When the dust finally settled, vast swathes of Insectoids lost all control, like meat on a block, to be carved by the newborn civilization. Yet the swarm was a continent of bodies, blanketing the planet. A few aberrations were bound to rise like thorns.
The Zerg Maiden’s mind shattered in the blaze of battle. Her spirit bled, her reason drowned, and she fell into erratic sleep. A chitinous sheen crept over her skin, as if guided by will. It cocooned her tight, shaping her into a single egg.
Those outliers were flattened quickly, like weeds under a burning wind. The Insectoids and their ecology became the newborn civilization’s second grand subject. Before that study could begin, Heron cut down the planet’s natives—the so‑called Star Remnant—like shadows before dawn.
Heron never dressed herself in saintly robes. War meant no truce, blood until silence; there was no sermon to give. To her, it was simply leveling the Star Remnant, like clearing stone from a road. When a civilization pushes outward and meets war, should it soften its blade?
Civilizations that spare an enemy are either gods beyond measure, or candles doomed to die by their own mercy. Heron was strong, but her newborn civilization was not that strong. Letting a high civilization like the Star Remnant go was a dream made of mist.
What followed was no tale for bards. It was war, a winter with no room for mercy.
The elders were erased first. They held the deepest seams of culture, layers set like stone. If elders remained, the embers of that civilization would never die. Fire passes from hearth to hearth; one day it would flare again.
The youths were culled to quell hatred. The younger the blood, the stronger the will to fight. They would not forget the newborn civilization’s pain and the scars it carved. Pressure might bury it for a season, but with them alive, unrest could always ignite.
So only the bewildered children were left, like seedlings in a cleared field.
Heron’s methods were harsh and unapologetic. Aether’s strength was a storm beyond the Star Remnant’s imagination. It smashed their foundations to dust, leaving only children and the bare skeleton of the planet’s civilization. The newborn civilization took over swiftly.
Technology and culture became the only pillars after the Star Remnant’s social lattice collapsed. They were what the newborn civilization prized most. Its fleets lingered in the system for nearly ten Earth years before sailing outward again.
The young children were raised, slow as sap rising in spring. New values and lessons were poured into them. They began to rebuild their “home,” brick by brick in a different song. In the newborn civilization’s schooling, the old order became the culprit everyone blamed. It was the race that had provoked the Insectoid upheaval. The newborn civilization cast itself as the higher hand extended. And in truth, the Insectoid unrest was seeded by the Star Remnant themselves.
One Earth year later, the Zerg Maiden whom Heron had struck senseless finally surfaced from the dark. Under Heron’s Aether, the feral power lodged in her body was drawn out like poison. The remaining spirit was combed smooth, until speech and connection bloomed again.
“Who... am I?”
In Heron’s private lab, the Zerg Maiden’s first words asked for her own name. Her feral eyes had softened into human pupils. The chitin on her skin thinned to a clear film, leaving her near indistinguishable from a human girl.
She lifted wide, dewy eyes to Heron and asked. A sigh, heavy as rain, slipped from Heron’s chest. What storm had twisted a girl like this into that savage Insectoid queen? In the chaos, the girl had cared for no life—Insectoid or human.
More than that, Heron had already slipped a link into the girl’s mindscape. What she found was pure and clean, like flawless white jade. It couldn’t be faked. The girl before her was no longer that raging queen. Perhaps this was her true grain, the core beneath the storm.
It felt as if the queen’s memories had been erased, like rubber across a white page, wiped out in the clash with Heron. Only Origin could carve a trail that Aether couldn’t trace. Only Origin could do that.
Heron, who never stopped studying mind and soul, felt a bright curiosity flicker. She found no seed of corruption in the girl’s spirit, no hook of control. It was clean, a blank page waiting for a brush. Perhaps that emptiness had let someone paint her into a mad Insectoid queen.
“You don’t remember who you are?”
Heron watched the girl. Aether watched harder, shadowing every ripple in the girl’s mind.
Confusion touched her first, like mist. Her brows pinched; her dewy eyes flicked to Heron, then around the whitewashed room. She stood, as if to walk out of that pale world. Her feet paused on their own. She sat back down before Heron.
She reached toward Heron, hand trembling like a leaf. Then she saw the chitin on her arm. Her hand snapped back. She watched Heron softly and asked:
“Are you... my mother?”
The question almost drew a laugh, like a bell muted by cloth. Heron was a researcher to her bones; she knew the source of such reflex. It was instinct, buried deep. Yet this girl wasn’t human. If a label had to fit, Insectoid fit like a carapace.
“What do you think? Do I look like your mother?”
Heron smiled and offered her hand. She didn’t mind the chitin; she took both of the girl’s hands gently. She leaned in, a warmth between them. To know the Zerg Maiden, she could play mother for a while—maybe forever.
If the Zerg Maiden could reclaim the Insectoids, it would be a windfall. Not just for research, but for war. She could help the newborn civilization read the swarm’s heart. Humanity craved evolution now; Heron’s Aether evolution theory had only cracked the door.
“You should be my mother. You smell familiar. But... but, Mo—Mother... why does my head hurt? Why... why can’t I remember anything? I...”
Heron’s gentleness opened something soft. The Zerg Maiden turned fragile, like a newborn bird. Tears pooled at her lids. She leaned toward Heron’s arms, voice catching with a child’s cry.
Heron found nothing strange in it. Mammals crave a mother’s warmth; instinct bends that way. Like a hatchling imprinting on the first face it sees. That natural leaning, plus Aether’s quiet grace, drew the girl toward Heron.
You could say she had already named Heron as her mother, in the heart’s hush.
The headache sprang from the feral spirit still lodged in her skull. Her reborn mind and body couldn’t bear that storm. Luckily, Heron had Aether watching her every breath. She soothed the pain at once, like fingers smoothing ripples from water.
Yet doubt pricked Heron, sharp as a thorn. Was the girl in her arms truly Insectoid? A human body under chitin could be built. But the girl’s native trust, her easy speech—it muddied the trail of her origin.
“Okay, okay. Don’t be afraid. The pain’s all gone, mm?”
She soothed the girl like a baby, humming a lullaby without thinking. In Aether’s embrace, the girl drifted back to sleep. Heron pulled the remaining feral roots from her spirit, clearing the last wild thorns.
After that, no one questioned Heron’s choice; her rank spoke like thunder. Most researchers even supported her raising the Zerg Maiden. It was a heaven‑sent chance, both bond and study.
The Zerg Maiden was a blank page. Under Heron’s hand, she grew from muddled child to lively girl. She walked beside Heron through the newborn civilization’s halls, and through the planet’s new streets, drinking knowledge like clear spring.
Heron’s study of the Zerg Maiden deepened, layer by layer. As “mother,” she faced no walls. Even the girl’s subconscious didn’t push against Heron’s Aether. From the start, Aether had been the hand calming her raging mind.
The deeper she went, the more questions sprouted. In a normal world, a being like her shouldn’t exist. Even under Insectoid dominion, a queen should match insect ecology—a “monster” carved in that mold. Not a hybrid stitched from human and Insectoid, like silk sewn to stone.
And Heron grew fond of her, more with every day. That blank spirit let her grasp Heron’s meaning quick as morning light. She was obedient and kind. Since learning of her power, she had done nothing to shame Heron.
