Volume 1: Path - [Awakening Arc]
Chapter 1: From filth, came beauty.
Read the Author's Note before you start reading.
...
In a beautiful garden, sunlight bathed every corner with golden warmth. The trees at the edges of the garden were towering and ancient, their trunks gnarled with age and their thick branches spreading a cathedral-like canopy above. Each tree belonged to a different species, like the towering Sycamore in the northwest, an old Willow with gently swaying tendrils near the east, and a silver-leaved Olive tree casting flickering shadows near the center.
The grass was lush, bright green, and soft beneath the feet, kept dewy fresh by an old brass faucet embedded in the ground. It hissed intermittently, spraying misty arcs of water in random patterns, casting miniature rainbows in the air. Hiss... shhhh...
At the heart of the garden, vibrant blooms were arranged like a living compass: Zinnias to the south in a burst of red and orange, Asters to the north with hues of violet and white, Coneflowers to the west standing proud in soft pinks, and Milkweed to the east swaying lightly in the breeze.
Swarming around these flowers were butterflies. Monarchs with their iconic orange and black wings danced above the Zinnias, while smaller, bright-blue Common Blue butterflies flitted among the Asters. Near the Coneflowers, a rare Purple Emperor shimmered with iridescent violet hues. At the Milkweed, the delicate Swallowtails spread their pale yellow wings like stained glass. Flutter, flutter...
Encircling the garden beds were low-growing bushes — all part of the Butterfly Bush family. Their lavender-colored blooms released a faint fragrance that called to butterflies from afar. Most of the butterflies were nestled here, wings still as they drank deeply from the nectar.
A soft voice, distinctly feminine and filled with warmth, echoed through the stillness of the garden, "Cael."
"Yes, mother." A voice responded after a pause, soft yet slightly hollow.
"Come here," she beckoned once more, her voice a melody that barely stirred the decaying air.
"Yes, I am coming," replied the boy as he stepped into view. A child around thirteen, with midnight-black hair tinged at the ends with ghostly silver. His eyes were obscured by his fringe, casting shadows over his gaunt, pale face. His skin was sickly white, almost translucent under the daylight. A sharp, angular jawline and hollow cheeks made him look like a sculpture of something once alive.
His attire matched his form, a high-collared black techwear jacket clung to his narrow frame, with silver zippers like surgical sutures. Beneath it, a dark gray turtleneck hugged him tightly, and his black cargo pants were clean-cut and stark, adorned with matte buckles that gleamed like restrained chains. His feet were bare, the flesh touched by sunlight that felt too bright for his presence.
The boy ran lightly, unnaturally quiet, toward the flowers and the butterflies. Tap... tap...
He moved with unnatural silence toward the garden's center.
There, his mother and father waited inside a perfect ring of flowers. Seven paths converged on them like a ritual diagram. The symmetry was eerie. Too exact.
He ran to them. His mother opened her arms. Her embrace was warm.
But her face blurred. Her features were missing.
His father's as well. Both were silhouettes, memories fading before completion.
As the hug ended, his expression twisted in horror as he looked at his parents. His gaze fell on his mother's right eye socket, which was grotesquely empty. An optic nerve dangled from the hollow, the eye itself completely gone. There was no blood, no gore leaking from the void. Instead, a caterpillar emerged. Squirm... wriggle...
Its body was a segmented coil of obsidian-black flesh, slick and glossy like oiled stone. Faint crimson runes etched into each segment glowed like embers pulsing with forbidden energy. Dozens of shadowy tendrils writhed and curled from its sides, never still, as if constantly searching for something unseen. Its face was smooth, featureless, except for six glowing red eyes arranged in a chilling formation, giving it a cold, watchful presence. The tendrils atop its head twisted like smoke in still air, and its entire form radiated a creeping, soul-staining dread.
Paralyzed with fear, he turned to his father to cry out. But what he saw next rooted him in place. His father's hair was gone, and his skull had been split open. His brain was exposed, glistening in the light. Dozens of identical caterpillars crawled within the folds, devouring the matter and drinking the fluids. Squish... slurp... chew...
Instinctively, the boy pushed away from his mother's embrace. His eyes wide in terror as the world around him began to twist. The colors dulled into a suffocating reddish-brown, the trees around them drained of all life, becoming withered husks.
The grass that once felt fresh beneath his feet vanished, evaporating into air. The vibrant flowers shriveled and died in seconds. Crack... crinkle...
As he tried to back away, his body struck an invisible barrier. Thud! He collapsed forward, breath caught in his throat, and when he raised his eyes, he was forced to look at them again.
His mother's condition had worsened. The caterpillars gushed out of her right eye socket, and then the left collapsed too, spilling more of the black-red monstrosities. But it didn't stop there. From her nose, mouth, ears, genitals, and even from torn patches of her skin and hidden folds, the infestation erupted. Splurt... hiss... squelch... The creatures gnawed their way out through her flesh, carving bloody tunnels slick with internal decay.
His father's brain had been entirely consumed. The caterpillars, slick with cranial fluid, stacked themselves atop one another and slithered free from the ruined skull. They poured out of the skull as they fell to the ground. Then, with a bone-splitting CRACK, his father's spine shattered. The corpse bent unnaturally backward, limbs jerking into impossible angles. His chest caved in, ribs broken and missing, others stripped clean to gleaming marrow. Shreds of muscle hung like torn cloth, quivering as the caterpillars passed through. Twitch... twitch...
His mother's form was even worse. Her torso had collapsed as if her insides dissolved into acid. Her flesh sagged like soggy parchment, full of holes. Her legs gave out beneath her, and her arms were locked mid-scratch, fingers buried into her own skin, trying to dig something out. Her throat, torn wide, became a passage for the flood—black-red caterpillars flowed from her mouth like a dam had burst. Gushhhhh...
Each larva glistened with a dark sheen, its pulsing body filled with madness and meat. They tunneled through the corpses—through eyes, jaws, spines, and groins—chewing flesh like fruit and cartilage like brittle crackers. Crunch... chomp... squish... One squirmed from within his father's jaw, curling between yellowed teeth. Another writhed through his mother's ruined pelvis and ribs.
Cael's legs couldn't move, trembling under the horror of watching his parents being consumed.
Then came the spinning. Whirrrrr...
The caterpillars began weaving with nerve fibers, binding flesh and wet muscle into thick strands of silk. Slick... hiss... Pulsing, veined sacs emerged—pupae throbbing with life yet to be born. Their bodies had become nothing more than grotesque nests, scaffolding for the next stage.
And then, the sound came. A rupture. A split.
The cocoons burst open, not delicately, but violently—SPLOTCH!SCHLUK!—with wet, meaty squelches.
From the gore spilled horror.
They were butterflies in name only. Their wings were long and jagged, shaped like stretched daggers or torn veils—elegance shattered and rebuilt into menace. The wings shimmered a deep black, laced with glowing red veins that looked like cracks in scorched glass or ancient, cursed runes pulsing with forbidden energy. Light didn't pass through them—it bent away, twisted into shadows.
Their bodies were thin and shadowy, not solid but drifting like they were formed of condensed smoke or ink suspended in water. Instead of legs, they had wispy tendrils that hung and twisted with each movement, leaving ghost-like trails behind them.
Their heads were small, round, and terrifyingly still. Two glowing red eyes blazed from each like hot coals in a dying world, burning with soul-piercing clarity. From their foreheads extended long, curved antennae that writhed gently, twitching with unnatural life—thin like wires, yet alive like flesh.
There was nothing gentle about them.
They didn't flutter. They haunted. Wrrrrrr...
As the final wing fluttered, the garden transformed once more.
Spider lilies exploded from the corpses. Fwoom! The man's chest split again as wet red blossoms tangled around his ribs. His wife's eye sockets poured petals, and her mouth overflowed with red blooms.
From filth, came beauty.
The grass turned to black rot. The flowers are dead. The world around them had reddened, desecrated.
The garden had become a grave. A sanctuary for the damned.
It was a place only the dead could love.
As if the corpses had nourished the soil itself, red spider lilies bloomed where death had struck. The trees collapsed into mush. From their branches, more caterpillars rained down, crawling toward the boy. Plop... plop... squelch...
The boy stood still, his body frozen in revolt.
His stomach twisted. His spine convulsed. Then, violently, he vomited. HUAAAAGH!! SPLASH!
But what came out wasn't bile.
It was life.
Hundreds... no, thousands... of black-red caterpillars burst from his throat. Oily, wet, and slick with rot, as if hell itself had delivered them. They landed in a quivering mass, and without pause, they turned toward him in perfect unison. Skitter... skitter...
The boy felt his heart beat faster than ever, the thump-thump-thump pounding like thunder in his chest. He turned around slowly, struggling to rise from the ground. Shhhh... rustle... Even with his legs trembling violently, he managed to push himself upright. His gaze locked onto a tall mirror—creeaak...—this was the one that had caused him to stumble when he tried to move backward from his parents. What he saw in the mirror stopped his breath. Gasp...
Standing within the reflection was a man, older than him by about eight years, but otherwise identical. Same face. Same bone structure. Same hair. But everything else was different.
He stood at the edge of the light, a tall, lean figure wrapped in shadows and torn cloth. His body, though slender, carried the hardened edge of someone who had survived far too much. Pale skin nearly glowed against the darkness, stretched tight over angular features and a wiry frame. His clothes were ragged and weathered—flap... flutter...—layers of tattered fabric and bandages cinched around his waist and arms like makeshift armor. A long black cloak hung from his shoulders, frayed and ghost-like, as if he had outlived a thousand promises.
His hair was a wild, tangled mess of inky curls that fell across his face, untamed and unbothered. But it was the eyes—those eyes—that landed like a gut punch. Fwoosh... Lurid, glowing red, filled with an ancient fury or curse. In them was a hollow emptiness, as if he had seen the worst of the world and made peace with it.
Scars marked his skin like whispers from forgotten wars. Dried blood crusted the collar of his shirt, a memory he refused to wash away. Every inch of him radiated quiet danger—like his soul had been stitched together with pain and loss.
He looked twenty, but his aura screamed older—ancient in trauma, ageless in silence. He was the kind of presence that seared itself into memory.
And the boy realized, with chilling clarity, that the man in the mirror... was him. Thump... silence...
[End of Chapter 1]