Rain pelted the Forest of Beginnings as the red feathered Devi-Birds found refuge under large leaves. The red Barked trees swayed as the wind whipped around in a sudden gust.Whispered words echo across the forest, traveling upon the wind as an ancient spell is given life. The air takes physical form inside the clouds in colors and sparks.
"YOU MUST LIVE!" A woman's voice rings out across the land from a battle far across the land. A pillar of light shone down forcefully from the clouded sky and down to a grove of trees.
A wounded young man fell to the ground as he descended through the beam of light. His blonde hair matted with blood as he coughed and held his bleeding side. His armor had been crushed and the metal now stabbed deep into his body.
"Just...gotta get to town." His normally gentle voice now came in a hoarse whisper as the rain drowned it out. He dragged himself to his feet, putting one labored boot in front of the other.
He was the hero that was supposed to save the world. The battle had left his party broken and the demon king dying. In a last bid to save the hero his goddess used a miracle to send him away and back to the forest of beginnings, an area with weak monsters and villages where any rising hero would find helpful in their quest.
"Wonder if they make the ale the same way." He muttered with a weak chuckle, the man winced as he fell back down to his knees.
"So close..." He mutters, reaching out a hand. the path towards the village just twenty feet away through the brush. Gathering his strength he remembers the sacrifice of his many companions to get this far. "I cannot falter." His eyes glow fiercely with determination as he gets back to his feet and plants another defiant foot forward toward survival. It's at this point his foot slams into a patch of rocks hidden by the overgrowth. Tipping forward his body screams in pain, the sudden action reopening his wounds.
*CRACK*
His head hits a dark jagged stone on the ground.
Hp:1/8000
-1
*BOOP*
Hp:0/8000
"No... this can't...happen." The hero's conscious fades away as his body slumps to the ground, blood pooling under his cracked skull and injured body.
Rain continued to fall long after the hero's final breath escaped him.
It washed the blood from the leaves and stones, diluted it into the soil, and carried the last warmth of his body into the roots of the Forest of Beginnings. The world did not pause to mourn. The red Barked trees still swayed, the Devi-Birds still whispered to one another beneath their sheltering leaves, and the distant rumble of thunder rolled on as if nothing of consequence had occurred.
Yet something had changed.
The holy sword lay beside the fallen man, half-buried in wet loam. Its blade hummed faintly, a restrained lament, waiting—always waiting—for hands that may now never come. Mana bled from the corpse in invisible waves, dissolving the title of Hero into fragments too fine for mortal eyes to see. Power without a vessel scattered into the air, soaking into bark, moss, stone—
and into something that had been waiting far longer than the sword.
The jagged rock beneath the hero's shattered skull trembled.
A sound escaped it, low and wet, halfway between a sniff and a sigh. The stone's surface rippled as if disturbed by a hidden current, and a seam split across it, widening slowly, eagerly. What had once passed for an ordinary rock unfolded into a mouth far too wide for its small, squat body. Teeth like uneven shards of flint jutted inward, glistening with saliva that steamed faintly in the rain.
Food.
That was all it knew.
No fear. No curiosity. No malice.
Just hunger.
The baby mimic—if such a thing could be named—lurched forward on stubby, half-formed limbs, its body reshaping with each movement as it struggled to imitate solidity. Its kind were born as instinct given form, predators shaped by mana-rich environments, drawn to objects of value, power, or careless adventurers. Most lived brief, brutal lives. Fewer still ever grew beyond cunning.
None had ever tasted something like this.
The mimic's teeth sank into flesh that still thrummed with residual divinity. The moment contact was made, the forest itself seemed to shudder.
Mana surged.
It flooded into the mimic like fire poured into a cup of water. The creature convulsed, its body spasming as something far beyond its natural limits forced its way inside. Its instincts screamed—too much, too much—but hunger overrode pain. The mimic fed.
As it consumed, something new stirred.
At first it was sensation.
The rain no longer felt like simple pressure against its surface. It was cold. Sharp. Distinct. The mimic recoiled slightly, surprised by the awareness, then leaned back into the downpour. Cold… and something else.
Wet.
Heavy.
It originally did not have words for these sensations, but they imprinted themselves all the same.
The mimic's teeth sank into flesh that still thrummed with residual divinity. The moment contact was made, the forest itself seemed to shudder.
Mana surged.
It flooded into the mimic like fire poured into a cup of water. The creature convulsed, its body spasming as something far beyond its natural limits forced its way inside. Its instincts screamed—too much, too much—but hunger overrode pain. The mimic fed.
As it consumed, something new stirred.
At first it was sensation.
The rain no longer felt like simple pressure against its surface. It was cold. Sharp. Distinct. The mimic recoiled slightly, surprised by the awareness, then leaned back into the downpour. Cold… and something else. Wet. Heavy. It did not have words for these sensations, but they imprinted themselves all the same.
The taste of mana was no longer just sustenance. It was layered. Bitter with loss. Bright with resolve. Heavy with regret. The mimic paused mid-bite, its mouth slackening as unfamiliar impressions flooded its being.
Images flickered.
Steel clashing against claw.
Voices shouting names it did not know.
Laughter around a fire. A mug raised high. Promises made with easy confidence.
The mimic jerked back, its body rippling violently as it released the hero's flesh. The mouth snapped shut, sealing away jagged teeth behind an unassuming stone-like surface. For a moment it was still.
Then it shook again.
Something was wrong.
Food did not do this.
Its thoughts—if they could be called that—were no longer a simple loop of hunger and movement. They stretched, tangled, folded in on themselves. The mimic became dimly aware of itself as something separate from the rain, the corpse, the forest.
It leaned closer to the fallen man once more, drawn not only by hunger now, but by a strange pull deep within. The holy sword hummed louder as the mimic approached, reacting to the shifting mana within the creature. The mimic recoiled instinctively from the blade, a primal fear flaring.
Sharp.
Dangerous.
Notfood.
The body, however—
The body was warm with memory.
When the mimic fed again, it did so more carefully. Slower. Each bite brought more than nourishment. It brought fragments of a life lived with purpose.
A village bathed in morning light.
A hand resting on a child's head.
The weight of armor for the first time. Too heavy. Then, later, just right.
A goddess's voice, gentle and sorrowful.
"YOU MUST LIVE."
The mimic froze.
That sound echoed differently now. Not as vibration in the air, but as meaning. It did not understand the words fully, yet they resonated with something forming inside it. The mimic's body shuddered, its shape losing cohesion for a moment as stone sloughed into something softer, more uncertain.
Live.
What did that mean?
The question did not come in words at first. It was a pressure, a void where instinct could not reach. The mimic fed until the hero's chest no longer rose and fell, until the mana that clung to the flesh thinned and finally began to fade.
When it was done, the mimic withdrew.
The corpse lay still, unrecognizable as the man who had fallen from the heavens. The rain washed over both predator and prey, but the mimic no longer ignored it. It felt the chill seep into its form, and for the first time, it felt something like discomfort.
It shifted, reshaping itself unconsciously. Its jagged outline softened, stone smoothing into something almost… deliberate. The mimic's body shrank slightly, compacting, as excess mana churned within it with nowhere to go.
Then the pain began.
It was not physical, not in any way the mimic had known before. It was pressure inside its core, like a knot tightening around something fragile and expanding all at once. Images and sensations crashed together chaotically.
The mimic collapsed.
Its form flickered between shapes—rock, chest, blade fragment, humanoid outline—each appearing for a fraction of a second before dissolving into the next. Mana arced across its surface in faint sparks, the same colors that had once danced in the clouds when the goddess cast her miracle.
Hours passed.
The storm moved on.
When dawn finally crept into the Forest of Beginnings, it found the grove quiet. Birds returned cautiously. Insects resumed their hum. The holy sword remained untouched, its glow dimmer now, uncertain.
And near the base of a red Barked tree, something small stirred.
The mimic rose unsteadily, its body no longer pretending to be a rock. Instead, it held a rough, asymmetrical shape—still monstrous, still wrong, but purposeful. A single eye opened where none had existed before, milky at first, then slowly sharpening as it focused.
Light.
The mimic flinched, raising a malformed limb to shield itself. The sensation was overwhelming. Too bright. Too much.
But it did not retreat into stillness as it once would have.
It watched.
The forest was…
beautiful.
That thought startled it more than any pain.
The mimic swayed, nearly toppling as it tried to reconcile this new awareness with the instincts still clawing inside it. Hunger lingered, but it was distant now, dulled beneath layers of something heavier.
Memory.
It turned—slowly, deliberately—toward where the hero's body lay.
The corpse was already changing, reclaimed by the world it had tried to save. The mimic felt something twist inside it as it looked upon the remains. The sensation was sharp and unpleasant, accompanied by a tightening in its core.
Loss.
Regret.
The mimic did not know why those feelings belonged to it now. It had not been the one who fell. It had not fought the demon king. It had not been chosen.
And yet—
I...
The thought formed clumsily, incomplete, but undeniable.
Iexist.
The mimic recoiled from the realization, stumbling backward until it struck the tree behind it. The bark was rough, textured. It could feel every ridge, every groove.
It laughed.
The sound that escaped its mouth was thin and broken, more a wheeze than a chuckle, but it startled birds from the branches all the same. The mimic clapped a hand over its mouth, eye wide.
That was… noise. It had made noise.
The mimic looked down at itself, at the strange approximation of limbs and form it now wore. It remembered hands. Strong ones. Gentle ones. Ones that had reached forward even when the body begged to stop.
"I cannot falter."
The words slipped out unbidden, spoken in a voice that was not quite its own. Hoarse. Uneven. Borrowed.
The mimic froze.
It recognized the sound.
Fear surged, followed by something warmer. Determination. The echo of a will so strong it had stained the mana itself.
The mimic curled in on itself, clutching at its chest as if it could contain the storm of thoughts raging within. It was no hero. It was a monster. A thing born to deceive and consume.
And yet, it could think.
It could remember.
It could choose.
The holy sword pulsed faintly, sensing the shift. For a moment, the mimic felt its pull—a call to something it could never be. The mimic turned away, shaking its head violently.
Not that.
Not me.
Slowly, shakily, the mimic rose to its feet.
The Forest of Beginnings stretched out before it, bathed in morning light. Paths wound toward villages, toward people who laughed and drank ale and told stories of heroes long gone.
The mimic took one step forward, then another.
Each movement was uncertain, awkward, but deliberate.
Somewhere deep within the forest, mana stirred in response.
A monster had been born.