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The battle against the Nightmare King had been won. Ghost drops to one knee to catch their breath. Small cracks line their face, and there’s a stitch in their chest that won’t go away. A cracked rib, possibly, but they don’t know whether or not they have ribs.
They glance over to see how their opponent is doing. The Nightmare King appears as he did when staggered in battle; his tall, stately form reduced to a cluster of little bat-like creatures, all huddled together on the floor. Each one looks limp and barely clinging to life. They know it’s supposed to be that way, that it’s part of the Ritual, but Ghost feels a pang in their chest that is not from any physical wound.
Something nuzzles their side, and who else would it be but the Grimmchild? She licks one of their open wounds until they gently nudge her away. They can heal themselves, after all, and they don’t know what’ll happen if she consumes Void. She pushes against their hand, mewling, but eventually gives up.
Grimm—what’s left of him, anyway—has no such faculties to reject the Grimmchild. One of his fragments squeaks in pain when she nuzzles it. The squeak grows to a horrified squeal when the Grimmchild bites down. She throws her head back and opens her maw to swallow the fragment whole. It is just small enough that she can eat it without choking.
Ghost stands in alarm. Then they realize: this is what’s supposed to happen. Burn the father, feed the child. They just didn’t know that Grimm meant it literally.
The Grimmchild swallows the fragments one by one. With each one, Ghost swears she’s growing. Her tail lengthens to almost twice her body length. The plating on her belly hardens and has a shine to it. Most noticeably, Ghost sees thin chitin stretch between each of her wings. She picks up each fragment of Grimm in her mouth and swallows it whole, chirping and totally unbothered by the distressed cries of her prey.
Ghost sighs and sits back down. This is just how things are sometimes. Bugs eat bugs. Sometimes, parents will sacrifice themselves as their child’s birth meal. However, the Grimm fragments are even smaller than the Grimmchild. They can’t help but feel some level of disquiet.
The Grimmchild swallows the last fragment, rolls onto her back, and burps loudly. She is now longer than Ghost is tall, with the same scarlet eyes that they had come to associate with the Troupe Master and Nightmare King.
The nightmare unravels, and Ghost blinks awake on the cold ground as if nothing had happened. The injuries from their duel have not carried over from the Nightmare Realm, and in fact they feel quite refreshed. They get up, brush the dirt off themselves, and instinctively look for the Grimmchild. She is there, of course, flapping around their head with her new wings and blinking her enormous red eyes. They catch her tail and tug her down to their level; they fear that she might become overzealous and fly off.
But when they look into her eyes, they swear they see the Troupe Master staring back at them. Of course. She’s a Vessel, like them. They wonder if her consuming her father had any affect on her personality. Has she been...replaced, somehow?
The Grimmchild chirrs and licks their face with her long, slobbery tongue, something that Grimm would never do. She hasn’t lost her sense of self. That is enough for Ghost.