Chapter 3: Codex Rising
The tin roof over Kael's head groaned in protest as the wind clawed at it.
He lay on the floor of a shanty barely held together by rebar, rust, and hope. The barrio slums of San Cristobal didn't sleep—not really. Somewhere beyond the alleyways, there were voices. People arguing. Gunfire. Someone's dog howling like it knew the sky had changed.
Kael's body burned.
He had passed out after the surge—his hands twitching, blood pooling under his back from a deep gash he couldn't remember getting. Now, something pulsed inside his chest. A cold, synthetic rhythm that didn't match his own heartbeat.
He opened his eyes.
Codex Interface Active.
Welcome, Host.
Designation: Unnamed. Hybrid Status: Incomplete.
Kael groaned. The Codex's voice wasn't loud. It was inside. Like a whisper through bone.
Do you wish to proceed with emergency sync?
He tried to stand but collapsed again. Pain flared in his ribs and leg. Then, suddenly, it stopped. A tingling warmth spread through his veins.
Cellular regeneration: 38%... 62%... 89%...
Warning: Unknown hybrid strain detected.
"What the hell…" Kael muttered.
Outside, thunder cracked. But the storm was not natural. It rolled in like something called it.
Hours earlier, he'd been scavenging with two others. Boys his age—hungry, reckless, desperate. They had found a sealed hatch hidden beneath the roots of an ancient balete tree. It had pulsed when Kael touched it.
His friends had laughed, dared him to open it.
He had.
Then came the scream—not from the hatch, but from somewhere beneath it.
And the world shifted.
Kael crawled to his feet. The pain was gone, replaced by strength he hadn't known since before the fevers took his parents.
The mirror in the corner reflected something he didn't recognize.
His eyes—once dark brown—now flickered with shifting light. Iridescent. Wrong. His veins glowed faintly under his skin like something was growing inside him.
Codex Symbiosis Phase I complete.
Initiating genome stabilization.
Kael stumbled outside into the rain. The barrio looked the same—but smelled… different. He could taste metal in the air. Hear the insects crawling beneath the mud.
A man staggered toward him in the alley—eyes wide, drunk, screaming.
"You! I saw it—I saw what's coming! They're waking! THE MONSTERS!"
Kael stepped back instinctively. The man didn't stop. He lunged.
Time slowed.
Something inside Kael shifted.
His vision refracted like a cuttlefish's lens. Muscles flexed with unnatural speed. And before he even realized it—
The man was on the ground. Groaning. Bleeding. Not dead, but broken.
Kael's arms trembled. Not from effort. From fear.
Reflex override detected.
Defensive mode: ACTIVE.
He ran.
Past rusted shacks. Past barking dogs and open fires. Until he reached the river where the water flowed like oil.
And there—across the riverbank—stood the balete tree again.
Except now, its roots had torn through the earth, and the hatch was open.
Kael stood at the edge of the opening. His mind screamed to flee.
But his blood whispered: Go back.
The tunnel beneath the hatch was lit with soft blue lines. Veins of light pulsing through ancient metal. He descended slowly, barefoot and drenched, into the bones of the world.
Codex Memory Chamber recognized.
Welcome, Descendant of the Womb.
"What… what are you?"
We are ARKHIVE.
We preserve. We adapt. We remember.
The walls shifted with holograms—images of dinosaurs stitched with sharks, lizards with whale lungs, apes with armored plates.
Kael watched in awe as one form flickered and lingered: a towering, spined monster with a snout like a crocodile and a tail like a leviathan.
Subject: JIRUUN.
Then another image. This one… was him.
Or something he was becoming.
It had longer limbs, plated arms, a shifting hide of scale and muscle, and a face that could barely be called human. But its eyes glowed with a single, pulsing light.
Codename: XENOVORAX.
Kael staggered back.
"No. That's not me. That's a monster."
Not yet.
You are incomplete.
Lightning struck aboveground.
And far away, JIRUUN lifted his head.
He had felt it.
Another was awakening.