Book One – Chapter 16

And Barbarthara, buried in the grand arachnid’s abdomen, was soaked in it. The corrupted fluids oozed through her. Flooded every root. Seeped into her core. She could not stop it — She was a scorchborn. To absorb was her nature. To take in sustenance. To feed on the world and its creatures. It was the foundation of her existence, the marrow of her life. And now, it was the thing that would end her.

Barbarthara did not know what poison the weaver had chosen for her. What poison had pierced her flesh in that first strike.

But that had only been the beginning.

Now came everything.

Not one poison with purpose, but all of them.

The full volatile arsenal of the grand one – every compound it had ever crafted, every intention it had etched into its glands – now leaked from failing sacs and ruptured membranes. Bleeding out. Bleeding into her.

Her core could not seal.

Her intake could not stop.

Her self could not hold.

Barbarthara lay deep within the ruin of what had killed her — and what she had killed. And in that steaming cradle of pulp and venom, she gave in. The toxins flooded her. They made her senses swim and set her mind flickering at the edge of unconsciousness. And as her thoughts frayed, and her form spasmed and shivered and stretched toward something else,

Barbarthara did not fight it.

Because this was not only pain.

Not only poison.

        This was change.

  And change meant life.

Barbarthara was not a being with a fixed design. She had no ideal body to protect and preserve, no pristine inner composition to stand against external influences, no singular blueprint to defend against corruption from the outside world. Unlike witches, unlike orks, unlike even arachnids, she existed only because she absorbed from that outside world. Because she took. Because she broke down what was foreign, and remade it as herself. She existed through that a constant current of sustenance.