The silence came first.

  After the roaring, gnashing, and sundering of the Eidolon Maw, the fall into the Hollow Beyond felt like plunging into a void stripped of stars. No sound. No light. Just the fading scent of ash and ozone—and gravity pulling them into a darker unknown.

  Nilo awoke first. His breath stuttered as he sat up on jagged violet stone, dimly lit by bioluminescent fungi etched like veins across the canyon walls. His uniform was shredded, but his limbs were whole—green flames still flickering around healing wounds.

  Groaning nearby, a figure stirred. Zara El-Khoury, her cowl burned away and a modified sniper lying beside her, dragged herself upright. Her molten aura still licked across her shoulders. “...this better not be hell,” she muttered, rubbing dust from her eyes.

  Hadi Nasir landed not too far away from her, his dark matter shrouding him like smoke. He winced but was intact. “That damn monster won’t let me sleep for a long time after this,” he muttered as he sat down, scanning the perimeter.

  An Meili was lying on Zhu Honghui’s chest seemingly unharmed and was awakened by the commotion. She jumped up to stand,“Hey! My knees still work! That's good luck, right?”

  Coughing after Meili got off him, Zhu Honghui slowly tried to get up—body warped slightly from impact but reforming rapidly thanks to his morphic resilience. And just behind him, spectral light shimmered—Arden Vale floated gently to the stone, his ethereal armor flickering around his form like a fading mirage.

  Zara hissed. “Six of us?”

  Nilo counted, nodded grimly. “We fell together. That has to mean something.” spreading his green flames to cover everyone, rapidly recovering them.

  “No signal,” Hadi reported, tapping the side of his comm band. “The Hollow’s cutting off Stellar frequencies.”

  “Well we didn’t fall in vain at least.” Zara bent and picked up a brightly shining core of pure S-Factor.”Lifefire, catch.” She shouted as she threw the crystal.

  An Meili glanced upward. The shaft they’d fallen through had vanished—sealed by tumbling debris and a hovering fog that pulsed with a wrong kind of life. “Well, there goes the way out.”

  “Then we shall climb,” Honghui said, tightening his vambrace. “Or die trying.”

  But even as they looked for footing, the ground vibrated. A low hum resonated from the rock beneath their boots—like a song being hummed by something asleep, buried deep.

  Arden narrowed his eyes. “We’re not alone down here.”

  The biome layer above the crystalline forest changed with an audible shatter. The rock walls darkened, and the air turned dry and electric—like the silence before a desert thunderstorm. The group advanced cautiously. Their boots crunched through brittle ground made of burned glass and petrified roots. This wasn’t just another ecosystem—it was hostile territory.

  Without warning, the sand shifted. A series of clawed limbs erupted from beneath like spears—Hollow mutants, grotesquely evolved with jagged exoskeletons and open maws that hissed with unstable S-Factor.

  “Hostiles!” Nilo called, starting his flames just as one lunged. It barely reached him before a thunderous crack echoed behind—Zara El-Khoury had already sniped it mid-air, her cloak rippling with heat.

  “Right side. Six more,” she said, voice calm, already repositioning. Heat shimmered around her as the temperature spiked.

  Another burst of dark energy surged past Nilo’s shoulder—Hadi Nasir raised a hand, launching condensed black spheres that warped gravity around the creatures. They screamed in frequencies that didn’t sound earthly.

  One Hollow mutant charged directly for An Meili, who flailed instinctively but all of a sudden the ground cracked open in front of her and it fell into a hidden sinkhole.

  “Hah! Take that!” she cheered, posturing triumphantly.

  “This little Koi,” said Zhu Honghui with a slight smile. “You’re just lucky.”

  Zhu launched forward, body expanding with red-hued scales as Dragon of War activated. Each step he took cracked the ground beneath him. He met the largest Hollow head-on, punching through its chest, then flipped its twitching body into another.

  Zara vanished into a shimmer of rising heat, reappearing atop a rocky outcrop. With two consecutive shots, another creature dropped.

  From behind the formation, a screech tore through the silence—a massive Hollow, its body fused with remnants of a Stellar Tree branch, charged like a juggernaut.

  Arden Vale stepped in front.

  The monster struck, but instead of impact, its claws passed through his body. Arden shimmered: half-real, half-light. Ethereal armor expanded along his form like glass sculpted by wind.

  He turned his head. “Go for the legs.”

  Blackstar didn’t need a second invitation. A miniature black hole collapsed the Hollow’s hind limbs in on themselves. The beast let out one last distorted cry before Zhu cleaved its head off with a qi-dragon punch.

  There was silence afterwards.

  “I think we’re getting better at this,” Nilo muttered, extinguishing his flames.

  They had barely made it past the ridge when Meili suddenly stopped and tilted her head.

  “What is it?” Zhu asked.

  She didn’t answer at first. She stepped forward, eyes scanning the ground, then the air—as if reading something invisible.

  “There’s... a thread here,” she said. “It’s related to my ability, I often find treasures this way before. It’s pulling me that way.”

  They followed her past a collapsed ravine, where the terrain subtly shifted from sand to rusted metal overgrown with mineralized vines. A slab of stone half-buried in the cliffside revealed a broken sigil—an Avalon Union symbol.

  Something that shouldn’t be here.

  The entry hatch was partially open, vines growing through the frame. Nilo and Arden exchanged a look before pushing it open. Inside, time had stopped. Flickering lights illuminated skeletal bunk beds, cracked glass panels, and corroded armor racks.

  “It’s... really Avalon-style architecture,” Arden confirmed quietly. “This place must be atleast 20-30 years old.”

  In the center, a broken pedestal sputtered to life. A flickering hologram shimmered—an AI projection with fading features. Its voice was corrupted.

  “Accessing... Core Memory: Unit... Avalon-3X... Status: Dead. Mission: Failed.”

  “Failed?” Nilo approached. “What happened here?”

  The AI's image crackled. “Experimentation on the S-Factor Root Node... exceeded containment limits... Project Heartseed... irreversible contamination.”

  Blackstar frowned. “You were trying to grow a new Stellar Tree.”

  “Yes,” the AI confirmed. “But the Hollow creatures... adapted… Consumed the Root. Became something new… They turned us into what you just fought.”

  “Why didn’t anyone retrieve the data?” Zara asked from the shadows.

  “Project was sealed. Memory cores extracted. Only fragment remains...”

  Before Nilo could even ask who extracted the memory cores, the AI suddenly flared.

  “Warning... The Seed still grows.”

  An eerie silence followed that phrase. Arden narrowed his eyes. “It means there’s a Root Core still active. Whatever that is, it’s still somewhere up there.”

  Meili shivered and took a step closer to Zhu.

  The AI finally shut down afterwards.

  ---

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Later, after clearing out a few safer rooms, the team set up a temporary camp. The smell of expired rations filled the air as Meili cheerfully opened a dented can labeled "High-Protein Nutritional Mush."

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she laughed, passing it around. “It’s lucky food!”

  Zhu winced but took a bite without complaint. Hadi stayed silent, but took his share with a brief nod. Zara didn’t speak—until Meili tossed a second can at her.

  “Sniper lady gets hungry too.”

  Zara hesitated. Then peeled the lid and began eating.

  “You don’t talk much,” Meili said brightly. “Were you always a solo type?”

  Zara glanced at her, then at the others. “Used to scout deserts alone for weeks. When the Dominion collapsed the New Sumerian border, I was already behind enemy lines. Survived by vanishing.”

  Meili blinked. “That’s... cool. And lonely.”

  Zara shrugged. “You get used to it.”

  “And you?” Meili looked at Hadi.

  The man raised his eyes, serious as ever. “Zarahan bred me to lead. But when I refused their Purity Doctrine, I was disowned by my family. The Academy offered something different. A choice.”

  “A man forced to carry a burden,” Zhu added. “You and I are not dissimilar.”

  Their eyes met—both men born to empires now fractured. There was a silent understanding.

  “You all came from places I’ve only read about,” Meili said, resting her chin on her knees. “I used to think I was just... lucky. But now I wonder if there’s a reason I’m here.”

  “There is a reason for sure,” Nilo said gently. “You’re here because your instincts guided us to this base. We’re alive because of it.”

  “I’m also here because of him,” she added, nodding to Zhu.

  Zhu flushed faintly. “Why must you always embarrass me.”

  Arden chuckled softly from his corner. “She talks more than anyone I’ve met.”

  “And yet,” Zara said, with the faintest curve of a smile, “she makes silence bearable.”

  The warmth of their makeshift campfire glowed faintly against the rust-streaked walls of the abandoned Avalon base. Hadi had rigged old power cells to heat the air, giving the illusion of comfort. Outside, the biome hissed and shifted—ever-changing, ever-watching. But in here, there was something rare: quiet.

  Meili sat cross-legged on an overturned ammo crate, finishing the last of her "lucky rations" with a satisfied hum.

  “You guys really don’t talk much,” she said cheerfully. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I was the only normal person here.”

  “You’re not normal,” Hadi said dryly. “You’re statistically improbable.”

  “That’s a compliment, right?”

  Arden smiled faintly, sipping boiled water from a dented metal cup. “For Hadi? That’s practically poetry.”

  Meili leaned forward, elbows on knees, her eyes bright. “So, since we’re stuck here waiting for the next nightmare biome to try and eat us—what was it like? You know, the Academy? Genesis Batch training? You four all went through it, right?”

  The air shifted.

  Hadi set down his food slowly. “It wasn’t a school. It was a crucible.”

  Zara stared into the fire. “Sixteen-hour days. Simulated death drills. Survival exercises where they didn’t come back for you. We were taught not just how to fight, but how to endure.”

  “Most of our batch didn’t make it through,” Nilo said quietly. “By the time we graduated, less than a quarter remained. Some broke. Some vanished. Some... changed.”

  Meili frowned. “That’s horrible.”

  “It was,” Arden admitted. “But it forged something in us. Not just power. Identity.”

  Meili’s expression turned softer. “Did you ever hate it?”

  Arden looked up, eyes thoughtful. “Every day. But I also needed it. I didn’t know who I was without someone else telling me. The Academy didn’t give me answers... but it forced me to ask.”

  “I used to cry at night in the barracks,” Zara said suddenly. The others looked at her. “I had no family. Just orders. I didn’t even know why I was still breathing half the time.”

  She tapped the side of her neck where her heatcore tattoo burned faint red.

  “But then... I started watching the others. Little habits. Hadi’s silent prayers before simulations. Arden sketching runes on the back of broken metal scraps. Nilo muttering formulas like bedtime stories. Even Byron... that big oaf... used to sneak us contraband sweets like some oversized rebel babysitter.”

  Nilo grinned faintly at the memory. “He always said, ‘Can’t fight a war on an empty soul.’”

  “Who’s Byron?” Meili asked.

  “He’s the one who’s transforming into a titan”

  “Ah, the funny guy that pissed of Xingxing?”

  “Yeah he’s probably done that.” Nilo confirmed

  Meili fell quiet for a while. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Just reflective.

  “And you, Meili?” Zara asked finally, surprising her. “What was your training like?”

  “I didn’t really have any,” Meili admitted. “No military camps. No simulation chambers. Just a rundown orphanage and a lot of scraped knees. I wasn’t picked because I was strong—I was picked because a Stellar Coin kept following me around like a puppy.”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, faintly glowing charm. “This showed up when I turned fifteen. No one could explain it. It led me to Zhu.”

  “And she’s been causing miracles ever since,” Zhu said, but there was fondness in his tone.

  “I guess I always believed... if something led me here, there must be a reason,” Meili said. “Maybe fate. Maybe luck. Or maybe I’m just tagging along with a bunch of actual heroes.”

  “You’re not tagging along,” Nilo said firmly. “You’re part of this team.”

  “Besides,” Arden added, “You’re the only one whose instincts led us to this base. You’re not here by accident.”

  Meili blushed. “You guys are nicer than you look.”

  Zara chuckled softly, for the first time that night.

  Then, from somewhere above them, the ceiling rumbled. A deep thrum echoed down the structure. A warning.

  Hadi’s hand drifted toward his weapon. “The Seed... I think it’s directly above the base.”

  Zhu stood. “Then let’s finish what this base started.”

  ---

  They emerged from the Avalon base through a half-collapsed corridor that led into open sky—or what remained of it. The terrain had shifted again, the biome rearranging like a living puzzle. Forest canopy twisted overhead, branches curved in impossible spirals, dripping with bioluminescent sap. Gravity felt inconsistent, like the air itself was resisting their movement. The land tilted, refused to stay flat, and no compass could hold its bearing.

  An unnatural hum vibrated through the ground, like a string pulled too tight.

  “I don’t like this place,” Meili whispered, pressing close to Zhu. “It’s like we’re walking into someone’s dream.”

  “No,” Zhu murmured. “Someone’s nightmare.”

  They came to a sudden rise.

  And there it was.

  Rising from a crater like a wound in the world—twisted, coiling, and colossal—was a Stellar Tree, or what remained of one.

  Once radiant and crystalline, the towering trunk now pulsed with black veins, its bark warped with parasitic growths. Fragments of iridescent light flickered like memories caught in amber, trying to shine through the corruption. Its branches did not reach for the sky—they curled inward, suffocating themselves. It did not hum with life. It groaned under its own existence.

  “It’s... calling something,” Hadi said, frowning. “Can you feel it?”

  “No,” Arden said, stepping back. “It’s not calling something.”

  His eyes flicked to Nilo.

  “It’s calling him.”

  Nilo stood frozen.

  The rest of the team looked at him. His expression was distant—lost in a tide none of them could see.

  Whispers—inaudible to the others—circled around him like vapor. They echoed not in his ears, but in the marrow of his bones.

  Lifefire.

  Colorless flame.

  Return...

  The tree’s core opened slowly like an eye. From its center leaked a faint, colorless glow—unlike any S-Factor hue they'd ever seen.

  Nilo stepped forward without realizing it. The others reacted instinctively.

  “Nilo!” Zara barked.

  He didn’t hear her.

  His thoughts were elsewhere—buried under a hundred memories. The chamber where he’d first touched S-Factor. The battlefield where he burned an ocean dry. The time he woke up and couldn’t feel his body because his mind was sprinting too fast for nerves to follow.

  This wasn’t just a tree.

  It was a resonance engine. A dead node from the ancient Stellar Network. Something that had recognized him—not as a threat, but as kin.

  “I’ve seen this before,” he murmured. “In my dreams... no—my flame’s dreams.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Hadi asked.

  But Nilo wasn’t answering anymore.

  His thoughts drifted—buried under the weight of memories not entirely his own.

  The sterile chamber where he first touched S-Factor, trembling as arcs of fire danced through his veins. The suffocating moment in cryo-recovery when he couldn’t feel his body, only the blur of too many flashing too fast. The training chamber collapsing during his breakthrough to 1 starl, when he saw another star form in his stellar core. The mission in Valles Crater, where he fought a human experiment that went berserk alone for thirteen minutes, his flames were barely holding its shape.

  And then came other memories—ones he never lived.

  Visions bled into his mind. A world from above, seen through alien eyes. Roots spreading across continents, drinking S-Factor from the crust of creation. Countless warriors kneeling beneath the Stellar Tree’s light, offering blood and hope.

  A hand reaching into the bark—colorless, flickering.

  An explosion of light swallowing a mountain.

  Nilo stumbled forward as if drawn by invisible chains. These weren’t just his thoughts. They were the tree’s. Echoes of a past life—or perhaps an ancestral memory seeded into every Root Seed that existed.

  He opened his mouth, but no sound came.

  The tree recognized him.

  Not as a visitor.

  But as a descendant.

  Flames—his flames—ignited around its trunk in waves. Not red, not orange—but green, white, and blue. The tree mirrored his abilities.

  Then came a new color.

  Black.

  A slow, oozing tendril of ink-like fire curled out from the bark—unlike any flame he’d ever controlled. It was not heat. It was hunger, a conceptual entropy. And it moved towards him without ill intent.

  Zhu Honghui hurriedly moved to intercept—but the tree sent out a wave of gravitational pressure that slammed the others to their knees.

  “Don’t—!” Nilo shouted, raising his hand.

  The pressure eased.

  The tendril hovered in front of him, almost expectant.

  “This is part of me...” he said, horror blooming behind his words. “It knows what I am. Or what I’ll become.”

  Arden’s voice was low. “That’s not a tree. That’s a mirror.”

  The black flame coiled and touched Nilo’s palm.

  Agony exploded behind his eyes—not pain, but realization. Images. Futures. Firestorms across continents. Lifefire becoming deathfire. His body breaking reality’s laws just by existing. And somewhere, deep within...

  ...an ocean evaporating, again.

  He screamed—and the tree screamed back.

  Then it collapsed inwards.

  A pulse of colorless light shot skyward, searing the sky with a rift. The warped tree crumbled to crystalline ash, leaving behind only a single shard. A seed. Shaped like a flame frozen in time.

  Nilo lost consciousness and fell forward. Arden caught him.

  The rest recovered slowly, looking at the crater in stunned silence.

  “What the hell just happened?” Zara asked, breathing hard.

  Arden stared at the seed in Nilo’s palm. The color shifted as if alive.

  “I think,” he said quietly, “it just gave him something.”

  Zhu narrowed his eyes. “Or gave us all a warning.”

  The group stood in silence around Nilo who was showing no signs of waking up.