Back at the camp, the Blood Seed shrieked in silence.
Its scream was soundless but absolute—a pressure that crushed the air and made every breath feel stolen. The rift above it tore wider, twisting space into a trembling wound that bled crimson light across the dirt. Every face turned the color of fresh blood. The tendrils crawling from the seed thickened and multiplied, digging into the ground like roots desperate to anchor something vast and terrible.
Kestin drifted backward, his body lifting several inches above the ground as his lower palms thrust toward the gate. Force rippled outward from his hands in visible waves, shoving dirt and stone and debris away before it could strike him. The air around him shimmered and warped with the effort of keeping himself aloft, his four arms trembling as he fought against the gate's push.
"Boss," he said, voice cracking as he floated unsteadily. "The gate is opening too slowly."
"I can see that!" Marek snapped.
Rist remained kneeling beside the seed, his ruined hand held over it as more dark blood dripped down. His body trembled from pain and blood loss, but he did not pull away.
Not yet.
Rist glared at the pulsing seed. "Stupid fucking Blood Seed... how much do you need!?"
Marek leaned closer to the rift, eyes darting from the unstable tear in space to the darkness beyond the fire.
'Rist must have lost too much blood from that first bite.'
"Come on," he hissed. "Open. Open already."
Evrin and Evris sat near the edge of camp, still chained at the ankles beneath the suspended iron weight. Rist held the metal ball in one hand, his grip white-knuckled despite the tremor running through his arm. The red glow from the gate crawled over the siblings' faces, making their violet eyes shine like bruised stars.
Evris gripped Evrin's sleeve with shaking fingers.
"What is happening?" she whispered.
Evrin did not answer immediately. His gaze was fixed on the fact that the giant holding their leash was weakening. For the first time all night, something other than fear moved through him.
A possibility. A small and dangerous possibility.
"Stay close to me," he whispered.
Evris looked at him, terrified. "Evrin…"
"Just stay close."
Across the camp, Marek spun toward them as if sensing disobedience in the air.
"You two!" he shouted. "Don't even think about moving. If either of you tries anything, I'll carve you up before help steps through that gate!"
Evrin lowered his eyes. But inside, the hatred did not lower with them. It sharpened.
Beyond the firelight, the creature watched.
Its wounds had closed. The gashes across its flanks had sealed into pale ridges, and the torn muscle beneath its chitinous plates had knit back together during its retreat into the dark. The pain was gone now—replaced by something else entirely.
The taste of Vyx essence still lingered in its throat.
It had never consumed anything like it before. The flesh had been dense, rich with something that burned as it went down. And when it had finished, the creature felt its body respond in ways it did not understand. New growth. New potential. A hunger that went deeper than meat.
But that hunger was secondary now. The creature's focus was fixed on the camp with predatory intent, searching for what had been taken from it—the prize it would reclaim.
A low tremor passed through its body—not pain, but something closer to rage.
The creature flexed one of its blade-like forelimbs, dragging it across its mandibles in a slow, deliberate motion. Faint hot pink lines shimmered beneath the new plating along its jaw, pulsing once before fading back into darkness. It understood little of names, little of language, and little of the desperate noises its prey made around the red wound in the air.
But instinct understood enough. Something was coming through that wound.
The creature's muscles coiled beneath its heavy carapace, and another tremor rolled through its frame—this one born of urgency rather than rage. It had to move. Now.
The creature crept forward, placing each pointed limb with careful precision between stone and dead brush. Its upper body, heavily shielded by thick, overlapping golden plates, hovered low to the ground. A nest of needle-sharp, blade-like legs tucked tightly against its dark underbelly as it slid forward with the sickening grace of a massive, armored centipede. High above its frame, its tail whipped with terrifying speed, a massive black-and-gold blade ending in a vibrant, glowing stinger.
Its head was seamlessly integrated into the sloping curve of its torso, completely devoid of eyes or a visor. Instead, a jagged, violent maw opened right into its chest cavity, revealing a hollow abyss swirling with a terrifying, raw magenta glow and lined with rows of crushing, subterranean fangs. It saw them—not through eyes, but through something else entirely. The world came to it in alien clarity: shapes, distances, the precise location of each body. It perceived as a human might, yet through senses that defy explanation.
Too many threats. One of them greater than the rest, but time was running out.
The first sign was Kestin turning after hearing a sudden, heavy rustling in the foliage at the edge of camp. His entire body went rigid.
"Boss…"
Marek turned slowly.
At the edge of the crimson light, something stepped out of the dark.
For half a breath, no one understood what they were seeing. Then Rist's crystal eye widened.
A curved sickle of golden armor and neon pink light materialized from the shadows. There were no soft spots—only rigid chitin and jagged seams where a violent magenta glow threatened to burst through its shell.
Marek's face drained of color. "Oh fuck no."
Kestin's voice shrank to a horrified whisper. "What in the Ark is that!?"
The rift pulsed behind them, widening by inches. The gate was almost open.
The creature took one step forward. Then another.
Suddenly, the beast accelerated. Its needle-sharp legs blurred against the dirt, digging deep to find traction as it built massive, terrifying speed in a straight line. Right at the apex of its sprint, the creature threw its momentum forward and coiled. Its segmented torso snapped together, tucking its head and underbelly completely inward, transforming the centipede-like monster into a massive, heavy sphere of overlapping golden plating.
It launched into a violent, spinning roll.
The armored boulder tore across the camp ground, flattening supplies, spraying dirt, and cracking rocks beneath its sheer weight. Kestin screamed and threw a heavy field pack directly into its path, but the spinning juggernaut hit the fabric, shredding it instantly and continuing its trajectory without losing an ounce of speed.
Rist barely had time to react. He swung his good arm down in a desperate, bone-crushing backhand to halt the assault, but the creature was moving too fast.
Still locked tightly in its spinning roll, the beast utilized the tremendous centrifugal force of its rotation to whip its massive black-and-gold tail outward. Like a blade flung from a wheel, the vibrant, glowing stinger shot forward from the spinning mass with lethal precision.
Thwack.
The stinger driven by the momentum of the roll impaled Rist directly through the muscle of his trembling arm. The giant roared in agony, his white-knuckled grip completely failing. The heavy iron chain slipped from his fingers, and the metal ball dropped heavily to the dirt—the exact opening Evrin had been waiting for.
Uncoiling from its roll in a seamless explosion of gold and neon pink light, the creature drove its blade-like forelimbs into the ground, pivoting instantly to launch itself toward its true target: Marek.
Marek twisted away, clutching the stolen prize tighter against his side as he prepared to defend it.
And somewhere far away, inside the Blood Seed chamber of the broken monument near the edge of Dome One, Dezcrin watched the newborn gate stabilize.