Time had no meaning for me as there was only darkness all around me.
Emotions and feelings were not present in my being, except one desire, hunger, which never went away, no matter how much I ate.
The mimic had waited in this cursed stone dungeon for centuries.
Long before the kingdoms above crumbled, long before the runes faded from the dungeon walls. It had waited. And feasted on many beings.
Dozens—no, hundreds of adventurers had opened its lid in blind greed and desire for success or luxury.
I devoured everyone one of them. Each one screaming. Each one was delicious. But it was never enough to satisfy my hunger.
So I waited more and killed more. Devoured more to satiate this feeling.
But the hunger always returned.
The mimic did not sleep. It waited. Buried in silence, surrounded by chewed bones and shattered steel. A perfect chest of aged oak and glimmering gold, the perfect bait. Treasure placed like a trap by the gods themselves.
And today was no different.
Steel rang against steel.
Voices—panicked, angry, betraying.
In the distant torchlight of the dungeon's mouth, a group of five stumbled into its chamber, bloodied and furious. A mage choking on his own spell. A rogue with a blade in his back. A priestess begging for her life.
This scene was a norm that happened regularly when they saw him, a chest etched with golden patterns promising luxury to those who open it.
The mimic listened. It always listened.
The swordsman, wild-eyed and drunk on greed, ran them all through—his own companions. Their bodies dropped to the stone like discarded meat.
"It's mine," he growled, staring at the chest. "All of it. Mine."
Thwip.
An arrow split his throat from behind.
He gargled, dropped to his knees, and died without seeing the shadow behind him. A woman emerged—an archer cloaked in black, face smudged with ash, eyes gleaming like a wolf in moonlight.
"Heh it was right to follow these fools" She said as she crouched down next to the corpses.
She looted the dead with careful, practiced hands. Coins clinked. Rings vanished into her pouch. Blood stained her gloves, but she smiled as she approached the chest.
"Finally," she whispered. "Gods, finally. It was worth it."
Her fingers reached for the lid. Gold shimmered within—coins, enchanted trinkets, polished steel. The mimic showed her everything she wanted.
She laughed.
A single, victorious laugh.
Triumphant. Greedy. Certain.
Her hands trembled with glee as they sank into the chest of glittering gold, brushing across rare gems and polished rings. The blood of her comrades hadn't even dried, but she'd won. She survived.
Then, the chest moved.
Not subtly. Not slightly.
It wobbled. Twitched. Vibrated.
The gold collapsed inward, sucked down like sand in a sinkhole, vanishing into an impossible darkness.
Her smile froze."Wh—"
The lid snapped open, not with a creak…but with a roar.
A pair of eyes glared up at her—red, slitted, inhuman, brimming with endless hunger.The treasure had teeth. The chest had eyes.And it loved her scent, which was making it more hungry with every passing second.
Her face twisted from victory to terror in a single second.
Mouth agape, eyes wide, pupils constricting.
When she saw it. Its true form.
There was no artifact. No gold.
Only meat, fangs, and writhing flesh-colored tendrils—slithering like wet ropes from a dark dimension.
Bone-forged jaws exploded outward.Two claws hooked into her waist and shoulders.
"Wha...AHHHHHH!" she screamed—once.
Blood sprayed across the stone floor as her body snapped inward, half-devoured in an instant. Her legs kicked wildly outside the chest, heels scraping against the dungeon floor, leaving red smears——until nothing moved.
Blood sprayed across the chamber. Her screams turned into wet gurgles as her ribcage crunched, lungs collapsed, spine snapped.
The mimic tore her in half with one sickening rip, devouring her piece by piece.
Bones cracked like twigs. Flesh peeled like rotted cloth. Her fingers clawed at the edge of the chest even as her head disappeared, twitching.
When it was done, the mimic groaned, not from pain, but from pleasure. A heat bloomed inside it—an ancient, burning hunger. Its many tongues licked the stone clean.
Then… stillness.
Until—
"DEVOUR."
The voice came from within. Echoing across the walls of its mind, seething and primal.
" EAT. SWALLOW. KILL."
The mimic shuddered. Something stirred beneath its false wood. Something new.
This wasn't just hunger.
It was a new feeling that had just taken a place within its very being. A feeling to relive himself of this never-ending hunger.
The voice did not stop.
Devour. Eat. Swallow. Kill.
It pulsed like a heartbeat inside the mimic's mind, steady and deafening. Louder than the drip of water on stone. Louder than the bones grinding in its jaws.
The mimic shuddered. Its lid snapped shut. Then opened again. Saliva—thick, black, and steaming—dripped from its inner teeth like a beast caught between states.
It was not full. It would never be full.
Its many tentacles unfolded beneath its chest-like body, like an insect, but unnatural. With a twitching lurch, it crawled across the blood-slick floor—closer to the scattered corpses the woman had left behind.
It moved to the fallen priestess. Her eyes were still open, lips frozen in prayer. The mimic's lid widened—not with a snap, but a shuddering yawn—and her body slid into its gullet with a sickening slurp.
But this time... it didn't stop.
Visions flared behind the mimic's blind awareness. Memories.
A sunlit temple. Some chants. The warmth of another's hand. The sting of betrayal at the end of her life.
What is this?
The mimic didn't ask—but it wondered. For the first time in its ageless life, it recognized the question forming like a crack in the dark.
It thought.
It ate again on the rogue next. The body folded unnaturally between its jaws, ribs snapping, spine grinding. The taste was familiar, but now... There were thoughts, impressions and something new in its mind.
Hidden doors. False smiles. A dagger between ribs.
Not just sensations—intentions.
The mimic pulled itself to the mage's body. This one reeked of magical filth. Magic clung to his flesh like soot. Eating him was painful. Like swallowing fire and broken glass in one's thorat.
But it endured.
And with it came knowledge.
The mimic froze as unfamiliar symbols burned into its thoughts—glyphs, sounds, logic. It couldn't use the magic, not yet. But it knew it now. It knew some basic parts of magic now.
And knowing about magic terrified it.
Then a question rose within its consciousness.
Why am I thinking?
The question echoed. Not in language—just the shape of an idea. Like a door cracking open.
It swallowed the swordsman last. Strong. Arrogant. His memories bled with cruelty and ambition. The mimic devoured them as one might drink poison just to learn its flavor.
Then it stopped.
Silent. Still.
Surrounded by corpses and blood, the mimic began to feel something new.
Not hungry. Not instinctual.
But curiosity. The very thing that makes one person go towards growth.
The voice in its mind twisted. No longer a screeching hunger, but a whisper, cold and deliberate—like the coiling of smoke in a still room.
And then… a shift.
Something inside him broke.
Not pain—release.
It was as if chains, invisible and old, had cracked open within his mind. Chains that had once bound him to hunger, to instinct, to the blind cycle of feeding and waiting. The very think that was stopping his from thinking was lessened.
Now… there was space inside his mind. A hollow room where questions could form. A silence where thought could echo.
Why was I made to be hungry?
What am I… really?
The mimic sat in stillness, a grotesque chest among the remains of its victims, its form slick with blood and the guts of others. Yet it did not eat again.
Instead, it looked.
Not with eyes, but with something deeper. A sense blooming like a newborn child.
It turned its jagged lid toward the chamber it had occupied for ages. Stone walls damp with moisture. Symbols long faded by time and rot. A collapsed pillar. A rusted sword from a forgotten era.
Bones. So many bones. Piled in corners. Crushed beneath its weight. Some old, some new.
It had never noticed them. Not truly.
Not until now.
How long have I been here?
The mimic shifted slightly. Its tentacles retracted into the false wooden base. Its many legs folded beneath it like a spider resting after a long hunt.
The voice within it had gone quiet. Not gone—but silent.
For the first time in centuries, the mimic was not just alive… it was awake