The Devouring Mothers

Eighteen year old Lilibet lives in a remote mountain mining town where death is common, poverty is constant, and the woods are older than the settlement carved into their edges. The men of the valley spill blood into the soil daily-through mining accidents, brawls, and battles-and the town whispers that dying men always scream for their mothers. Lilibet knows the truth: it is not their human mothers they call for, but the Devouring Mothers, ancient entities beneath the roots who drink spilled blood and claim the dying.
Lilibet's life is defined by servitude. Her father and brother rely on her labor while dismissing her intelligence, strength, and independence. The woods are her only refuge, a place where she feels watched but not threatened, and where she senses a pull she cannot explain. Her only softness comes from Hutch, a kind young man who sees her as more than a burden-but even his affection feels like another cage.
After a tense dinner where her father reveals he intends to marry her off to the Johnson family, Lilibet breaks. Feeling betrayed and trapped, she flees into the night and crosses the glen she has always respected but never fully entered. As a violent wind rises and the earth seems to breathe beneath her, she experiences a terrifying, surreal moment: she claws at her own throat, feels her blood spill into the soil, and screams "Mother!" before collapsing. She believes she is dying.
Instead, she awakens at dawn, uninjured but transformed. Her senses are sharpened, her movements fluid and unnatural, her hair alive with motion. A small orb weaver spider-one she had saved earlier-appears in her palm and behaves impossibly, as though recognizing her. The forest around her shifts, revealing faces and limbs rising from the soil, beckoning her with hunger and welcome. Overcome by an instinct she cannot resist, she consumes the spider, completing a ritual she does not yet understand.
Hutch finds her at sunrise, shaken and confused. He insists she was not in