The flashlight beam shook in my hand like a frantic heart, a thin thread between me and the abyss. The Echo-Petrified crawled, its fractured quartz wings scraping black sand in a dissonant song—a stone whisper cracking, like a lying lover's promises. Its multiple eyes, gleaming pearls, tracked the light with ravenous hunger, and its cry birthed again: a sonic echo hardening air into invisible blades, streaking my skin with cold scratches, like winter caresses on bare flesh.
"Not today, freak..." I backed, breath ragged, Voracious's remnant carapace still warm against my back—a borrowed shield, fragile as a vow. Battery blinked: 86.8%. So slow, so mocking, like this world forced me to face my ghosts in harsh light. Emma... Her laugh, a softer echo than this, pierced my mind—a stolen flash, a rain-kissed goodbye turned bittersweet poison.
I ran, or tried: treacherous sand swallowed steps, obsidian pillars rising like jealous sentinels, quartz veins pulsing phosphorescent glow rivaling my light. Behind, stone mandible clatter swelled, hypnotic rhythm calling to fusion—to become one with this corrupted realm. The Echo-Petrified wasn't ordinary; a nascent twisted, perversion where airy flesh wed immobile stone, hybrid howling agony in soul-cracking waves.
Tripped on petrified root, light flying mid-air—a suspended heart. Landed safe; snatched it, spun to face. Monster dove, wings unfurled in broken-glass veil, bloated body oozing black basaltic tears. Sonar hit first: mental click, shadow-map charting weaknesses—brittle bones, palpable fear. Felt the invasion, like prying eyes in my intimacy.
Instinct. Voracious. Charged—not hero, but desperate starving. Carapace-gloved hand smashed wing; dry crack, quartz shards flying like cursed confetti. Retaliated, mandibles snapping ear-close, echo disorienting—world spun, pillars and mist melting into black kaleidoscope. But the light... Ah, the light. Aimed straight at eyes, beam piercing like faded hope's lance. Blinded, it staggered; seized chance: leap on back, teeth sinking membrane, rubbery-mineral flesh bursting acrid juice burning tongue.
Inner fire roared:
[Voracious – Level 3 Unlocked]
Absorption: +15% Perception (Echo-Scan – Basic Detection, 10m). Whispers reveal secrets.
Clarity wave crashed—not visual, internal: sonar waves birthed inside, sweeping shadows. "Saw" monster within: cracked stone veins, hybrid hunger. Around... Three Sand-Claws closing, blood-drawn, shells faintly gleaming. Rolled off, Echo collapsing inert heap, last cry a stifled sigh.
Panting, up. Light still on—86.7%. It held, like love refusing death. But whispers lingered: farther in mist, deeper rumble, greater twisted stirring. Jungle wasn't done with me. Not yet.
The new perception skill hummed in my skull like a swarm of distant bees, an unnatural extension that made the world feel both sharper and more invasive. Echo-Scan wasn't just seeing; it was feeling the dark, waves of invisible sound bouncing back with secrets I wasn't sure I wanted to know. The Echo-Petrified's corpse lay twisted at my feet, its bloated form deflating like a punctured lung, quartz wings sagging into the sand with a final, crystalline sigh. Shards of its membrane clung to my teeth, the acrid aftertaste lingering on my tongue—a mix of petrified dust and something sweeter, like the faint euphoria of a forbidden high. Voracious purred in satisfaction, the absorption settling into my nerves, sharpening my senses to the point where every rustle in the mist felt like a personal threat.
I spat out a fragment of wing-bone, the crunch echoing louder than it should in my ears, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. The light from the phone cut a narrow path ahead, illuminating the pillar's base where the fight had gouged deep scars into the stone—jagged lines that wept a thin trickle of viscous sap, glowing faintly with the same phosphor as the veins overhead. The air hummed with residual energy, the sonic cry's aftershocks vibrating in my chest, making my ribs ache like I'd been pummeled by an invisible hammer. Three Sand-Claws circled at the edge of my scan's range, their pearl-eyes glinting in the shadows, claws scraping tentative patterns in the sand. They weren't charging—not yet—but the hunger in their postures was palpable, a mirror to the one gnawing at my gut.
Keep moving, the voice in my head urged—Voracious, or just survival's cold logic? I didn't care. The jungle didn't reward hesitation; it punished it with teeth and venom. I pocketed the phone for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the dim phosphor glow, the beam's absence plunging the world into a deeper gray. The mist swirled thicker now, coiling around the pillars like living smoke, carrying faint whispers that my new skill amplified into half-heard murmurs: Closer... join... become... The Echo-Petrified's legacy, no doubt—its cries lingering as psychic residue, tugging at the edges of my mind like hooks in raw flesh.
A deeper rumble rolled from the mist, low and resonant, vibrating through the sand up into my bones. Not the Stone-Jaw's brute thunder—this was subtler, a growl from the earth itself, like the Realm breathing, exhaling secrets it didn't want unearthed. Echo-Scan pinged it: 15 meters out, beyond my basic range, but close enough to feel the weight. Something bigger. Hungrier. The Sand-Claws froze, their scavenging paused, instincts overriding greed as they burrowed shallow into the sand, shells dimming to camouflage.
I snatched the light back out, beam sweeping wide, catching glints of movement in the haze. The pillars loomed taller here, their bases merging into low arches like the ribs of some colossal skeleton, etched with faint, swirling symbols that pulsed in time with the rumble—ancient script, or just the corruption's graffiti? The air grew colder, the mist beading on my skin like sweat from a fever dream, and for a heartbeat, another parasite memory clawed in: the alley back home, rain-slicked pavement reflecting neon signs, Emma's umbrella bumping mine as we laughed about nothing. "You're always rushing into shadows," she'd teased, her warmth cutting the chill. The recall twisted, souring into accusation—What shadow did you rush into now, Arthur? This one I shoved it down, the doubt a fresh wound, and focused on the scan's faint pings.
The rumble resolved into form: a shadow detaching from the mist, larger than the Echo-Petrified, its silhouette a hulking blur of stone and membrane. Not charging—yet—but probing, mandibles or claws scraping experimental paths. My heart rate spiked, the temporary strength from the first kill fading, leaving me hollowed out, muscles trembling with post-adrenaline crash. The phone's battery blinked—86.6%—a cruel joke, holding steady while everything else unraveled. Use it, Voracious suggested, that inner voice smoother now, almost conversational. The light as weapon, as before.
I angled the beam toward the emerging threat, the pale glow piercing the mist like a scalpel. It recoiled slightly, a low hiss escaping—sonic, but muffled, like wind through cracked stone. Closer now, details sharpened: another hybrid, this one a bastard child of the Stone-Jaw and something airborne, wings of tattered membrane fused to a carapace riddled with quartz fissures, eyes a cluster of glowing slits that wept thin trails of luminescent fluid. A Veil-Scratched, the scan labeled it instinctively, knowledge blooming unbidden in my mind—ambusher of the ruins, venom sacs bloating under its hide like overripe fruits ready to burst.
The thing tested the light again, inching forward with a drag that scored the sand, its claws leaving trails of sizzling residue. The whispers intensified, my scan picking up the undercurrent: not words, but urges—fuse... consume... one. Voracious recoiled in my gut, a rare flicker of resistance, as if even it sensed the perversion. The Sand-Claws scattered fully now, burrowing deep, leaving me alone with the new hunter. The pillar at my back felt less like shelter and more like a tombstone, the symbols on its surface seeming to writhe in the beam's edge, like tattoos on a dying man's skin.
No running this time—the rumble was too close, the mist too thick to navigate blind. Fight, then. The shard of quartz from the Stone-Jaw kill lay nearby, glinting mockingly. I scooped it up, the edge biting into my palm, drawing a thin line of blood that mixed with the drying ichor on my fingers. The Veil-Scratched lunged, wings half-unfurling in a desperate bid for speed, but the light held it off, beam locking on its eye-cluster. It veered, crashing into a spire with a resonant clang, quartz dust exploding in a cloud that choked the air.
Seizing the moment, I closed in, shard raised. The beast recovered fast, mandibles snapping wild, but the carapace crust from earlier—fading but stubborn—took the glancing blow, stone meeting stone in a shower of sparks. My slash landed true, carving a gash across its wing-joint, membrane parting with a wet rip that released a puff of venom-mist, the vapor stinging my eyes and throat like inhaled acid. Coughing, I drove the shard deeper, twisting to widen the wound, hot fluids gushing over my hand—thinner than the Jaw's, laced with a sonic hum that vibrated up my arm, making bones ache like tuning forks.
It thrashed, wing flailing to bat me away, but the scan guided me—pinging the sacs beneath its hide, bloated and vulnerable. I stabbed again, piercing one with a satisfying pop , venom erupting in a spray that splashed my chest, fabric dissolving in seconds, skin blistering in fiery welts that peeled back to raw muscle. Pain white-hot, vision blurring, but I held, ripping the shard free and plunging it into the second sac. The beast convulsed, sonic cries warping into a feedback loop that shattered nearby quartz into glittering shrapnel, shards embedding in my arms like cruel jewelry.
Voracious surged, the hunger overriding agony:
[Voracious – Level 4 Unlocked]
Absorption: +20% Agility (Aerial Claws – +15% Dodge Speed). Shadows dance, prey bleeds.
Grace flooded my limbs, a predatory fluidity that turned the thrash into an opportunity—I rolled with the wing's swing, coming up behind it, shard discarded for bare hands. Claws—my own, now subtly hardened—sank into its nape, tearing through the membrane to the softer flesh below. The kill was messy, intimate: fingers delving into the gash, pulling free a pulsing vein that thrummed with trapped echoes, the organ bursting in my grip like overripe fruit, sonic residue buzzing against my skin like static kiss. I bit into the exposed meat, taste exploding—acid membrane and bile, scorching my throat but igniting the skill.
The Veil-Scratched stilled, steaming lacerated heap, glassy eyes void-staring. Panted, covered corrosive juice, arm wound oozing red-black mix. Light-mirac intact, glitch-then—digi-hic: phone-screen ghost-map lit, line-break pale-holo drunk-lover sketch. Symbol-anc path "Surface"... anom: cavity-near refuge-pot, mark-pulse bury-heart.
Rumble-return close. Ruin no haven. Yet.
The agility boost lingered, a ghost of speed that made my movements feel unnaturally smooth, like skating on blood-slick ice. The Veil-Scratched's corpse slumped fully, its sacs deflating with a final wheeze, venom pooling in a hissing puddle that etched runes into the sand. I staggered back, the new gashes on my arms weeping freely, the pain a dull roar under the endorphin haze. The phone's glitch-map hovered in my mind's eye, faint lines tracing paths through the mist—symbols I couldn't read, but the anomaly pulsed like a heartbeat, drawing me toward the ruins ahead. A cavity, the scan whispered. Refuge. Or trap.
The mist pressed closer, whispers multiplying into a cacophony that Echo-Scan amplified into a headache symphony. Sand-Claws emerged from their burrows, emboldened by the kill's silence, scuttling toward the corpse with opportunistic clicks. I let them have it—the feast was theirs; mine had been the kill. Limping forward, light beam carving the dark, the pillars gave way to arches, low and crumbling, like the skeleton of some forgotten cathedral. The rumble grew, a bass note under the whispers, vibrating through the ground into my feet, up my legs, settling in my chest like an unwanted guest.
Ruins. The word fit, though these weren't the vine-choked relics of adventure tales; they were wounds in the earth, basalt arches veined with obsidian that gleamed wetly in the light, symbols etched deep—swirls and fractures that seemed to shift when I blinked, like code glitching in reality's matrix. The air here was thicker, laced with a mineral bite that coated my tongue, and the mist hung low, coiling around my ankles like curious serpents. Echo-Scan pinged faint echoes inside: still forms, not moving, but there—carcasses? Or worse?
A scrape echoed—dull, like nails on taut hide. Scan zoomed: lurking hybrid, 8 meters in, Veil-Scratched proper this time, wings membrane-bristled with claws, bloated venom sacs pulsing heart-burst ready. My pulse quickened, the agility boost urging action, but fatigue tugged back—the fights piling up, body a map of fresh wounds. The phone warmed in my hand, battery steady at 86.5%, the map's anomaly closer now, a pull like gravity.
No choice. The rumble behind—whatever greater twisted stirred—pushed me forward. I slipped into the archway, beam sweeping the vestibule: collapsed ceiling raining dust, floor littered blanched bones and mummified flesh stretched on shattered exoskeletons. Prior victims, exile-others trapped cocoon-curse. Shiver—not cold, recognition: remain-twist mirror, love-unful freeze agony.
The Veil-Scratched burst shadows, flesh-fang whirl slam. Rolled blood-dust, claw-rake arm—tear-sharp skin-split pink-rag, blood-hot flow traitor-kiss. Scream-Vorac answer: beast-hung ripost, nail-hard crust sink bloat-abd.
Yield-flesh ob-scene pop-wet, visc-black gush, filament-sticky cling finger goo-regret. Sac-burst press, acid-ven sizz skin eat-flesh smoke-bubble—gore-pure roast-meat sulf-stench air-fill. Pain-blind bit-savage tear memb-wing chunk: text-rubb bile-stone rot taste, bone-fine crunch tooth cart-fresh. Convulse-mon mandib-snap vain throat-near, fire-inner rise:
[Voracious Lv. 4 Unlocked]
Absorption: +20% AGI (Aerial Claws – +15% Dodge). Shadows dance. Prey bleeds.
Light-body pred-grace musc-infus—like Emma-ghost brush storm-agile. Scratched-still steam-lacer heap, eye-glass void-stare. Pant-juice corr cover, wound-arm ooze red-black mix. Light-mirac intact, glitch-then—digi-hic: phone-screen ghost-map lit, line-break pale-holo drunk-lover sketch. Symbol-anc path "Surface"... anom: cavity-near refuge-pot, mark-pulse bury-heart.
Rumble-return close. Ruin no haven. Yet.
The agility settled like a second skin, my steps lighter, dodges instinctive as breathing—though the wounds screamed otherwise. The Veil-Scratched's husk steamed beside me, sacs deflated like burst balloons, venom carving furrows in the stone floor that smoked lazily. I flexed my fingers, the new claws—subtle extensions of my nails, edged with stolen membrane—flexing with a faint, wet snick. Power, yes, but the price? My reflection in a puddle of ichor showed eyes too sharp, skin too pallid, veins threading black like cracks in porcelain. What if she sees? The parasite doubt flickered, Emma's face overlaying the distortion for a heartbeat—her smile cracking like the quartz underfoot.
Shoved it down. The rumble swelled, closer, the arches trembling faintly, dust sifting from the ceiling like ash from a dying fire. The map's anomaly pulsed stronger, a beacon in the scan's web—cavity, 20 meters through the vestibule, marked with that buried-heart throb. Refuge? Or the Realm's next joke? The ruins deepened, arches merging into a labyrinth of half-buried halls, walls etched with those shifting symbols that now seemed to writhe in the light's edge, like living tattoos on a corpse. Bones crunched underfoot, some human-sized, skulls hollowed with mandibles-marks, eye-sockets staring accusatory. Exiles like me? Or just echoes of what I'd become?
A side chamber beckoned, scan pinging low-threat but high-anomaly—ruins within ruins, collapsed pillars forming a crude alcove. I edged in, beam revealing more relics: shattered quartz idols, veined with the same phosphor as my mutations, and a low dais where something glinted. The map aligned—the cavity. But the rumble hit then, full force: ground quaking, arches groaning as if the jungle itself rebelled. Dust choked the air, visibility dropping to arm's length, and Scan screamed warnings—multiple signatures converging, the greater twisted rousing its kin.
No time. I dove for the cavity, a narrow fissure in the dais, barely wide enough for my shoulders. Squeezed through, the stone scraping my mutations raw, appendages catching on jagged edges with painful tugs. Inside: a modest hollow, walls veined quartz luminescent diffusing soft blue glow, like inner moonlight trapped in ice. Air cooler, drier, the rumble muffled to a distant thunder. Refuge. For now.
Collapsed against the wall, light dimmed to save battery—86.4%—the scan's waves lapping at the edges, detecting no immediate threats. The blue glow bathed me, highlighting the gore: arm gashes oozing, thigh burn throbbing, chest welts from the venom spray peeling in ragged strips. Voracious hummed content, the agility weaving into muscle memory, but the doubts crept back, parasites feasting on the quiet. *Human appearance?* The quartz reflected my face—distorted, veined, eyes shadowed with that unnatural gleam. Emma's laugh echoed faint, accusatory: *Idiot, rushing shadows.* What if I surfaced like this? A monster in her world?
The rumble faded, jungle sated for the moment. I bandaged with torn jacket strips, the fabric stiff with dried ichor, and scanned the cavity: faint veins pulsing like a heartbeat, symbols on the walls matching the map's anomaly. Safe? Or lure? The phone glitched again, map lines sharpening—paths to "Surface," a word that tasted like freedom and doom. Sleep tugged, but Voracious resisted, hunger a constant undercurrent. The whispers returned, softer: *Evolve... persist...* I clutched the shard, blade against the void. Tomorrow, ruins deeper. For answers. For out.