Chapter 1: The Warm Dark

Awake.

Awareness hit like a freight train, a jolting realization of self. I was alive, sentient. But it wasn't a soft wake in a warm bed. That moment was harsh and sudden, like a plunge into ice water.

The darkness was everywhere, an impenetrable blanket that my mind could not pierce. My eyes—assuming I even had such things anymore—refused to obey my mental commands to open. Instead, I blinked uselessly against the unending void, a void that felt oddly warm and moist, pressing down from every side in a way that made me struggle to breathe.

Panic surged. Where was I? How did I get here? Was I dreaming?

My limbs, if you could call them that, ached as I wriggled and stretched, pushing back against the unseen boundaries that caged me in. There were no comforting sounds to latch onto—just an eerie silence that bore down as heavily as the darkness.

I reached out mentally, seeking some thread to connect the current moment with what had come before. Had there even been a before, or had I always been here in this oppressive womb of nothingness? As I tried harder to remember how I got here, it became harder and harder to locate. It was like trying to remember washed-away memories I was trying to uncover.

The harder I thought, the less clear my mind became. All that emerged was a maelstrom of confused, fragmented images that swirled and shattered whenever I tried to focus on one. Faces, names, scenes...they all blurred into each other, becoming a nonsensical mosaic bereft of meaning.

The thought came to me like a stone in water: it was clear and rippled outward. My gender, my face, and my name didn't seem to matter at all when compared to how I really felt in my twitching, alien body.

Who was I? The answer was lost in a fog, just like everything else about me. In my past, there were no words on the pages, and I had to grab onto the blank ones to find something to hold on to.

But in the middle of all that empty space, a basic instinct rang out loud and clear: the voice of the present was stronger than the mystery of the past.

I wasn't a person. I was not myself.

Something isn't so big. Something less strong.

I was scared more than anything else.

A sound broke the silence.

There was no sound at all. A glow, pale white letters, hovering in the dark just in front of me.

——[Quest Received!]

Don’t get crushed or scratched out of the Warm Dark. ——

I froze. The words hung there, clear and crisp against the void. Not a thought, not a hallucination. They were real.

More text bloomed into view:

[Species Identified]

Race: Botfly (Parasitic) | Age: ~1h

Size: 6.5 cm³ | Growth Limit: 8.1 cm³

Stage: Larva

Botflies are known for their gruesome reproductive methods. Their larvae hatch beneath a host’s skin, consuming it from within. Relentless in hunger, they can inflict severe pain and permanent damage on their host’s body. 

The text lingered, cold and clinical.

My stomach dropped.

—A bug? I’m a fucking bug?

My mind reeled, trying and failing to process this revelation. No, not just a bug, but a parasitic insect living in another creature’s body. It was neither a mosquito nor a louse. A botfly.

Even my limited knowledge of the world before could supply enough detail to make that fact chilling. These were the things of nightmares, grotesque horrors that laid their eggs under a host's skin to feed upon living tissue until ready to pupate and emerge.

That was my kind, my new species.

Or so the text said. But it couldn't be true, could it?

I wasn't an insect, not an animal of any sort, not really. I was me. I remembered things; I knew things. There was no way I could simply be... rewritten. Could I? It didn't make sense. None of it did.

But no matter how I struggled to reject it, the reality of what the floating words told me could not be ignored.

And the thing that was even stranger than the rest of that madness was that, somehow, none of it mattered to me.

I was still alive, and that was all that really counted, wasn't it? Because deep down, there was a spark in me that wanted to live, no matter what. I'd never really thought much about the nature of my soul, but the concept of death made the very core of myself tremble. I didn’t want to die.

But where was the point of reference that could help me find a way back? What did I have to guide me now that my previous existence was gone?

—I don't want to disappear. If I can't go home, I'll just have to create a new home. Even if that home is...this.