The Hollow Moth: Reincarnated as a Caterpillar

The entrance to our newfound sanctuary is completely hidden beneath layers of silk. It took forever to set up—stringing webs, placing snares, rigging traps from my preloaded spines—but hey, at least we're safe. For now.

I let out a quiet sigh, stepping back to inspect our handiwork. Yeah. Not bad.

Tessa lounges nearby, tail wagging lazily as she munches on the human snacks we uncovered earlier. Dried meat, something crunchy—who knows. She seems way too happy about it, chewing with a blissful expression and crumbs stuck to her snout.

"Enjoying yourself?" I ask dryly, raising one antenna.

She looks up, muzzle full. "Mmh… sho good," she mumbles, then swallows. "You should try this one. Tastes like actual food."

I snort. "Thanks, I'll pass."

Right now, I've got other things on my mind—like magic.

I lift one leg slightly, focusing. Remember the fleshling's weird explanation earlier? Heat. Replication. Manipulation. Raw mana. It's a tangled mess, but somehow it's clicking into place.

I imagine warmth—heat radiating softly, curling out from my center.

At first, nothing happens.

Then, a faint shimmer. The air ripples gently around my leg, warming until a small haze dances above my claws.

It works. A tiny success, but I'll take it.

Tessa eyes me curiously between bites. "Hey, is that… magic?"

I let the warmth fade, nodding faintly. "Yep. Just practicing."

Her eyes glint with amusement. "Gonna start cooking for us now?"

I roll my eyes. "Only if you're volunteering as the first ingredient."

She chuckles softly, going back to her food. "Rude."

I settle back down, the quiet satisfaction lingering in my chest.

Traps set. Magic practice underway. Fleshling is still unconscious.

And Tessa, happily snacking away.

Right now, I think I'm finally starting to get what's happening.

Magic. Heat. Focus. It's less about pushing, more about letting it happen—channeling that sensation into something real.

I lift my leg, pointing carefully at a nearby rock.

Slow breaths. Steady.

Heat gathers, pooling inside me. I hold it, gently pushing forward.

Nothing forceful—just careful, controlled pressure.

The air ripples first, shimmering faintly around the stone. Then it happens. The rock starts to warm, slowly at first, then faster, deeper, brighter—

Tessa suddenly stops chewing. "Um, Nur?"

I don't answer. Can't answer. The heat's building rapidly, surging forward. Before I realize it, the rock is glowing bright red, sizzling.

I flinched, breaking my concentration. The heat vanishes from me instantly, but the rock stays hot—red-hot, still glowing.

Tessa stares, mouth half-open, crumbs dropping from her muzzle. "Whoa. Did you mean to do that?"

I slowly lower my leg, watching the rock carefully. "Not exactly."

But it worked. More than worked. It's a start—maybe even something powerful, if I can get a handle on it.

Tessa gives me a sideways grin, nudging me with her shoulder. "You're officially scary now."

I smirk back, feeling strangely proud. "And you just figured that out now?"

I shrug slightly, turning to Tessa with a faint smirk. "Besides, that's basically nothing compared to what you can do, Tess."

Her ears perk up instantly, eyes lighting with sudden pride. "Oh, yeah! You're right."

She quickly flexes her claws, eyes fixed in concentration. Within moments, the tips glow searing red-hot, heat shimmering around them like tiny suns.

She grins at me smugly. "See? Way scarier."

I roll my eyes, but the corners of my mouth twitch upward. "Show-off."

Tessa chuckles, releasing the heat and shaking out her paws. "Hey, just reminding you who's the actual scary one here."

I sigh, pretending annoyance but secretly enjoying her antics. "Yeah, yeah. Terrifying."

She laughs softly, tail wagging. "Glad we're clear on that."

A sudden noise interrupts our banter—a low, faint grunt from behind us. Instantly, Tessa's ears perk up, and I swivel sharply toward the source.

It's the fleshling.

He's stirring, shifting slightly, limbs twitching against the cold stone. Another grunt escapes him.

I step closer cautiously. "Hey… you awake yet?"

No immediate response, just another low, frustrated grunt.

Then, out of nowhere, he speaks—voice raspy, strained, barely above a whisper.

"Mor… ven…"

I freeze. That… sounded like a name.

Tessa tilts her head, eyes narrowed in confusion. "Morven? What's a Morven?"

I don't answer, staring at the fleshling's twisted form. A chill creeps down my spine.

"Hey," I say slowly, taking another cautious step forward. "Who's Morven?"

He doesn't reply, falling quiet again, but I can see his body still twitching, caught somewhere between dreams and waking.

Tessa glances at me uneasily. "This is getting weirder."

She's right. And somehow, I have a feeling this is only the beginning.

"Morven," I repeat quietly, testing the sound again. Is that his name? Never heard a name like that before, though, given we're in an entirely alien world, that shouldn't be a surprise.

Slowly but surely, the fleshling stirs, shifting against the stone, limbs twitching unevenly as he wakes. Tessa steps closer to me, ears tilting warily.

"Oh boy," she mutters, tail swishing anxiously. "Here comes the gibberish."

I sigh, bracing myself. But when his eyes finally flutter open, there's no immediate babbling—just silence. Confusion flickers clearly across his warped face. He blinks several times, as if trying to focus through a haze.

Then he opens his mouth—and starts speaking.

Not in his usual nonsense, but in that unfamiliar, structured language—the same strange tongue he used when we first met.

"Seh velan toru, Morven...? Ven...sar halia?"

Tessa looks at me, ears pinned back, utterly lost. "What's he saying?"

I shake my head slowly, cautious but intrigued. "No idea."

The fleshling seems genuinely puzzled, glancing at his hands, then around the silk-covered room, murmuring again, softer this time:

"Morven... han relat?"

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Whatever clarity he'd found clearly doesn't extend to us. But at least he's not screaming about clocks or meat-threads yet.

Yet.

And there it goes again—his skin warps, ripples like water, then reshapes into something that makes my spines twitch.

My species. My face. Or a knockoff version of it, stretched just wrong.

Mandibles click into place, ocelli glint with faint shimmer, and a few stubby spines push through his scalp like he's trying way too hard to be convincing. It's not even the first time he's pulled this stunt, but this one feels different.

Then, without moving his mouth, I hear it.

"Can you hear me?"

It's not sound. Not really. The words vibrate through the base of my skull.

I narrow mine back. "...Yeah. I can."

He exhales through the mandibles like he just figured out how to breathe.

"Good," he says.

And it actually worked. Great. Mind-talking meat puppet. Just what I needed.

"Wow," I mutter, antenna flicking back in mock awe. "You actually managed to speak coherent words instead of stringing nonsense like a broken poetry machine. Truly, a miracle."

He flinches slightly.

"So," I continue, voice flat, "tell me. Who are you?"

His mandibles part, then clench. There's this tiny pause—hesitation—not confusion exactly, more like dread wearing confusion as a mask.

"I… I don't know," he says, the words crawling straight into my brain, not my ears.

"Who am I? You said that name… Morven... I feel like I knew that name. Is that… my name?"

I stare at him. Hard.

"…You're asking me who you are?"

"I don't know," he says again, quieter this time, voice pulsing straight into my skull.

"I feel like I know something. Everything. And nothing. All at the same time. But every time I try to reach it—the knowledge, the memory—it all unravels."

He sounds... lost. Not just confused—broken in the soft, unraveling kind of way.

Tessa squints at him, then glances at me.
"Uh… I don't get it?" she says, with the exact same tone she uses when I try to explain how I sense distances with spatial resonance.

I sigh. "He's basically saying his brain is a junk drawer full of half-burned notebooks and whenever he grabs one, it disintegrates."

Tessa tilts her head. "Oh. So… he's weird."

"Extremely." I gesture at him. "But maybe useful-weird. Jury's still out."

He keeps going, voice thinner now, like a thread stretched too far.

"The harder I try… the more I feel like losing myself. It's getting harder to stay… me. Harder to keep it all together."

There's a flicker behind his eyes—panic, maybe. Or something colder. Something older.

And that's when it all snaps into place.

"Huh," I say, clicking my mandibles. "So that's what that was."

Tessa looks up mid-chew. "What what?"

"The gibberish. The nonsense. The 'I am the echo of the void beneath the staircase' crap." I gesture vaguely at him. "He wasn't just being weird. He was glitching."

She stares at him. He doesn't deny it.

Yeah. That mess in his head? That wasn't just madness.

That was something trying real hard not to fall apart.

"Alright let me guess," I say, squinting at him, "the very thing that's keeping you together is those artifacts you've been slurping on?"

He doesn't flinch. Doesn't even blink.

"Yes."

His voice cuts in smooth, like he's admitting he eats rocks for breakfast and dares me to judge him.

"The more I absorb, the more stable I become. The more knowledge I can reach—without unraveling. Without going insane."

Tessa makes a face like she just stepped on something squishy.

"So… cursed knowledge smoothies. Nice."

I hum, mandibles twitching. "So you're basically patching yourself together with puzzle pieces from a bunch of forgotten nightmares."

He nods, dead serious.

"Correct."

Fantastic. We've adopted a flesh cryptid with a hoarding problem.

"Alright, Morven," I say, drawing out the name just to test how it feels. "Can we call you that, by the way? Or is your real name something like—" I wave a leg dramatically, "—'The Infinite Shuddering of a Thought Yet Unborn.'"

He tilts his head, that same, thoughtful expression stretching across the not-quite-my-face he's still wearing.

"Morven…"
He repeats it like it's foreign. Familiar. Heavy.

Then he nods.
"Yes. That name… it feels familiar. It holds."

Good enough for me.

"So now what?" I ask, tapping my claws on the rock floor. "You got your magic juice, your name, your half-working brain—what's next?"

Morven looks past us, toward the silken-covered exit, eyes distant.

"Now… I find the rest of me."

Of course he does.

He looks at me, eyes still swimming with half-formed clarity, and says—

"Will you… Help me? Find the rest of me?"

I blink. Then I squint.

"Really?"

Tessa looks over, ears twitching, caught between sympathy and confusion.

"You do realize your business has nothing to do with us, right?" I deadpan, tapping a claw on the floor. "We're just two confused girls in a dungeon with trauma, some teeth, and a growing collection of bad decisions."

Morven doesn't flinch.

"And," I add, "last time we tangled with a part of you—or whatever the hell that rotting orb freak was—my entire brood almost got wiped out. So forgive me if I'm not thrilled about collecting more of your soul marbles."

He doesn't argue.

He just nods.

"I understand."

And somehow, that makes it worse.

He doesn't argue. Doesn't plead. Just lowers his head slightly—still wearing that warped mimicry of my face, which is extremely not comforting—and says:

"Then… at least let me accompany you on your journey."

His voice is calm, lucid, almost too sane. Like he's afraid to spook it away.

"Perhaps… we will find part of me along the way."

I click my mandibles. Tessa shifts beside me, tail brushing my leg.

"Oh, so now you're our cryptid intern?" I mutter. "You gonna help with the groceries too?"

He actually tilts his head like he's considering it.

Tessa leans over and whispers, "I mean… he is weirdly strong."

I sigh. "Fine. But if you start spouting nonsense again, I'm duct-taping you to the wall."

He nods solemnly.

"I accept these terms."

Of course he does.

I really don't want a stranger with issues in our party—especially one who talks like a broken philosophy textbook and has identity problems thicker than Tessa's tail fluff—but fuck it.

This is the dungeon. Zone Four. Survival of the fittest, eat-or-be-eaten, don't-look-too-long-at-the-shadows or you'll end up in them. We take every bit of help we can get. Even if it's wrapped in a flesh-warping mystery burrito.

Besides… he kinda did teach me something about magic. Not that he meant to, but still. Might squeeze a few more pointers out of him before he explodes into riddles again.

And he speaks the native language. That's huge. We've been stabbing our way through every misunderstanding so far, and I'd rather not play charades with another arrow-slinging murder squad.

So I suck it up.

"Alright, fine. But one cryptic meltdown and you're sleeping outside the spine-perimeter."

Morven just nods, like he's accepting a sacred pact.
"Understood."

Tessa beams. "Yay! New party member!"

Yeah. Yay.

"Alright," I say, clicking my mandibles as I pace a little. "We're getting off track, again."

Tessa glances over, still holding that last piece of rations like it might solve world hunger. Morven just stares, head slightly tilted like he's buffering reality. I keep going.

"We came here because of humans. They're a threat to my brood. The ones who tried to snatch Goldy? Might be part of something bigger. And with this lab, the cages, and you standing in the middle of it holding a chunk of yourself like it's a damn coupon—" I jab a leg toward Morven, "—this whole thing stinks."

The silence stretches, heavy. Morven doesn't look surprised.

"I have an itching feeling," I continue, "that whatever you are, and these artifacts you keep absorbing, are part of all this. The humans. The disappearances. The Rot. The whole damn mess."

Morven doesn't flinch. Doesn't even try to deny it.

"Maybe," he says softly. "Maybe I'm… indirectly involved in this. Not by will. But by origin."

I narrow my eyes.

"That's supposed to make us feel better?"

He shrugs with that crooked half-smile he wears sometimes. "I wouldn't trust me either."

Tessa gives a slow blink. "Okay well that's not ominous at all."

No kidding.

But the thing is—he's not lying. At least not right now. And if he's part of the puzzle, then maybe keeping him close is the only way to see the full picture. Even if the picture ends up killing us.

"Ok first," I say, jabbing a spine into the dirt for punctuation. "Since you clearly have no idea who you are, then at least explain this—how do you know about this place? What is it even? And you said something about her. Who told you?"

Morven's form twitches a little—his eyes unfocused, his jaw working through invisible words like he's chewing on broken glass thoughts.

"Her..." he says, slowly. "The one who told me of this hideout... yes. Her. The young elf priestess. She goes by... Lyriana."

Tessa looks up at that, frozen mid-chew.

"Her party..." he continues, voice brittle. "They attacked me. Or maybe they tried to capture me—I was... unstable."

Unstable. Understatement of the year.

"I barely remember it clearly," he says, gaze sliding away from us, "but I remember killing two of them. Humans. They struck first, I think. I... reacted."

Of course he did. Something tells me his definition of 'reacting' involves limbs flying off and the smell of blood and magic in the air.

"After that," Morven mutters, "I walked toward her. She was the only one left. She begged me to spare her life."

Tessa shifts uncomfortably beside me. I keep quiet.

"I asked her... if she knew about me. About the glowing rocks."

His tone shifts mid-sentence—morphs into something jagged and strange, his voice cracking as he suddenly mimics his babbling

"Fragments! Pulsing blue! I see me in her eyes!"

Then he coughs, shaking the madness off like dust.

"She told me about this place," he finishes, voice barely above a whisper. "Said I might find... part of myself here."

I exhale slowly. "So we're here, crawling through a human-made hideout, because some half-dead elf priestess you almost murdered handed you directions?"

"I spared her," he says quietly. "She told me the way. Then she ran."

"And you followed," I say. "Great. Perfect. All according to the plan I definitely had when I woke up this morning."

Morven's gaze drops. "I didn't want to hurt them," he mutters. "But they saw a monster."

"Yeah," I say, leaning back, crossing my legs. "Well. So did we."

So we are dealing with monster traffickers or whatnot. This hideout, Orbed's prison, Morven's artifact—all of it's connected.

The humans who tried to snatch Goldy, the ones Morven killed, this lab with cages and jars full of floating eyes—none of this screams coincidence. Something's definitely going on in this labyrinth.

And my brood… they're still out there.

I exhale sharply through my mandibles and mutter, "Fantastic. We're not just crawling through some abandoned base anymore. We're standing in the middle of a goddamn conspiracy web."

And I hate webs.

"Alright, let's go back to the family," I say, voice tight with urgency. "They might be in danger as we speak."

Tessa perks up immediately. "On it! You want me to—?"

"Yeah. Undo the traps. Your specialty."

She grins widely, flame licking her claws before I even finish the sentence. "Burn it all. Got it."

The silk-lined entrance hisses as she sets it alight, flames crawling through my carefully laid traps like it's dry grass. Embedded spine-triggers burst with crisp pops, one after another, leaving behind nothing but scorched stone and smoke. Tessa watches it with a satisfied flick of her tail, like an artist admiring her work.

Meanwhile, I unfurl the map again. Lucky this hideout's still lit—probably the only good thing the humans left behind. I study the routes, tracing claw-tip along the paths.

"We came in through this tunnel," I murmur, more to myself. "And they… headed that way."

I shift the map, squinting at a ridge line just south of our position. "If we cut through here—this pass—it should let us intercept them. Assuming they're still moving in the same direction."

I fold the map and glance back. Morven's standing quietly, head tilted like he's trying to memorize every word.

"Tessa. You ready?"

"Always."

"Morven, stay close. Don't wander. Don't spiral. And if anything breathes too loud near us, melt it."

He nods slowly. "Understood."

"Alright then," I say, voice low and steady as we step out. "Let's move."

End of Chapter 53