Reborn
The forest filled with presences like a lung inflating too quickly.
Identical figures, yet all flawed in minute details: a smile sewn too tightly, eyes too empty, movements too synchronized to be natural. There was no warmth in them. Only imitation. Their pale skin, as white as milk, glowed beneath the silvery moon. One had the body of a spider, complete with eight hairy legs that creaked on the broken twigs. One of the creatures tilted its head, observing her as one might observe a rare insect caught in a web.
“A human,” someone murmured, almost disappointed. Their voices were cold; they seemed to penetrate and crawl beneath her skin. The web around Astar’s neck tightened slightly, as if reacting to that word.
She swallowed. The taste of blood returned to her mouth, and along with it… something else. An echo. A shadow inside her that refused to be ignored.
“Don’t look frightened,” she thought. “Don’t do it.”
But her body trembled anyway.
Another step, closer. Then another. The shadows surrounded her unhurriedly, as if the outcome were already decided. “We should eat her,” said a voice from the side, flat and curious. “She’s tiny, but she’s still alive.”
“But…” another voice interjected, slower, almost confused. It drew close enough for her to study it. It had a sweet face, like a young girl’s, dotted with red circles. Eyes as black as coal scrutinized her intently, its head tilted unnaturally. It inhaled.
The silence changed. It didn’t disappear; it grew heavier.
“You’re wrong…she’s not human. Not entirely.”
That whisper made something in the air vibrate. The cobwebs around her trembled as if they’d sensed a threat different from the usual. Astar felt the stares change: no longer blind hunger, but doubt.
The creature before her bent down slightly, observing the blood trickling down her chin. The red slid across her pale skin, and for a moment it seemed almost too intense to be merely human.
“This smell…” she repeated, more softly. Then she jerked back, looking around. “It’s dirty.”
She didn’t seem disgusted, but rather confused, as if the world had just broken a rule. The cobwebs above her tensed, like living nerves, and Astar realized something with almost violent clarity: they were no longer deciding whether to eat her.
They were deciding what she was.
A faint sound rippled through the woods. Not footsteps. Not the wind. A movement higher up that made the branches tremble. Everyone fell silent. Even the cobwebs seemed to stiffen.
And then, slowly, as if the world itself had decided to part… a figure appeared among the trees, suspended by invisible threads. It wasn’t walking; it was commanding the space. Even Astar found herself staring at it, mouth agape, her eyes filled with wonder mixed with terror.
“Enough.”
The voice was calm. And for the first time, all the creatures around Astar moved in unison, as if to let it pass.
Astar didn’t see it clearly at first. Only fragments: the elegant silhouette against the moon, the threads holding it up like a puppet and yet like a king on his throne, and those eyes… cold. Piercing.
The figure tilted its head slightly, observing her as if reading something written directly in her blood.
“…Odd,” it said at last.
Whatever had just arrived… it wasn’t deciding whether to eat her. It was deciding what to do with her.
And that was much, much worse.
The figure among the trees didn’t move right away. It remained suspended in the darkness like a thought that hadn’t yet decided whether to become real. Then it spoke again, and the voice came closer, clearer, as if the forest itself were uttering it.
“Don’t worry, no one will eat you. We don’t feed on our own kind, but the choice is yours. You can be saved, or we’ll kill you now. No other demon can hunt in my territory without consequences. So tell me, what is your choice?”
The silence that followed was almost gentle. Not threatening, not yet. Just inevitable.
Astar felt the pressure of the webs on her neck, the still warm blood trickling down her skin, and something inside her snapped without a sound. It wasn’t a choice, not really. It was survival disguised as a question.
“…saved,” she whispered.
The word came out small. Too small for the world around her. And for a moment, it seemed like the right choice. The spiderwebs slowly retreated, as if they’d received an order that brooked no argument. The figure didn’t even speak; it merely made a slight gesture with its hand. The forest responded.
The movement resumed without chaos, yet it moved with coordination: a single mind at the helm of a thousand bodies.
They dragged Astar without actually touching her, guided by invisible threads that brushed her skin like fingers. They made their way through the underbrush until they reached a structure that shouldn’t have existed: a sort of crooked shelter, made of wood, flesh, and intertwined cobwebs. A house that didn’t belong.
Inside, it was dark, but alive. Astar was pushed past the entrance, and the world changed its scent. It smelled of demons.
Not all the same. Not all monstrous in the same way.
Two girls watched her from a corner, motionless like forgotten dolls: they had almost human features, too clean to be random, too empty to be innocent. A little further on, the same creature with a spider’s body and a human head moved slowly across the ceiling, its legs scraping the wood in a steady rhythm. And even further on, a deformed giant, with a massive body and a spider’s head, breathed heavily like a mountain waking up.
Astar couldn’t look away. Her brain was desperately trying to categorize each of them. It failed every time. Then she saw it. The ethereal figure that seemed to walk on air.
Rui.
He was smaller than Astar had expected, but his presence filled the room. He didn’t raise his voice. There was no need.
“This is my family,” he said simply.
He pointed to them one by one, without hesitation, as if he were listing something natural. “Mother. Father. My sisters and brothers.”
His gaze returned to Astar, steady and analytical. “Everyone has a role. And every role must be respected.” His tone was childlike, but the weight of his words betrayed the true malice underlying his intentions. “Those who don’t respect it… are punished.”
The silence in the room grew heavier. Rui took a step forward and announced,
“You will become part of the family. My sister.”
Astar stared at him, unable to tell whether that word was a promise or a sentence.
Rui knelt before the little girl and, with a wave of his hand, caused a bowl to appear on his lap. A strand of spiderweb cut his finger, and blood began to drip, filling the bowl. Then the wound closed by itself.
It wasn’t a kind offer. It was a truth imposed upon her. “Drink. To become one of us.”
And Astar drank.
The pain came as if her body were learning to exist in the wrong way. Her bones seemed to liquefy and reassemble; her skin burned as if it were being rewritten. She fell to her knees, but she didn’t really touch the ground: everything was shaking, everything was changing. Her hair lightened, turning white and long, and the ends transformed into something unnatural, like filaments ready to become limbs. Her skin grew even paler, almost unreal, as if the blood beneath were no longer human.
And then came the eye.
A sharp pain, impossible to ignore. On one side of her face, something opened, and from there poured living forms: eight small, limb-like extensions that moved through the void and grazed against her face, seeking balance. Astar screamed, but her voice was no longer entirely her own.
When the pain finally subsided, she was no longer the same. The silence in the room was absolute; Rui watched her without surprise, only confirmation.
“Welcome,” he said softly. “Now you are truly my sister.”
And in the darkness of the spider’s web-like house, Astar realized she hadn’t been saved. She had been reborn.