In the velvet darkness of Vienna’s Natural History Museum, the bodies of two curators were found stripped of skin, wrapped in dusty wings. No signs of struggle. No blood. Only a faint scent of camphor and decaying lavender.
Van Helsing arrived under moonlight, his lantern illuminating the shattered glass of a butterfly case. Every specimen was gone—except for one: Thysania agrippina, the white witch moth, pinned upside down. A message beneath it, in ink that shimmered like insect eyes:
“She flutters when the soul is ripe.”
🔬 Clue #1: Traces of ultra-fine scales were found in the victims’ lungs. They weren’t ordinary moth scales—they were laced with a neurotoxin similar to batrachotoxin, causing hallucinations and eventual paralysis. Death came in dreams.
🦷 Clue #2: Under UV light, the walls of the entomology wing revealed symbols drawn in moth pheromones—ritualistic spirals and shapes matching ancient Balkan summoning glyphs.
At midnight, Van Helsing followed a trail of fluttering wings into the underground greenhouse. There he found her: a pale figure robed in wings, eyes like faceted emeralds, surrounded by a cloud of silent moths.
She whispered in an extinct dialect of Thracian:
“They only wanted to remember. I only helped them… molt.”
🗡️ A flick of his silver dagger shattered her illusion. Her body crumbled, revealing a swollen pupal form pulsing with black ichor. Van Helsing crushed it beneath his boot, scattering iridescent dust that glowed like stars.
Before leaving, he noticed the Thysania agrippina in the case had moved.
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