#vitaphage

This is herrrrrr

This is a Vitaphage. (This specific character however is internally called Vira to distinguish from the creature Vitaphage and the fact that the story they're in is called Vitaphage as well)

Vira here is average height for a Vitaphage (7ft tall, around 2.1 meters for the rest of the world). Vitaphages are parasitoids! Due to the fact that they live in close proximity to their hosts as well as kill them (I'll talk about that in a moment) they aren't quite real parasites.

Vitaphages have adapted to human hosts (they have however been documented in deers, wolves, and bears before. They can theoretically inhabit any land mammal with a torso the same size or larger than a humans), taking the following steps to inhabit their host:

Hunting down their host and making a large wound on the torso with their sharp and thin front legs

Ripping out the hosts internal organs, leaving the spinal cord intact. This will be important in a moment.

They then contort themselves into the cavity and bring together the sides of the wound.

Their body will start releasing an enzyme that'll slowly close the wound over several hours, leaving a large scar spanning the new hosts torso.

Their body then, like releases more enzymes or something. I don't really know, I'm not a scientist. Anyways they have control over the nervous system now, which is why the spinal cord being intact was important. However, they don't always have complete control over the nerves, so it's common for a host to have shaky hands, twitching, or a tendency to drop things.

Extra biology things:

They don't actually feed off their host! They use them for shelter and to obtain food. The feeding off their host thing is a common misconception

Though their body may be thin and bonelike, those actually aren't bones! It's a carapace that's more flexible in the spine and thorax regions, so that they can contort themselves into the host, and harder on the legs so that they can stab their victims.

Their organs are mostly in the spine area. They're somewhat snakelike if you think about it.

Speaking of snakes, they have a tongue sheath. I just ended up drawing her with her tongue out for some reason.

Though fairly strong (often able to overpower an unarmed adult human, but most of the time will ambush their victims anyways) they're rather fragile creatures. As you can see by the fact that their hearts (all seven of them!) are a bit more on the outside than one would normally want out of a body. This is because they aren't really meant to not have a host for an extended period of time. However:

They can actually be fine without a host! If they have someone that can provide them food (they're omnivores with a preference for meat), their own room with a heater and at LEAST two mattresses, and something to wear to keep them warm and help them feel covered,

This is what I'm thinking of. Dog sweaters.

they can actually do pretty well. These things are important for their mental and physical health.

Oh also they're human level intelligence. They're simply unable to vocally communicate with humans due to their lack of vocal cords, and I highly doubt either party would wait for the other to write out a message to communicate.

And now, what all three of my followers have been waiting for! The actual story!

Our character is called Seraphina

She wakes up in a facility in a room thats walls are splattered with blood and organs. She can't remember anything. Next to her is a slightly damaged cyberdeck that's meant to be worn on someone's arm. Over the course of the story (which I'm imagining in a game format because I want to be a game developer someday) the cyberdeck repairs its corrupted audio files. The audio messages are all in her voice, recounting her fear as a monster is stalking her through the facility. She slowly drives herself mad, seeing a monster in the shadows that just isn't there. The last audio message seems to be her running before getting caught by the thing, followed by screaming and horrible wrenching noises, before the message shuts off. She ends up picking at the scar (leading from the edge of her mouth down her torso), leading to her realizing she was in fact the Vitaphage that ended up killing Seraphina and inhabiting her body (I know it seems weird that she would somehow not know she's a Vitaphage but this is in fact a rare, but documented phenomenon. It can occur from a combination of the Vitaphage having a very poor mental state when inhabiting their host and a better than usual ability to control the nervous system, leading to it taking around four to five hours for them to realize the difference between their body and their hosts) and becoming extremely guilty about taking a human life, beginning to have some hallucinations of a shadowy version of Seraphina. She ends up recording one final message before ripping herself out of her host and laying down next to the body, waiting to die. (This is driven both by the extreme guilt and the realization she is unable to get out of the facility as well as the fact there isn't any food in it.)

The reason why Vira doesn't remember anything is because she was kept in that facility without proper food or shelter, leaving her in a state of delirious hunger.

The only other piece of content that I have for this:

Addressed from Vita to Seraphina, as one final message.