Chapter 2: First Molt

Chapter 2: First Molt

The silence of the house was a physical weight. Leo sat on the edge of the groaning guest bed, the nightmare clinging to him like a shroud of grave dust. He kept touching his stomach, half-expecting the skin to feel different, alien. The frantic fluttering was gone, replaced by a cold, dense knot of… something. It was a leaden stillness, a foreign object lodged deep within him.

"It was a dream," he whispered into the pre-dawn gloom, the words sounding flimsy and pathetic. "Grief. Stress. Bad water." He was an architect. He built his life on logic, on the unyielding physics of concrete and steel. A man doesn't inherit a centipede. It wasn't possible.

He needed a task, a tangible problem to solve. The paperwork. The will. He would focus on that, on the sterile reality of legal documents and property deeds. That was his world, not this… this folklore horror.

He forced himself to his feet and moved through the house like a trespasser. He started in the small, cluttered room Abuelo had used as a study. Piles of yellowed newspapers, receipts for tractor parts, Farmer’s Almanacs—nothing. The search was a conscious act of denial, a way to keep his hands and mind busy, to stop himself from thinking about the phantom scrape of a hundred legs down his esophagus.

Inevitably, his search led him back to the master bedroom. The moonlight had shifted, now pooling on the floor by the closet. He deliberately kept his back to the nightstand, refusing to look at the milky-white shed skin he’d seen there last night. He wouldn't give the delusion power.

He slid open the creaking closet door, releasing a puff of air thick with the scent of mothballs and old wool. Faded plaid shirts hung like ghosts in the darkness. On the floor, beneath a stack of scratchy blankets, was a worn cardboard shoebox, the brand name faded into obscurity. It felt too heavy for shoes.

Curiosity, a dangerous and unwelcome impulse, won out. He lifted the box and carried it over to the bed, sitting where the moonlight fell. He pried off the lid.

The box was filled with photographs. Dozens of them, all black and white, amateurishly developed. He picked one up. It was a blurry, overexposed shot of the full moon. He picked up another. The moon again, this time a perfect crescent. He sifted through them, a growing sense of unease crawling over his skin. They were all the same subject. The moon, in every phase, catalogued with an obsessive’s focus. Some were so grainy they were just a white smear against a black background.

Beneath the photos was a stack of papers, torn from a notepad and covered in Abuelo’s spidery, barely legible scrawl. They weren't letters or a diary. They were notes. Fragments of a madman's thesis.

She drinks the light, but thirsts for the soil.

The first molt is a cleansing. The old skin must be shed to make way for the new.

Do not fear the hunger. It is a sign of her strength. Our strength.

The blood knows its own. It cannot be denied.

Leo’s logical mind recoiled. It was the nonsensical rambling of a lonely, superstitious old man. A way to give meaning to a solitary life in the middle of nowhere. He tried to laugh it off, a dry, humorless sound that got caught in his throat. But the words… they didn't feel like nonsense. They felt like an instruction manual.

As his eyes scanned the phrase The first molt is a cleansing, the cold knot in his stomach clenched.

It wasn't a cramp. It was a violent, twisting contraction, as if a powerful fist had seized his intestines. He gasped, dropping the shoebox. The photos and notes scattered across the bed and floor, a hundred pale moons staring up at him like the eyes of a silent jury.

The pain was blinding, a white-hot agony that radiated from his core. His body convulsed, doubling him over. This wasn't food poisoning. This was something else, something invasive and purposeful. He lurched to his feet, a guttural groan tearing from his lips, and stumbled towards the bathroom, his body no longer his own.

He crashed against the doorframe, his vision tunneling. As he collapsed to his knees before the grimy toilet, a memory, sharp and vivid, erupted in his mind. It wasn’t the nightmare. This was real.

He’s ten years old, awakened by a strange choking sound from down the hall. He creeps to Abuelo’s bedroom door, peeking through the crack. His grandfather is on his hands and knees on the floor, his back heaving with violent, silent retches. He isn't throwing up. He’s… expelling something. After a final, shuddering convulsion, Abuelo spits a glob of thick, white fluid into a dusty towel. He remains on the floor for a long moment, breathing heavily, before pushing himself up. He catches a glimpse of his own pale face in the dresser mirror, and a strange, serene smile touches his lips. He saw Leo in the reflection, and his smile didn't falter. He simply put a finger to his lips, a shared secret in the moonlit room.

The memory vanished as Leo’s own body gave a final, agonizing heave.

He retched into the toilet bowl, but what came out wasn't bile or stomach acid. It was a thick, pearlescent fluid, viscous and heavy, like raw egg whites laced with silver. It coiled in the water, shimmering faintly in the dim light from the hallway, utterly alien. It smelled of ozone, the scent of the air after a lightning strike, and a faint, coppery tang that was like blood without the color.

The moment it was out of him, the pain vanished. Completely. It was as if a switch had been flipped. The agonizing torment was replaced by a profound, hollowed-out calm. He felt scoured clean, empty.

Trembling, he pushed himself up, his hands gripping the edge of the sink, knuckles white. He stared at his reflection in the cracked, silver-spotted mirror. His face was chalky, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. His eyes were wide, the pupils dilated with a terror that went deeper than fear of death. This was a fear of transformation, of utter loss of self.

He watched a single tear trace a path through the grime on his cheek. He was broken. Something was inside him, living inside him, and it had just… shed its skin.

Then, his reflection changed.

For less than a second, for a single, impossible heartbeat, the face in the mirror was not his. The fear in the eyes vanished, replaced by an ancient and predatory intelligence. The lips, his lips, pulled back from his teeth. It wasn't a grimace of pain or a smile of relief. It was a slow, smug, and deeply unsettling grin. A look of pure, inhuman satisfaction.

It was the look of a creature admiring its new home.

Then it was gone. His reflection was his own again, just a terrified man staring at his own face. But the image was burned into his mind. He was not alone in his own skin. He had seen the passenger, and it was smiling.