Chapter 13 – The Voice Beneath the Salt
The dreams came first.
Kael stood on a shoreline that did not exist. The sky was starless. The sand beneath his feet was coarse with salt and teeth.
The water boiled.
Shapes moved beneath—massive, serpentine, scaled. They shifted like leviathans asleep under a blanket of blood.
A voice rose—not from the sea, but from the marrow of his bones.
"They rise through fire… but they forget the deep."
"You take what is not yours."
Kael opened his mouth but found salt pouring out—gagging, choking. The world bent sideways. The sky cracked. The water peeled back, revealing a jaw—a monstrous maw ringed with bioluminescent glyphs. Within, a single, burning eye stared back.
"You wake them all… and you forget me."
He awoke screaming.
Two Days Later – Kovarra's Teeth
The warband trained harder now.
Kael pushed them through live-fire drills, breach simulations, formation raids. Dreadmaw roared commands in the sparring pit, teeth flecked with blood. Whisper-Vow vanished into shadow mazes and returned only to whisper corrections into the ears of those who failed. Ironmark shattered armor plates for practice.
Kestri now flew recon over the cliffs, glider wings extended, mapping terrain and thermal drafts. Crate had rigged new gear from salvaged parts—even stabilized two broken plasma coils. Tallym moved through the infirmary, quietly administering Codex pulse readings and recalibrating hybrid sleep cycles. Their roles weren't ceremonial—they were essential.
Yet unease lingered. Since the night of the Codex pulse, many felt... watched.
A juvenile hybrid collapsed mid-drill. His brain burned with overactivity. Tallym found neural feedback loops in his skull—Codex signals too strong for his undeveloped body. He survived. Barely.
Serrin brought the data to Kael.
"He's accelerating the neural grafts. Trying to make them loyal before they're stable."
Kael stared at the screen. "And if they break?"
Serrin's voice went cold. "Then they break believing in you."
Kael turned away. Outside, Crate and a dozen hybrids were salvaging plasma coils from a downed scavenger transport—wreckage Whisper-Vow had scouted weeks ago. One of the younger hybrids carved Kael's sigil into the wall nearby. Another knelt silently at the fire, whispering prayers—not to gods, but to the Codex. Or to him. Kael didn't ask.
He clenched his jaw. Was this evolution… or another leash?
"Pick a target," Kael ordered. "Something small. We strike tonight."
The Caravan Ambush – Black Spines Ravine
The night wind screamed through the jagged canyon.
A convoy of slavers threaded carefully through the pass—two armored transports, six guards, and a caged cell in the rear holding five hybrids. Young. Fresh.
They never heard the first kill.
Whisper-Vow blinked from a cliff and slit two throats before their shadows hit the ground. Ironmark descended like a war hammer, smashing the lead vehicle with a roar. Dreadmaw tore through steel like fabric. Kestri soared above, signaling timing.
Kael dropped from the ridge with a blade in each hand, moving like a whisper between screams.
Five minutes. No survivors.
They freed the captives—one dead, two wounded, two shaking in silence.
Whisper-Vow turned to Kael, face unreadable. "That wasn't routine. They were baiting us."
Kael nodded. "A warning."
And then the wind changed.
The Warden's Herald
A low rumble echoed through the ravine. Not mechanical. Not natural.
It moved like a sound too deep to hear, too old to name.
From the shadows beyond the dead convoy, a shape emerged.
It dragged itself forward—twenty feet long, malformed, wrong. Skin like black coral. Spines that pulsed with bioluminescent patterns. Jaws that split in three directions. And behind its eyes—nothing. No soul. No purpose.
Just hunger. Commanded hunger.
Whisper-Vow staggered. "It's not Codex."
Serrin's voice whispered over the comm. "That thing is carved from extinct lineages. Genomes we've never seen active. That's not science. That's a message."
Kael raised his weapon. "Wardenspawn."
The hybrid horde fell into position, unsure. Fear crept in. One whispered a prayer. Another backed away, trembling.
Then the beast spoke—not with words, but through them.
"You were not the first, Kael Sorrén."
"You will not be the last."
"JIRUUN WATCHES."
And it charged.
📘 Codex Fragment – Transgressive Lineage File [Redacted]
Entity classification: UNKNOWN
Biomass origin: Deep-sea sediment fused with multiple extinct marine theropod strains.
Identified behavioral markers: Hive-pulse tracking, Codex-null resistance, Warden alignment
Summary: Weaponized organism designed to bypass Codex control. Locomotion implies subterranean travel and amphibious breeding cycles. It does not kill for blood—it kills for balance.
Classification updated: WARDEN-PROXY
To be continued...