The transport shuttle sliced through the low clouds, a shrill hum reverberating against the fractured skyline of Sichuan.
From above, the land looked broken — tectonic plates like cracked porcelain, torn highways, collapsed villages, and entire hillsides blackened by seared corruption. The once lush valley was now veiled in ash, mist, and the copper scent of scorched earth.
Inside the shuttle, tension thickened.
"Deploying now," Ferez announced from the rear latch, already suited and locking in his gear.
The platform lowered with a hydraulic hiss. Dust and cold wind greeted them like a warning. Seyfe stepped off first, boots crunching against cracked stone and what might've once been a road.
His eyes scanned the horizon — flickers of runic burn patterns etched across debris, broken vehicles sunk halfway into warped terrain, and overhead, a faint pulse of static thunder — the unmistakable signature of an unstable rift dome.
Saline landed beside him, adjusting her interface scanner.
"This doesn't look like it's been hit... it looks like it's been devoured."
Jerome descended last, rifle already in hand.
"Ground tremors detected. Slight pull to the east. Rift destabilization probable."
Emi touched down a moment later, crouched and already surveying the corrupted energy lines etched into the earth. Her silver hair gleamed faintly under the gray clouds, and her voice came soft.
"This isn't just a tear. This is aftermath. Something happened here—something big."
They spread out slowly, the tension in the air as heavy as the ash around them.
Seyfe crouched beside a rusted helmet buried in the dirt, half-melted. He turned it over gently — the insignia of another Veiler squad barely visible. No blood. Just... gone.
"Check your comms," he said. "This zone's been silent too long."
Ferez looked over.
"Echoform presence?"
"Faint... but there's something." Emi stood still, eyes narrowed. "Like they're watching from beneath."
"Below?" Saline asked.
Jerome nodded, pointing to a collapsed underpass.
"Tremors indicate movement underneath the old metro lines. Veilers likely descended into that."
Seyfe looked up toward the distant shimmering distortion over the mountain ridge — the rift itself, still pulsing like a dying heart.
"Then that's our path."
And with weapons drawn and nerves braced, Squad C-7 moved into the ruins — toward the rift and whatever waited below.
The remnants of the old metro tunnel loomed before them, its steel beams bent inward as though clawed apart. Seyfe led the descent, his boots landing silently on concrete stained with old blood and faintly glowing runic burns.
Their lights pierced the choking darkness, illuminating half-collapsed corridors and hanging cables that swayed slightly — not from wind, but from something that had passed recently.
"Lifesign traces," Emi whispered, holding up her handheld monitor. "Last registered here... then flatlined."
Jerome knelt near a scorch mark etched along the wall.
"Fire damage... but not mechanical. Biological origin, maybe. Look at the charring patterns."
Saline clicked her tongue, unholstering her secondary blade.
"Still think we're chasing a Class D?"
They moved slowly, their breathing tight.
It was Ferez who stopped them — his hand raised.
"Wait. Cellik signature, ten meters ahead."
They found it beneath a half-crushed support beam — a Veiler's Cellik, flickering and buried in rubble. Seyfe dug it out with care. The casing was dented, but its record core was intact. He wiped grime off the lens and activated it.
The projection burst to life, shaky and distorted with static. The recording was from a helmet cam — a panicked Veiler, eyes wild, breathing fast. Around them, screams echoed. Flames lit the distance.
"This is Veiler Iren, Overseer Squad 14… We engaged a lifeform near Rift Marker Delta. Repeating: NOT AN IDENTIFIED FORM. Repeating—NOT—"
A loud screech interrupted the log — something slithering, wet, scraping metal.
The camera jolted violently as the Veiler fell. The footage shifted — a massive shape breached the tunnel floor, bursting upward.
It crawled, not walked — scales laced in glowing slime, its jagged spines rippling with every heave, green liquid erupting from its pores. Flames erupted from its gullet, igniting one of the squadmates.
"It shoots fire—what the—it's like a reptile, but—it's not—" the voice cracked into screams."It's under us! It moves beneath!"
The feed cut.
Silence.
Seyfe slowly closed the Cellik. The air around them had grown heavier.
"It waited below the ground," he muttered. "Struck from underneath like it knew where we'd be."
Emi was already scanning the environment.
"There's a crater behind the collapsed beam. Matches the creature's emergence pattern. If it's still burrowed… it could be anywhere beneath us."
Jerome's face tightened.
"We're not equipped for an underground predator that shoots fire."
Ferez looked at Seyfe.
"We need to rethink this entry."
"No," Seyfe said, slipping the Cellik into his belt. "Now we know what we're facing. And if that thing's still here… then someone needs to finish what Squad 14 couldn't."
A distant rumble echoed from deep within the tunnel. A sick, bubbling hiss.
The hunt had begun.
The creature's roar cracked like a furnace split open, its scales flaring with the volatile green slime as it reared up — a monstrosity of half-reptile, half-nightmare, built for burrowing ambush and fire-slick death.
Seyfe was the first to charge, his blade arm crackling with veiled energy. He ducked under the thrashing tail that shattered a pillar above him, then slid across gravel and dirt, slicing upward into the beast's exposed lower jaw. Sparks flew. A shriek.
"Jerome, now!" Seyfe shouted mid-movement.
Jerome obeyed instantly, launching into the air with a precise spin, slamming both palms into the creature's neck and releasing a kinetic repulse blast — staggering it just long enough for Saline to weave in with deadly agility.
She flipped over the tail, slid beneath its swiping claw, then unleashed a precision strike to the left leg joint, slicing tendons with a blade laced in a suppressant toxin.
"It's bleeding!" she called. "Whatever the hell it bleeds—it's corrosive!"
The ooze gushed out, melting stone where it dripped.
The creature, reeling, thrashed into a frenzied crawl, dragging itself back down to the terrain. It dug, trying to vanish back beneath, but—
"Ferez!"
Ferez stepped in front of the burrowing path, stance wide, both gauntlets pulsing blue.
"I got it."
He slammed both arms into the earth.
A resonant pulse field exploded underground, rupturing the earth beneath the creature and dislodging it violently into the air, its spines catching on the debris mid-flight.
BOOM! It landed on its side, back scorched, limbs twitching.
Emi charged next. Her steps were light, almost silent, but her eyes locked on the weak point Jerome had earlier marked — the fractured side of its forejaw. She vaulted over a mound, threw a small shatter disc mid-spin, and struck right into the cracked bone.
Crack.
The jaw split with a nauseating crunch. The creature screamed, deafening the chamber.
"Stay on it!" Emi yelled. "It's not regenerating yet—we have a window!"
It flailed. A fireball launched directly at Saline.
Seyfe saw it and didn't think — he dived, shoulder-checked her out of the way, and was slammed by the fire full-on. His coat ignited, but he rolled, tore it off, and kept moving.
Smoke curled off his shoulder, skin blistering slightly, breath ragged.
"You good?" Saline asked, gripping his arm.
"Just pissed."
With a growl, Seyfe reactivated his core energy. Black veins flickered around his neck as his mutated tongue curled for a moment in pain — then he burst forward again, too fast to trace.
His blade plunged straight into the creature's eye.
"Die already!" he snarled.
It screeched, rearing back, thrashing its body in spasm, flames spilling from its cracked mouth.
Jerome leapt high, channeling a compression field between his palms.
"Seyfe, move!"
Seyfe pulled back just as Jerome's orb detonated — imploding half the creature's skull inward in a single, concussive vacuum strike.
The creature twitched. Roared weakly.
Then collapsed.
Green sludge spread across the floor, sizzling.
They stood still. Breathing hard.
The tunnel finally began to settle, bits of stone falling in soft pitter-patters.
"Did we... kill it?" Saline asked, looking between the steaming corpse and the others.
"If that thing twitches again, I'm burning it myself," Ferez muttered.
Emi tapped her comms.
"HQ, this is Unit 23-Delta. Hostile is neutralized. Massive subterranean Echoform, reptilian classification, estimated Grade B-Plus. Minimal casualties, no team losses. Requesting containment unit for sample retrieval."
A moment of static. Then:
"Confirmed, Unit 23-Delta. Extraction en route."
Seyfe dropped to a crouch, wiping his mouth and spitting.
Black.
His tongue still hadn't returned to normal.
Saline walked over, offering him water.
"You alright?"
"Yeah," he muttered. "But... something tells me this was just a scouting beast."
Jerome narrowed his eyes. "You think there's more?"
"I think this was a distraction," Seyfe replied, glancing toward the still-smoking path ahead.
The ruins weren't done revealing their horrors.
Not yet.
In the dimly lit operations chamber of Veiler HQ, large projection panels hovered across the walls, each relaying fractured live feeds from different squads.
Sparks crackled on one monitor.
Screams echoed faintly on another.
But Aki Varess stood still, arms crossed, her red eyes reflecting the stabilized stream coming from Unit 23-Delta — Seyfe's squad — now showing the smoking corpse of the reptilian Echoform, partially melted into the ground.
"Enhance thermal," she said quietly.
One of the analysts complied, fingers flying over the console. The image sharpened — a false-color burst showed active heat still pulsing beneath the carcass. No movement, but something was wrong.
Aki's gaze sharpened.The slime.
The green, viscous fluid still bubbled unnaturally, even after death.
"It's not post-mortem discharge," she murmured. "It's reacting to the ground... almost like it's seeding."
A second screen flared on the right.
Another squadron — Overseer Unit 19 — was reporting a seismic flicker in a zone nearly 80 kilometers away.
"Cross-compare both signatures. Now."
A young assistant nodded and overlaid the data. As the signatures lined up, Aki's jaw tensed.
"...Identical. Too precise for coincidence."
She turned slightly.
"Inform R&D that we might be looking at a mutation hive—this wasn't a lone Echoform. It's a spawner."
A silence followed her words — the kind of silence that chilled the room.
She tapped her earpiece.
"Unit 23-Delta. This is Handler Varess. Hold your position. Extraction is still on its way, but do not relax — there may be residual threats. You're not done."
Seyfe's static-laced voice returned through the line.
"Figured as much. The thing didn't die like it should've."
"Good. Keep your blades up."
As the feed zoomed in again, her red eyes narrowed.In the creature's remains — almost too faint to catch — a small glint shimmered under the muck. Like metal.
Aki leaned forward.
"Get me an isolate on that object. And triple-check the biosignal patterns recorded in its death throes."
She didn't say it aloud, but something in her gut twisted.This wasn't just a new variant.
It was deliberate.
Something — or someone — was breeding these Echoforms with purpose.
And she needed to find out why.
Before the next one woke up.