At first, nothing happened.
The town remained as it was. Quiet. Ordinary. Alive.
A guard leaned against the wooden wall, half awake, scratching his neck.
"...Damn bugs," he muttered.
Another one nearby shifted uncomfortably, rolling his shoulder.
"You feel that too?"
"Yeah. Probably just fleas or sothing."
They laughed it off.
They didn’t see the way the ground near the base of the wall had begun to swell slightly.
They didn’t notice the thin, black legs slipping through the seams of the wood.
They didn’t hear the deeper sound beneath the soft crawling.
Sothing heavier.
Sothing large.
Vermis took a single step forward.
"Begin."
That was when it changed.
Not gradually.
All at once.
A guard suddenly scread, his voice sharp and raw. He clawed at his chest, fingers digging into the gaps of his armor.
Sothing moved beneath it.
Not outside.
Inside.
His scream cut off into a choking sound as his body convulsed. His mouth opened wide, and for a brief, horrifying second, sothing pushed up against his throat from within.
Then it tore through.
A mass of writhing insects burst out of his mouth in a wet, tearing rush, dragging blood and flesh with it as they spilled down his armor.
The other guards froze.
Then panic hit.
"What the hell is that?!"
"Get them off! Get them off!"
They tried.
They really tried.
But the swarm wasn’t sothing you could brush away.
It clung.
It burrowed.
It forced its way into every opening.
Eyes, mouth, or ears.
One guard dropped his weapon, screaming as sothing thin and long slid into his ear. He slamd his head against the wooden wall again and again, trying to crush it, but it only made it worse. Blood ran down the side of his face as his movents turned erratic, then slow.
Then he went still.
Inside the town, the first scream reached the streets.
A woman stumbled out of her house, her hands covered in blood as she tried to pull sothing off her arm.
It wasn’t coming off.
A cluster of black insects had dug into her flesh, their bodies half buried, twitching as they fed.
She scread again, her voice breaking.
Then the ground beneath her shifted.
It cracked.
Sothing large forced its way up from below.
The earth split open.
A massive insect dragged itself out, its body thick and uneven, its shell layered like rotten armor. Its legs were long, too long, bending at unnatural angles as they unfolded one after another. Its head twitched sharply, mandibles clicking as strands of flesh hung between them.
It was the size of a man.
Its eyes locked onto movent.
Then it lunged.
The woman didn’t even have ti to run.
It crashed into her, knocking her to the ground. Its legs pinned her down as its head lowered. The mandibles opened wide, then snapped shut around her shoulder.
The sound was wet.
Crunching.
Her scream didn’t last long, and more of them followed. From beneath houses, from inside storage pits.
From the very foundations of the town.
Grotesque forms pulled themselves free. So had bloated bodies that dragged across the ground, leaving trails of dark fluid behind them. Others were thin and elongated, their limbs too many, moving in ways that didn’t follow any natural rhythm.
The streets turned into chaos.
People ran.
They didn’t get far.
A man sprinted toward the gate, only for a winged creature to drop from above, its body splitting open mid-air as smaller insects poured out from within it like a living flood. They hit him all at once, covering him completely.
He fell, still screaming.
The sound kept going.
Even after he stopped moving.
The guards tried to fight back.
So managed to swing their weapons, crushing a few of the larger insects. One drove a spear through the body of a massive centipede-like creature, pinning it to the ground.
It didn’t die.
It twisted.
Its body wrapped around the spear, then kept moving forward, its front half rising as it latched onto the guard’s face.
The guard dropped everything, clawing at the thing latched onto his face.
It didn’t let go.
Its legs dug into his skin, anchoring itself as its mandibles tore deeper. Blood ran between his fingers as he tried to rip it off, his screams turning into wet, choking sounds.
Then—
A sharp crack echoed across the street.
The insect exploded apart.
Not from decay.
From force.
A figure landed hard on the ground, boots crushing what remained of the creature beneath them.
"Back!"
The voice carried authority.
Three figures stepped forward through the chaos, their presence cutting through the panic like a blade.
The Town Lord had arrived.
He stood at the front, his body broad, muscles tightly packed beneath his armor. His skin carried a faint bronze sheen, a sign of his cultivation. Every step he took was firm, grounded, the kind that crushed stone instead of stepping over it.
Behind him were his two subordinates.
Both at Body Tempering.
Both hardened.
One of them swung his blade in a wide arc, cutting down a human-sized insect that lunged at him. The blade sank deep into its shell, splitting it open with effort rather than ease.
"Tch. These things are tough," he muttered.
The other raised his arm as a swarm rushed toward him.
"Get off!"
He released a burst of force from his body, shaking the smaller insects away. So were crushed outright against his skin, unable to pierce through.
"Normal poison won’t work on body tempering practitioners," he said.
The Town Lord stepped forward, crushing another insect beneath his heel. His gaze swept across the ruined town, the corpses, the grotesque creatures still crawling.
Then it stopped.
On her.
Vermis.
She stood at the center, untouched, unmoving, surrounded by towering insects that slowly shifted around her like a living wall.
"...What did you do to my town," the Town Lord said in anger.
The Town Lord stared at her, his expression tightening.
Vermis didn’t answer imdiately. Her hollow gaze rested on him, calm, almost curious.
Then she nodded once.
"Killing them for the almighty lord."
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