"…well. That can't be good."

I don't even bother replying.

Because she's right.

I step closer, cautious but curious, and crouch over him.

One claw nudges his side.

No response at first — then his chest jerks, a faint, uneven breath rattling out of him.

"…Not dead," I mutter, more to myself than to Tessa. "Well. That's… good. I guess."

I sit back on my haunches, staring at his collapsed, glowing frame.

"Now what do we do? Just… wait?"

Tessa tilts her head at me, still looking uneasy.

I sigh and answer my own question. "Yeah. He's got an explaining to do when he wakes up, so we don't have much choice."

I glance around at the still-lit room, the papers, the shelves, the dull cage. "Besides… we haven't even searched this place properly yet. There might be, you know… human food stashed somewhere."

Tessa's ears perk instantly. She actually looks excited for a second, tail giving one sharp wag. "Wait—food? Like… actual food?"

But then she freezes mid-step and squints suspiciously at me.

"…But what if the humans come back here?"

I shrug, already flexing one spine.

"Well… then we set traps. Be prepared to fight them if they do."

Her grin comes back, faint but fierce this time. "Alright. Now that's more like it."

I glance back at the fleshling, still unconscious on the floor, and mutter under my breath

"Just don't make me regret letting you live, Wall-y."

End of Chapter 51