That Time I reincarnated as an insect-Chapter 80 - 79 : A NEW WORLD FOR ZZA

Zza felt the world stretching under her feet like someone grabbed both ends of the hallway and pulled until the floor whined. The breath inside her chest scraped upward. Her pulse jittered in her claws. The dark ahead wasn’t just dark — it was thick, like stepping inside the memory of a shadow instead of an actual one.

She kept going.

Her legs didn’t want to.

Her nerves begged to stop.

Her mind tried to collapse inward the second the walls whispered her name again.

But she pushed through all of it.

The floor dipped.

A soft glow lit the far end of the corridor — faint gold, pulsing in slow waves. Zza braced herself, already knowing what shape she expected to see.

And she saw him.

Buzz.

A broken Buzz, sitting slumped against the far wall. His wings hung limp, crushed. His head sagged forward. His claws trembled in his lap. He looked small. Smaller than she remembered. Like someone folded him into a version that forgot how to fight.

Her breath cracked.

"Buzz...?"

He lifted his head.

Faith cracked inside her chest.

His eyes were soft. Wet. Lost.

"Zza," he whispered, voice shaking so gently she could barely catch it. "I’m sorry. I tried. I really tried. I just... didn’t make it."

She stepped forward without thinking.

He held up a trembling claw.

"Don’t come closer," he begged. "It hurts. It hurts too much. If you touch me, I’ll break again."

Zza froze. Her breath shook out of her like she’d been punched.

"Buzz... please tell me that’s really you."

A crack sliced down his face.

Not a wound.

A glitch.

A wrongness.

But she still stepped closer.

Her claws shook as she touched his cheek.

His skin wasn’t warm.

It wasn’t cold either.

It was nothing.

A hollow sensation.

A temperature that didn’t exist.

Her breath stilled.

His smile was too soft.

Too perfect.

"I knew you’d come," he whispered. "You always come. You’re good at that."

Her claws snapped back.

This thing wore Buzz like a costume.

"No," she murmured, taking another step away. "You’re not him."

He tilted his head with a gentle sadness.

"I can be whatever you want. Just choose. I will shape myself to your memories."

Zza’s stomach twisted. Her legs braced. The corridor thickened behind her like it didn’t want her to leave.

"You’re just another lie," she whispered.

He rose in a fluid, sickeningly smooth movement.

"Lie? No, little Zza..."

He reached for her cheek.

She dodged.

He smiled too wide.

"...I am the version of him you wish he’d been."

Before she could move—

Before she could scream—

Before she could attack—

Every light in the corridor shattered at once.

The false Buzz froze.

Not in fear.

But in recognition.

A shadow filled the mouth of the corridor behind Zza, tall and wrong in all the ways that made her lungs tighten.

Buzz.

The fused Buzz.

Or whatever twisting storm he was turning into.

His silhouette flickered in three shapes at once:

Tall and sharp.

Regal and smooth.

Glitching and broken.

His claws scraped the floor, leaving scars that bled gold. His wings jittered like static. His breath came in pulses that shook the corridor.

The false Buzz smiled.

"So you found her," it said in a soft, mocking hum.

The fused Buzz lifted his head.

Four eyes glared.

"Imitation," he growled — two voices overlapping so violently the walls trembled. "Get out of her skin."

The false Buzz laughed, stepping backward with a smoothness that felt too practiced.

"Why? You never fill her memory correctly. I simply give her what she wants. A softer you. A kinder you. A version that doesn’t break."

Zza felt the corridor pulse.

She felt Buzz react.

The real one inside him.

A painful surge of emotion, raw and panicked:

*"Zza don’t listen don’t believe that thing I’m here I’m here I’m—"*

The hive voice cut over him with sharp cold.

**"You see how she reaches for illusions."**

Buzz’s body twitched, visibly torn between the two minds splitting inside him.

He stepped forward, each limb glitching into a new shape before settling.

The false Buzz moved behind Zza in a blink, claws brushing her shoulder.

"She ran to me," he whispered into her ear, soft enough to hurt. "Not you."

The fused Buzz roared.

The corridor dropped into silence, as if trying to swallow the sound.

Zza’s breath locked.

She felt Buzz’s real mind explode in pain, in fury, in fear:

*"Don’t touch her—don’t touch—don’t—"*

The hive-Buzz’s voice cut through, cold as glass:

**"She touches only me."**

He surged.

Zza dove forward as two versions of Buzz slammed into each other at full speed.

The corridor bent sideways from the force. Metal warped under their claws. Gold splashed across the walls like thrown paint. One Buzz snarled with a human ache, the other crooned like a lullaby sharpened into a knife.

Zza crawled away, breath shaking, eyes stinging.

They didn’t fight like two creatures.

They fought like two broken halves ripping at each other’s spine, trying to pry themselves apart.

The fused Buzz tore chunks of false-gold off the imitation’s face.

The false Buzz stabbed both arms into the fused chest, hissing:

"You’re incomplete. She doesn’t want incomplete."

The fused Buzz screamed.

Zza felt the scream inside her ribs.

She crawled to her feet.

"Stop—both of you stop—please—Buzz—Buzz—"

Both heads snapped toward her at the exact same time.

Her breath evaporated.

The false Buzz smiled with a sweetness that felt poisonous.

"She calls you like a leash."

The fused Buzz’s body jolted, real Buzz trying to speak through the cracks:

*"Zza don’t come—don’t get closer—I can’t control—"*

The hive drowned him instantly:

**"She is ours."**

The false Buzz lunged.

The fused Buzz tackled him mid-air.

They crashed into the wall with enough force to fold metal. Zza stumbled back as cracks raced along the floor. The corridor dimmed. The hallucinations blinked in and out like dying lamps.

Buzz and the imitation ripped into each other — claws stabbing, shells breaking, wings shredding.

Zza could barely breathe.

She had no idea which one would win.

She had no idea which one she wanted to win.

And then—

The floor under her feet split.

Light blasted upward, swallowing her from below.

The two Buzzes reached for her at once.

Real Buzz’s voice shattered through the chamber:

*"ZZA—"*

Hive-Buzz’s voice overlapped, deeper:

**"COME—"**

The false Buzz shrieked:

"STAY—"

Zza fell.

The corridor folded above her like a mouth snapping shut.

Darkness swallowed the world.

---

Zza didn’t wake gently. She came back like someone shoved her up through cold mud, her breath clawing out of her throat, her claws scraping at nothing. The ground under her chest felt warm and strangely soft, like padded vines layered over one another. She pushed herself up with a groan that sounded too alive for the place’s silence.

The silence felt wrong.

It wasn’t empty.

It was listening.

Her eyes adjusted to a faint glow seeping through the walls — a slow, pulsing light that throbbed like a heartbeat too far away to calm her. She sat back on her knees, chest rising and falling sharply, and finally looked around.

The sector wasn’t a room. It wasn’t a corridor. It wasn’t anything she’d ever seen.

It was a maze.

A forest of roots thicker than tree trunks curled and twisted into arches, bridges, coils, whole walls. Their surfaces glistened with a slick sheen, each vein running under them glowing gold. Every beat traveled through the roots like a slow shockwave.

She touched one.

It pulsed under her claw.

Her breath jerked.

And then—

something whispered.

Not a word.

A fragment.

Like a memory half-buried.

She yanked her claw back.

Her heart hammered. "This place... feels alive."

A second whisper drifted across the vines.

Then another.

Then dozens.

She pressed her hands over her ears, but it did nothing — the whispers weren’t in the air. They were in the roots.

In the ground.

In her bones.

She stumbled forward, picking her path between thick, curling roots that rose and fell like waves frozen mid-motion. The golden veins twisted under her feet, leading toward something deeper. She didn’t want to follow them, but her legs seemed to know the way even as her mind rebelled.

The whispers grew clearer.

A voice she didn’t know:

*"She chose the tunnel. Foolish."*

Another, older:

*"We stored the memories too early. The hive fractures."*

A third one...

this one stopped her dead.

Buzz.

His voice.

A younger version. Softer. Filled with raw wonder.

*"Is this what life outside the Queen feels like?"*

Zza’s throat tightened instantly. Her claws curled in, trembling. She followed the root it came from, weaving through a narrow split that forced her sideways. The root thickened and merged with a bundle of others, each one humming lightly.

Another whisper floated up.

Buzz again — not soft this time, but furious, breathless.

*"I don’t care if you erase me. I won’t obey."*

Her heart cracked.

The memory wasn’t spoken to her.

The memory was stored *here*.

In the roots.

The city stored him.

Every fear.

Every fight.

Every thought he tried to hide.

And Zza was walking through all of them.

A cluster of roots overhead flickered with gold. Whispered with a voice too familiar.

The Queen.

*"He is malleable. Break him twice before reshaping."*

Her legs nearly gave out.

She leaned against a wall of intertwined roots, breathing fast. Her shell pulsed with heat as if her body wanted to reject the memory pressing against her. She forced herself to breathe in through her nose, out through her teeth, trembling all over.

"I’m finding you," she whispered into the maze, voice raw. "I don’t care how deep they bury you."

The maze answered with a low groan, roots shifting slowly out of the way.

Almost like it understood.

Or mocked her.

She pushed forward.

The maze tightened into a narrow hallway, roots forming teeth-like shapes above her head. The air warmed. The whispers thickened.

A faint trembling hit the ground.

Zza froze.

Another tremor.

This one stronger.

She crouched low, claws spread.

Something was moving through the maze.

Something heavy.

Something familiar.

Her pulse spiked.

Her blood ran thin.

Buzz.

Or the thing wearing him.

She couldn’t tell which.

She kept moving, faster now, weaving between thick roots that felt like ribs. The golden veins brightened the deeper she went, lighting the sector with a warm glow that made her skin crawl.

She stopped when she reached a clearing.

A huge root rose from the floor to the ceiling like a spine, its surface crawling with flickers of memory. Images. Voices. Faint silhouettes. Buzz’s face pressed into the glow, screaming silently. Zza staggered toward it, breath breaking.

"Buzz?" she whispered.

The root shimmered.

His face turned toward her.

Her stomach knotted into something sharp.

He looked young.

Too young.

Like the version of him she never met.

His mouth moved. Whispered her name.

Soft. Trembling. Honest.

She reached out.

Her claw touched the root.

And her mind exploded with images—

Buzz trapped in a cocoon.

Buzz clawing at a Queen’s leg.

Buzz alone in a tunnel, crying silent tears.

Buzz laughing with her.

Buzz breaking while fused Buzz watched.

The overload hit her so hard she fell to her knees, gasping with the weight of his life, his pain, his growth, his terror, his hope.

Every memory threaded through her.

She sobbed into the roots, overwhelmed.

When she lifted her head, the glow changed.

The face flickered.

Shifted.

His eyes hollowed.

His voice twisted.

**"Little Zza."**

Her claws clenched.

The memory-warren was imitating him again.

She ripped her hand away, trembling.

"Stop. Stop doing that. Show me something real."

The roots pulsed faintly.

Then the maze behind her shook.

A deep tremor.

Heavy.

Deliberate.

Alive.

Her breath hitched.

He was close.

Buzz.

But not.

Both.

Her body reacted before she could think — she ran.

The roots bent around her in growing curves, guiding her deeper into the sector, where the walls grew thinner, almost transparent with light. Memories swirled inside them, some familiar, some terrifying.

Every step she took echoed louder.

Every breath scraped.

And behind her—

a voice filled the maze, doubled, broken, regal and cracked:

**"Zzaaaa..."**

Her chest tightened.

The fused Buzz had entered the sector.

And the Root Maze welcomed him.

The memories brightened at his arrival, gold veins lighting like wildfire. They wanted him. They fed on him. They remembered him too well.

Zza ran harder.

Every time she licked her lips, she tasted fear.

Every time her claws hit the roots, she heard whispers of Buzz losing himself.

The ground shook again.

Closer.

She turned sharply and dove through a split in the wall, tumbling into another chamber filled with faintly glowing roots. These were smaller, twitching, like nerves waiting to fire.

She dragged herself upright.

Her breath wavered.

Something scraped behind her.

She spun—

and saw him.

Buzz.

Or the fused him.

Standing in the entrance.

His form rippled — tall, elegant, broken, shifting. Gold dripped from his claws. His wings jittered. His eyes flickered between soft and calm and dead.

He stepped into the chamber.

Her heart nearly left her.

He spoke with overlapping tones:

**"You came to my memories."**

*"Zza leave—leave before it uses you—"*

"Buzz," she whispered, tears burning. "Fight it."

His body jolted.

He spoke again.

Two tones tearing across the words.

**"Fight you."**

*"Fight for you."*

The chamber pulsed.

The roots reacted.

Memories burst across the walls — flashes of battles, losses, hopes, fears — until the room felt too full to breathe.

Fused Buzz stepped closer.

His claws twitched. His wings flickered.

Zza backed away.

He whispered:

**"This place knows everything I was."**

He took another step.

*"This place steals everything I am."*

Another.

**"This place keeps what I become."**

He stopped in front of her.

Close enough she felt the heat radiating from his shifting shell.

Zza’s breath caught in her throat.

"Buzz," she whispered, "I’m not losing you."

His hand lifted slowly, trembling from the inside out.

He touched her cheek.

A feather-light touch.

Then his claws spasmed.

His eyes snapped gold.

**"Then stay."**

The chamber sealed behind him.

The roots tightened.

Memories warped into claws.

And Zza realized she was trapped with the fused Buzz in the one place that remembered him better than he remembered himself.