The crimson rift opened before him, thin at first, then widening above the awakened seed into a trembling window of blood-red light. Through it, the camp appeared in broken flashes: firelight, scattered supplies, Rist bleeding beside the seed, Kestin twitching in fear as he readied all four of his arms for what was to come, and Marek twisting away with the stolen prize crushed against his side.
Then Dezcrin saw the creature.
It moved through the chaos on fresh, thick plates of gold and violent magenta energy. It had no face, no eyes to blind, only that gaping, radiating maw of raw power built straight into its armored frame.
'No.'
The thought arrived cold and absolute, cutting through everything else like a blade through silk.
'It can't be.'
But he knew what he was seeing. He had carried the knowledge for centuries—old reports, older warnings, the kind of history that lived in blood and bone rather than records. Dome Three. The Vorid swarms. The extermination campaigns that had burned through entire sectors, hunting things that should not have been allowed to exist in the first place.
Their consumption wasn't born of hunger; it was a process of absolute integration. They absorbed everything at their peak—chitin, bone, essence, energy, and structure. They fed on what they killed and adapted, piece by piece, evolution by evolution, until nothing remained that could stop them. The swarms had spread through Dome Three like a plague of transformation, each creature growing stronger with every kill, adapting faster than anything should.
'They were all supposed to be dead.'
Incinerated. Tracked down to the last cell. Scraped from the Ark's living record until they existed only as an old nightmare in the dark.
'It fed on him.'
The creature had taken a piece of Rist—two fingers, a chunk of palm—and integrated it into its terrifying biology. That blind, crushing form wasn't a disadvantage; it was built for absolute, unyielding tunneling and slaughter, fortified by the life force it had stolen.
'How long has it been feeding?'
The question settled through him like ice. If it had consumed Vyx essence this quickly, what else had it eaten before Marek's crew found it? What had it been in that cave, dormant and waiting, before it woke and began hunting again? And what would it become if it kept feeding?
Dezcrin had read the old reports. He knew what happened when Vorids reached Emergent or even his own Endurant rank. They didn't just evolve—they ascended. They became something that could challenge entire territories, something that required coordinated extermination efforts across multiple territories and Domes to contain.
'One lives...'
The thought was a blade, and it cut deeper than anything else.
'One lived. And now it's here. In my territory hunting.'
Dezcrin knew if he could control it, he would be unstoppable.
His violet eye burned brighter.
Back at the camp, Marek froze. His eyes snapped toward the rift while evading lethal attacks from the creature.
"Boss!"
Dezcrin leaned closer, though he did not touch the gate. Not even slightly. "Why are you opening one of my Blood Seeds this close to my territory?"
Marek's face drained further. "My Lord, we found something. Something valuable. But this thing followed us from the cave. It took a piece of Rist's hand and is freakishly strong!"
"Show me," Dezcrin said.
Marek hesitated for only a fraction of a breath. Even in panic, greed kept his grip absolute; he used both of his arms to clutch the stolen object tightly against his chest, shielding it with his own body as he evaded the creature with dashing speed.
Above the chaos, Kestin hovered even higher into the air, lifting himself well out of the Vorid's reach to ensure he wouldn't be struck. From his elevated vantage point, he channeled his energy through both of his orbs, watching the beast's movements with frantic precision. Every time the creature lunged and Marek was about to be struck, Kestin unleashed the orbs' power, flashing a glowing barrier into existence right in the path of the lethal claws just in time to absorb the blow.
Safe behind the deflections, Marek kept his arms locked around his loot. He did not reveal all of it. But through the rift, Dezcrin caught a glimpse of the prize's surface beneath Marek's tight grip.
The Blood Seed chamber went still. Dezcrin's violet eye narrowed.
Whatever anger had been burning in him changed shape. It did not fade. It focused.
Dezcrin understood, in that instant, why Marek had risked the seed. The object was not merely valuable. Its rarity and worth were obscene, compressed into something small enough for a fool to clutch against his ribs.
Now the creature's presence made sense. It had not come to hunt. It had come to reclaim what it valued most because they had taken something it made.
The old reports had never agreed on what to call them. Eggs. Cores. Vorid seeds. Each name had been too small for what they truly were. A living vessel of condensed potential, shaped by a Vorid and nourished on the life of whatever poor creatures it dragged into the dark. Every death fed into it. Every stolen breath thickened it. Every body lost in that cave had become part of what Marek now clutched against his chest.
To absorb it into a living body was to invite a power no mortal soul was meant to carry. It wasn't a fleeting surge or borrowed strength destined to fade. It was a permanent rewriting of the holder's essence—a structural evolution that shattered their natural limits and expanded what they could become.
If the Vorid reclaimed it—if it consumed even a splinter of the potential it had spent cycles cultivating—the beast would not merely evolve. It would transcend into its active swarm state, giving way for it to birth more of its kind.
And Marek had been stupid enough to hold a Vorid's egg against his chest like common loot.
"So that is what you dragged out of the cave?" Dezcrin said.
Marek swallowed. "Yes, my lord."