The girl's name was Lina, and she was fast-talking, sharp-eyed, and way too smart for someone who'd been living out here without an interface.
Her crew? Three more rough-around-the-edges misfits:
— Tam: Big guy, quiet, always carrying a broken radio like it still worked.
— Yen: A wiry dude with too many questions and not enough caution.
— Mira: Youngest, maybe nine. Didn't say a word but could track like a bloodhound.
"We've been running from stuff for weeks," Lina explained that night around the heatstone hearth. "Raptors, storms, something with eyes that glow red and moves like smoke. And then… we saw the light. This place."
She paused, looking around with awe. The soft hum of the structure, the vines glowing gently above their heads, the pond that had reshaped itself into a drinking basin.
"This isn't just shelter," she whispered. "It's… sacred."
Arka gave a half-laugh, tossing another chunk of heatvine into the fire. "It's old tech. Plant-based architecture from whoever lived here first. Not magic. Just really smart nature engineering."
Lina turned to him, eyes narrowed. "Same difference."
🌀 ARKA'S SURVIVAL LOG
New Status: First Contact – Survivors drawn to your growing base.
Base Popularity: +1
Morale: +20 (they had real food, a warm bed, and no monsters—for now)
Days blurred after that.
The place transformed. With more hands, Arka and the others expanded the structure. Skyvine domes grew across the edges of the clearing, connecting to the central house like petals around a core. A crafting bay formed near the stream, where Kiki helped crack iridescent stones for tools. Gardens sprouted—actual ones, not just jungle scrounging.
🌀 NEW STRUCTURES BUILT:
Skyforge: A living forge powered by thermal vines.
Glowbeds: Self-heating sleeping platforms woven from radiant moss.
Echoroots: Communication system using underground resonance (basically jungle Wi-Fi).
Arka stood on a platform one morning, watching fog roll over the treetops. "This is starting to feel like a real place."
Kiki chirped, perched beside him. He was getting taller, sleeker. Leveling again.
🌀 KIKI LEVEL UP
Level: 6
New Trait: "Pack Bond" – Allies within range get defense and stamina boosts when Kiki's nearby.
"Dang," Arka laughed. "You're not just a dino ninja—you're a team buff."
Below, Mira chased bioluminescent beetles. Tam and Yen were hauling sap barrels. Lina was in the archives chamber, obsessed with memory nodes.
She called Arka in later that night.
"Look at this one," she said, activating a node. The light flared.
A vision unfolded—ancient Builders hunched over glowing seed-cores, placing them in the earth. Around each, a house grew, vine by vine, stone by stone.
But then—disruption.
Red light tore across the memory. A black cloud, something massive, surged over the jungle.
"It has returned," the Builder whispered. "We sealed it once. The Earth remembers. But memory alone cannot protect us."
The vision ended in static.
Arka and Lina just stood there in silence. Then:
"…What was that?" Lina asked.
"I don't know," Arka said. "But I don't think the raptors are our biggest problem anymore."
🌀 ARKA'S SURVIVAL LOG
Ancient Entry Logged: [The Black Return]
Warning: Unknown entity detected in jungle radius. Protective protocols advised.
That night, the walls of the house hummed. The vines thickened. Heatstones flared brighter.
Something was stirring in the jungle again.
And this time, Arka knew—they'd need more than a base.
They'd need a tribe ready to fight back.