>>279898684I believe they were the same person - while the monk was there, whenever they die, they briefly rejoin the bloodstream, until they crawl out of the water as a small creature and regrow to their original forms. The cycle would repeat, hence the oroboros imagery. When the monk left, there wasn't enough magic to keep the cycle going - whoever was active at the time slowly began to rot away, and any attempted resurrections became the malformed dregs. Matori was rotting away, and the only way to stave it off was to eat the dregs for their remnants of magic.