He leapt from his chair, his breakfast crashing to the floor, and sprinted to the study. There, behind a glass cabinet, pulsed the glowing orb tied to Acrid. Without hesitation, he opened the cabinet door and paused only briefly as Mind watched him, wide-eyed and still. The professor placed his hand on the orb—and vanished.
This time, it wasn’t a vision.
The jungle air was cool and damp with mist as the professor found himself truly standing within it. The world was vivid—no more smoky haze from his dreams. Ahead of him, the tribe moved silently, carrying the unconscious journalist, and behind them, the boy walked solemnly. When he turned and saw the professor, his eyes lit with a mournful, knowing smile—as if greeting an old friend.
A heavy breeze swept through the jungle, carrying the scent of sap, wet leaves, and something older than time itself. Then the trees parted.
Acrid emerged.
It moved like a mountain carried by the wind—massive, rooted, deliberate. His colossal form shimmered with shades of dark green and burning gold, bark and fire fused into one. The jungle around him bowed as if in reverence.
The professor looked up, his breath caught in his throat. Acrid’s head alone dwarfed his entire body, each breath the dragon took causing the leaves to stir and pulse.
Their eyes met.
In that gaze was the weight of millennia—loss, rebirth, judgment, mercy. The professor’s legs gave out, not from fear, but something deeper. He sank to his knees beside the boy, who bowed in perfect unison.
Their marks began to glow—bright, emerald green—etched not in ink, but in energy. The professor could feel it humming under his skin, syncing with the pulse of the earth beneath him.
A golden fruit landed softly between them.
The boy reached out and bit in without hesitation, as though it were his daily bread. The professor stared at his piece, the light dancing across its smooth skin. He lifted it slowly, hesitated for a moment, then took a bite.
It tasted of every memory he had ever loved.
Warm days. Quiet books. Childhood laughter. A single bite brought tears to his eyes.
He stood, wiping his cheek without shame.
Acrid lowered his head, close now. The ground shook, but the professor didn’t flinch. Slowly, almost as if drawn by instinct, he reached out and placed his hand on Acrid’s snout.
Warm.
Breathing.
Alive.
The bark-like texture was softer than expected, like touching the trunk of a tree that had known you since birth.
Acrid’s voice—deep, resonant, ancient—spoke not in the professor’s ears but in his chest, vibrating through bone and soul:
“The jungle now protects you.”
Tears fell freely down the professor’s face. He didn’t know why. Relief? Belonging? A burden shared with something greater?
Then—
A whistling sound tore through the air.
A missile struck Acrid’s back with a thunderous explosion knocking the professor and the boy back 50 feet. Vines wrapped instantly around the professor and the boy, pulling them into a pod woven of bark, leaves, and root.
Jungle Perimeter – Moments After the Missile Strike
The missile slammed into Acrid’s back with a thunderous boom. The forest didn’t roar—it inhaled. The trees stiffened. The ground vibrated. And then... the jungle's shell began to close.
The border of the jungle grew a shell that hardened and pulsed with a faint green glow. On its surface, a sheen of dark liquid formed.
Acrid’s acid.
Not dripping. Coating. Waiting.
Forward Position – Brazilian Battalion
“Hold position!” Comandante Guerra shouted, waving his men back. “Do not engage further! Repeat—do not fire!”
It was too late.
A group of American soldiers, unsure of the command structure, opened fire at the now-sealed dragon and its glowing shell. Bullets slammed into the bark—and something strange happened.
The acid caught them.
Not in a burst, not with sound—but like oil across water. The bark didn’t flinch. Instead, it redirected the rounds, spitting them back in slight, warped trajectories.
The rounds came back coated in sizzling green.
Three soldiers fell instantly—hit by their own bullets, now fused with acid that ate through armor, fabric, and flesh.
Washington’s Command Tent
Colonel Washington stormed out, just in time to see one of his soldiers screaming, tearing at his chest plate as smoke rose from within it and the acid chewing through his skin.
“What in God's name—”
Guerra turned to him, eyes wide but eerily calm.
“The jungle doesn’t fight. It protects. And you just made it protect itself.”
Another burst of automatic fire echoed—and another squad fell, not from jungle aggression, but from reflected death.
One U.S. tank rolled forward and fired a shell at the barrier.
The scene shifts
Gulf of Mexico – 18 Nautical Miles off the Coast
LOOP (Louisiana Offshore Oil Port)
The waters surrounding the massive oil platform were calm—eerily calm.
The abandoned tanker floated beside it like a corpse, listing just slightly to starboard. The hull groaned as the morning sun shimmered across blackened water. Oil leaked in thin ribbons, subtle enough not to raise alarms… but pungent enough to lure what the Navy hoped it would.
Captain Ares stood inside the command center of the U.S.S. Olympias, hands clasped behind his back, eyes locked on the main sonar screen.
“Status on bait?”
“Still leaking just enough to keep the sensors tripped, sir,” replied the systems officer. “Drones confirm visual—no human movement onboard. Hull integrity’s holding.”
Ares gave a single nod.
“Maintain silence across the fleet. Passive sonar only. No comm bursts unless I give it.”
The room dimmed under red operational lighting, a quiet hum of electronics filling the silence. Every console buzzed with passive readouts. Outside, the full might of the fleet drifted in patient formation—aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and hunter-killer submarines—all armed, all waiting.
“Contact,” the sonar operator said suddenly, fingers tightening on his headset. “Single massive signature—slow ascent. Bearing 144, zero-one-zero. Approaching rig base… now anchoring.”
Captain Ares stepped forward. “Visual?”
“Drone feed coming through.”
The primary monitor flickered—then locked on.
There she was.
Brastes.
Ares didn’t flinch, but the weight in the room shifted.
The creature drifted up from the abyss like a submerged monument. Black as obsidian and basalt, her hide glistened with the texture of cooled magma and tectonic scars. Her wings curled tight along her sides like fault lines sealed under pressure.
She circled once, slow and deliberate, then sank her claws into the seafloor beneath the LOOP rig and stilled.
“Is it… resting?” an officer murmured.
“No,” Ares said softly. “Listen.”
A low vibration began to hum through the ship—just barely registering beneath the ambient noise.
“Its broadcasting,” said the sonar tech, eyes locked on the readings. “Same interval pulses repeating. Non-hostile. It’s… it’s a signal, sir.”
Above the waterline, alarms on the oil platform came to life. Red lights blinked. Warning sirens chirped faintly over an empty deck. The abandoned rig’s emergency systems, designed to detect seismic activity, began to flicker online.
“Its setting off the evacuation alarms,” Ares said, eyebrows drawing together. “It wants the workers to leave.”
The silence that followed was thick with disbelief.
“Sir?” his XO asked.
Ares didn’t answer immediately.
He stared at the screen, watching Brastes’ steady pulse continue.
“Maintain silence,” he repeated. “Let it speak.”
He turned from the display, his voice low and even.
“I want eyes on the perimeter. No weapons hot. Not yet. This isn’t an attack…”
He glanced back toward the creature on-screen.
“It’s a warning.”
Captain Ares remained still, eyes locked on the display as Brastes continued her slow, rhythmic broadcast. Not a flinch of aggression. Not a ripple of haste. Just a calculated presence that made the ocean seem smaller around her.
He tapped his fingers twice against the console, then spoke in a voice barely louder than the hum of the CIC.
“Signal Fort Walton. One AWACS in the sky. Quiet patrol—nothing below twenty thousand feet.”
His XO turned. “Recon or deterrent?”
Ares didn’t break his gaze from the monitor.
“Clarity.”
Within minutes, the low thunder of jet engines echoed faintly through the Olympias’ upper decks. High above the cloudline, a radar-laden E-3 Sentry carved a wide orbit—its dome sweeping the ocean with precision. Far out of reach. Unseen. But watching everything.
“Keep them passive,” Ares added. “They don't fire. They don’t broadcast. They just watch.”
The AWACS pilot confirmed receipt in a static-smooth burst of encrypted comms.
“Pegasus is airborne. Holding high. Watching low.”
Ares gave a single nod to no one in particular.
“Good.”
Then he folded his arms again and returned his focus to the sea.
Still waiting.
Still listening.
The ocean floor quaked—but not from Brastes this time.
It came from below her.
A low rumble—deeper than sonar, older than language—stirred the silt from the seabed. Brastes didn’t move, didn’t break rhythm, but the vibration flowing from her core momentarily wavered, almost as if acknowledging what was coming.
Then the seafloor split.
From the depths of a hidden trench, something vast and wide surged upward in slow, rumbling force. The blunt drake emerged—not sharp like her sister, not graceful like Brastes—but dense, armored, and grinding.
Her body shimmered faintly in filtered light—a deep, muted gold, dull like aged metal coated in sediment and time. She was wide as a naval ship and twice as heavy, her thick dorsal plates layered like bedrock.
At the front of her maw was the drill—not mechanical, but alive. Rings of keratin and diamond teeth spun slowly inside a cavernous jaw, churning without sound, hungry and deliberate.
She latched onto the submerged drill head of the LOOP platform.
Then—she began to consume.
Steel shrieked beneath the waves as the drill’s structure collapsed into her spinning mouth. Bits of shattered metal and rebar vanished between her teeth. Every bite was slow but absolute—a dismantling, not an attack.
With each chew, green mist hissed from the vents along her back. The vapor flowed across the seafloor like fog, settling into cracks and crevices.
And where it touched?
Life.
Algae bloomed. Coral sprouted. Strange pale vines uncoiled from the sand. Restoration in motion.
Not a battle cry.
A correction.
Aboard the U.S.S. Olympias – Command Center
“Captain…” the sonar tech’s voice was low now. “Another contact. New target. It’s… eating the drill.”
Ares stepped closer, watching the structure on the monitor buckle and tilt.
“Feeding,” he muttered. “What in God's name?”
The XO leaned in. “Still non-hostile?”
Ares didn’t answer right away.
He watched as another rig support cracked in half and disappeared into the drake’s spinning maw. More green mist flooded from its vents, crawling over machinery like ivy reclaiming concrete.
“Not hostile,” he said. “Not yet.”
He turned.
“But if it takes the rig down… there’s no mistaking it.”
He raised his hand, hesitated—then lowered it.
“Hold fire.”
“New contact,” the sonar tech reported sharply. “Smaller profile—fast mover just entered the rig’s perimeter. Narrow body. Speed’s dropping.”
Captain Ares leaned in, arms crossed. “Another one?”
“Same depth band, but this one’s fast and agile—tracking tight around the structure. It just stopped. Hovering.”
“Visual?” Ares asked.
“Coming through now.”
The feed snapped into place: a narrow-bodied, gold-scaled creature—sleek, hovering beneath the LOOP platform. Around it, the water began to ripple with motion.
“Additional contacts inbound,” the sonar tech added, eyes widening. “Hundreds. Coordinated... they’re forming around it.”
The radar screen lit up in bursts—tight, uniform formations emerging from the deep. Humanoid in profile. Long... they have tails instead of feet? Every one armed.
“…What are we looking at?” a junior officer asked, barely above a whisper.
“They’re holding position,” said the XO. “Encircling the first one. Like a command ring.”
Then it happened.
The sharp creature released a pulse.
It didn’t come with thunder. It came with pressure—low and dense, like the ocean itself exhaled through metal.
The sonar room was the first to feel it.
The sound hit like a depth charge, not external but internal—through the skull, behind the eyes, into the ribs. A sound humans weren’t meant to hear.
Every screen on the Olympias blinked white.
Sonar. Radar. Comms. Weapons. Dark.
Lights flickered.
Then silence.
For ten seconds, the ship floated in a vacuum of power.
In the CIC, men and women staggered.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Some clutched their heads.
Others slumped in their chairs.
One collapsed at their console, unconscious before they hit the floor.
Ares gritted his teeth, his vision swimming. His ears rang—high-pitched and searing. The only sound he could make out was someone vomiting behind him.
He looked toward the XO, who was blinking blindly, blood trailing from one nostril.
“...Report…” Ares croaked.
The power surged back.
Screens rebooted. Consoles flashed. Red emergency lights took over as the ship’s heart beat again.
Above the Clouds – AWACS Command
High above the Gulf, the E-3 Sentry Pegasus soared in a smooth arc, its powerful radar dish spinning silently over the wings. From this height, the sea was a blue slate—calm, unreadable.
Inside, the crew monitored fleet positions, comm relays, and sonar relays linked to the Olympias and surrounding vessels.
Then came the pulse.
It wasn’t sound—it was pressure, even here.
The interior of Pegasus thrummed, like the plane itself had clenched.
“Did you hear that?” the comms officer said, removing his headset. “That was... internal.”
Every screen momentarily glitched. Instruments flickered—but recovered. Power stayed up.
“We’re good,” the systems chief confirmed. “No system failures. Everything’s holding.”
But the relief didn’t last.
“Sir…” the radio tech muttered. “Fleet comms just dropped. I’m not getting anything. Not even the emergency beacon from the Olympias.”
“Pegasus to fleet—come in. Olympias, do you read?”
Nothing.
Every channel across the band returned static.
Not even emergency bursts. The ocean had gone silent.
“Sir, we’ve lost all fleet comms.”
Back on the Olympias
The lights flickered weakly overhead. For a moment, all that filled the CIC was the sound of labored breathing, groans, and the dull whine of systems rebooting.
The main displays were dark.
Status lights blinked inconsistently.
The hum of the ship’s power core was still crawling back to life.
Captain Ares stood frozen, braced against the center table, his ears ringing so sharply he couldn’t hear his own breath. His vision blurred—like looking through thick water.
One of the radar operators was on the floor, curled on his side, unconscious. Blood ran from one ear.
Another officer was sitting slumped against the bulkhead, blinking rapidly, eyes unfocused.
“Tack?,” Ares rasped, his voice weak. “Get up.”
Tack didn’t respond. Ares pushed off the table, staggered two steps, and grabbed the man by the collar, shaking him lightly.
Tack's eyes fluttered, then widened. “Sir… what happened? I—I can't hear—” He winced and pressed both hands to his ears. “I can't hear.” Tears in his eyes and panic swept across his face.
At another console, a junior tech vomited into a waste bin and dropped to her knees, shaking.
“Medical team to CIC,” the XO gasped from across the room, gripping the side of his head. “We’ve got multiple down. Some unconscious. Some bleeding—migraines. I can’t… I can’t think straight.”
The screens flashed back on, one by one—lines of data streaming like rebooted lifelines. Slowly, the ship was waking up.
Ares held onto the edge of the table again. His heart was pounding, his head throbbing. But something cut through the pain:
This wasn’t meant to kill us.
If it had been, none of them would still be standing.
He looked around the room, soldiers still recovering, staggering to their feet, blinking through tears or clinging to walls.
“Check stations,” he barked, his voice gaining strength. “I want sonar and visuals back now.”
One tech forced herself into her chair, face pale, hands shaking. “Rebooting… we’re coming back online.”
The CIC was chaos laced with silence. Systems flickered. Crew members staggered, holding their heads, blood trickling from ears and noses. The low thrum of ship power was crawling back online—one flickering screen at a time.
Ares stood at the command table, unmoving, jaw set against the pain behind his eyes. The pulse still rang in his skull like a bell struck too hard.
“Sir,” the comms officer called out hoarsely, eyes wide, “FleetNet’s coming back—patching you in now.”
Then the channel exploded.
“This is Hydra! We’ve just regained main power—flight deck blacked out—confirm, did the entire fleet just get hit?!”
“Ajax reporting—main turrets offline for ten seconds, partial reboot complete—requesting targeting orders!”
“Prometheus—internal injuries reported. Close proximity. We lost ballast control for four seconds—we’re steady now but need instructions!”
Ares took one breath and stepped toward the console.
He keyed the override channel.
“This is Olympias Actual. All ships: the pulse was acoustic—biological in origin. Directed. Not mechanical.”
He paused, letting that settle.
“Every ship was hit. We held the line. That was not an attack. That was a command—and a warning.”
Static buzzed across the comms. Then silence.
“Regain posture. Weapons cold until my mark.”
As the fleet gathered itself from the edge of the abyss, a new image flickered onto the forward screen.
The surface of the rig rippled.
One of the creatures breached, legs splitting midair, landing on the deck like a soldier dropped from the heavens. Armed. Poised.
Another followed. Then more.
Ares watched without flinching.
“This is not a drill.”
Gripping the side of the tactical console, Tack threw himself into motion, fingers flying across controls by memory.
“Lock all batteries!” he barked, loud enough for the room even if he couldn’t hear himself. “Target the lead contact and prep salvos one through three!”
He slammed a red toggle.
“Pegasus, stand by for launch coordination—relay strike vectors to Ajax and Prometheus!”
Ares turned slowly, watching as Tack roared through the storm with blood trickling from both ears—not flinching. Not breaking.
“Sir…” said the XO, wincing as he stood, “Tack can’t hear you.”
“He knows what to do,” Ares replied.
He watched the tactical feed light up—systems green, weapons primed, fleet syncing with the air support above.
On the live feed, the first creature landed on the rig. A second followed. Then more.
They were armed.
And they weren’t waiting.
Ares gave one final look toward the screen.
“Fire.”
Amazon Jungle – Just Beyond Acrid’s Barrier
The shell tore across the air toward the towering bark wall protecting Acrid.
It struck dead-center.
CRACK–BOOM.
The explosion didn’t shatter the barrier.
It detonated on impact—and the result was far worse.
The shell burst into a cloud of green-glowing shrapnel, its metal casing now soaked in Acrid’s acid, which coated the fragments mid-air.
The acid hissed and steamed as it flew—
and then it rained.
A small squad of soldiers, crouched less than thirty yards from the point of impact, barely had time to react. One raised his weapon to speak—
—and took a fragment to the throat. It embedded cleanly. He fell sideways, clutching it, only to feel his hands begin to burn where they touched the wound.
Another took a glancing hit across the cheek—
and his helmet melted as the acid poured through the foam lining and down his neck.
A third caught multiple shards to the chest and arms—his armor corroding instantly, the metal boiling into his uniform as he screamed and clawed at himself, trying to tear it off.
The air filled with their cries—wet, panicked, short-lived.
The jungle responded with silence.
Nothing advanced. Nothing chased.
But the ground beneath them began to drink the blood and metal, vines twitching, roots trembling, as if absorbing the cost of their trespass.
Forward Observation Post – Jungle Edge
The explosion echoed across the battlefield, followed by a sickening chorus of screams.
Guerra and Washington stood side by side behind reinforced barriers, watching through binoculars as the squad was torn apart by acidic metal rain.
Soldiers writhed. Armor curled back like wax. The air shimmered with rising steam as the jungle digested the fallen.
Washington was the first to lower his binoculars.
“Jesus Christ…”
His jaw clenched as he turned toward Guerra.
“You just got your men melted alive. What the hell kind of response did you think that wall was going to give?”
Guerra didn’t speak at first. His face was stone, but his throat bobbed once with tension.
“That tank fired without my command,” he said coldly, casting a glare at the captain nearby, who stood pale and silent. “He broke protocol.”
Washington stepped forward, fury simmering behind his voice.
“You escalated this with armor. You lined up tanks like we were storming a bunker—not standing outside something ancient. We were here to observe, not poke the damn god.”
“We were here to control the situation,” Guerra snapped back.
“You lost control the moment that tree bled acid,” Washington hissed.
The forward radio crackled beside them. Calls for medics, screams for extraction. In the distance, the jungle stood perfectly still—no gunfire returned, no counterattack launched. Only the wind and the slow, methodical movement of growing trees.
Guerra turned back toward the jungle, face tightening. He spoke low, almost to himself.
“That wasn’t defense. That was a warning.”
Washington’s voice followed like a knife:
“Then we just made our last mistake.”
Jungle Field – Impact Zone
The air still shimmered where the acidic fragments had landed.
Soldiers screamed—some writhing, some slumped and smoking—alive, but dying fast.
From the nearby treeline, two medics broke cover, packs slung, sprinting toward the downed squad with urgency.
“Move! MOVE!” one shouted, sliding to his knees beside the first casualty—a soldier with a fragment buried in his chest, acid hissing through his plate carrier and into his lungs.
The medic reached for his trauma shears—cutting fast, armor falling away in blackened flakes.
Then he grabbed the fragment.
A sharp hiss erupted.
His glove smoked instantly, and before he could yank his hand back, the acid had already eaten through the latex and into his palm.
“AAAGH— MY HAND!”
He fell backward, clutching it, skin sloughing from his fingers like wet paper.
The second medic froze for half a second—then dove in anyway.
“Tourniquet! He needs a tourniquet—!”
He looped the strap around a soldier’s thigh, pulling it tight—too tight—snapping the strap from panic. But he didn’t notice the green smear across the man’s boot had touched his own pant leg.
By the time he finished tightening the strap, his calf was melting. The fabric hissed and collapsed inward. He tried to stand—and his leg folded at the knee, skin and tendons dissolving under the uniform.
Both medics screamed, collapsing beside the men they came to save.
One reached for his injector—missed—
the other crawled away, trying to make it back to the treeline, acid leaving a trail of smoking handprints where he pulled himself.
“No… no no—God—”
He didn’t make it ten feet.
By the time the squad’s backup arrived, there was no one left to help.
The jungle remained still.
The screams had faded to sobs—then to silence.
What remained was a steaming field, littered with melting armor, weapons, and remnants of the fallen. The acid ate through metal and skin alike, leaving blackened craters and wisps of green vapor curling into the humid air.
Three soldiers emerged from the nearby underbrush—young, shaken, rifles held tight but forgotten in their hands. One of them took a single step forward, staring at the limp form of a medic whose outstretched arm was still burning, the bone visible through what was left of his glove.
“Jesus…” one whispered. “They were medics…”
Another moved to go forward—just two steps.
Then he froze.
His boot had stopped inches from a puddle where a chunk of armor was still bubbling, half-melted into the soil. The air around it shimmered. A single drop of acid dripped from a nearby leaf, hitting the ground with a sharp hiss.
“We—we have to pull them back,” one said, voice rising. “We can’t leave them out there—”
The third soldier grabbed his arm.
“Look at them!” he shouted. “They’re already gone! You touch them, you die too!”
A tense silence settled between them.
They stood on the edge of it—the invisible border between life and law. The jungle had made its point: any further, and it would not distinguish intention from threat.
Finally, the lead soldier stepped back.
He didn’t say a word.
None of them did.
They turned—retreating quietly, leaving the dead where they lay.
Forward Observation Post – Jungle Edge
The screams had stopped.
The field ahead now resembled a war crime—bodies melting, medics slumped beside the dead they couldn’t save, and pockets of green vapor still drifting through the undergrowth. No movement. No counterattack.
Just the sound of the jungle breathing.
Colonel Washington stood with both hands on the sandbagged wall, jaw clenched, watching steam rise from the broken ground.
Commander Guerra stood beside him, lips tight, eyes unmoving.
“We send in recovery now,” Washington said, “and we lose more. We’re not prepared for this kind of warfare. We need to stand down.”
Guerra’s silence stretched too long.
“What?” Washington snapped, rounding on him.
Guerra didn’t look at him.
“We should drop ordnance. Clear a path.”
Washington blinked. “Are you out of your damn mind?”
“You saw what just happened,” Guerra said, voice low but firm. “They’ve dug in. They’re using environmental weaponry. Acid. Sentient growth. No rules of engagement. We retaliate—hard.”
“Retaliate against what?” Washington barked. “That jungle hasn’t fired a single bullet. You hit it, and it gave your men a warning shot. That wasn’t a fight. That was restraint.”
Guerra turned sharply, eyes flaring.
“And how many more of my soldiers have to burn before you call it a war?”
Washington took a slow step toward him.
“You’re not thinking clearly. That jungle is alive. Not just the creature—we’re standing in something bigger than either of us was trained for.”
“Which is why we don’t wait,” Guerra countered. “We drop a MOAB—cut a mile-wide corridor through the canopy. Show them that we have rules too.”
Washington stared at him for a long moment.
Then said quietly:
“You’re not talking about a corridor. You’re talking about an excuse to kill something you don’t understand.”
A nearby soldier turned toward them from the comms tent.
“Sir—strike package is on standby. Coordinates needed for airborne delivery.”
Guerra’s eyes shifted between the radio operator and the steaming field ahead.
Washington stepped between him and the order.
“Don’t do it.”
“Step aside.”
Washington didn’t move.
His boots held firm, planted in scorched earth. He didn’t look at Guerra. He kept his eyes on the jungle, on the thick wall of bark still glistening with acidic sheen, on the melted ground where soldiers had fallen. The wind was still. The air carried weight.
Miles deeper, beneath layers of bark and vine, something shifted.
Acrid stirred.
From within the tangled sanctuary of the forest, the ancient colossus lifted its head. Bark peeled away like armor as it rose, its luminous eyes flickering with intelligence—then widening, slightly, in something close to disbelief.
It had felt the Professor. It had known the boy.
But this… was new.
Its gaze pierced through the canopy. Through the trees. Through the smoke.
And landed squarely on Washington.
Then came the whisper.
Not heard. Not imagined.
Just… known.
“You do not belong here. But you stood. You did not kneel. And those that protect the jungle… are rewarded.”
A pause—gentle, but final.
“You may approach the barrier. The Jungle now protects you.”
Washington staggered a step back—not from fear, but from the sheer weight of what passed through him. His heart pounded. The jungle no longer looked like an enemy. It looked like it had… made a home.
He glanced toward the wall again. The bark shimmered—unchanged. Silent.
But the message had been clear.
Behind him, Guerra waited for a confrontation.
But in front of him?
A door had just opened.
“Colonel. I said step aside.”
But Washington didn’t move.
Not to argue. Not to respond.
Instead, he took a slow breath, turned away from Guerra—and walked.
Each step away from the command post felt like it echoed. Boots pressing into scorched earth, then softening as he crossed into loam and roots. The field ahead still hissed with residual acid, the jungle untouched, unknowable.
Guerra stood frozen, one hand clenched into a fist. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Colonel! You’re going into an active kill zone! Get back here!”
Washington didn’t respond.
Soldiers flanked Guerra, uncertain, some lifting weapons, others frozen. One lieutenant stepped forward to intercept.
Guerra barked an order.
“Stop him. Now.”
Three soldiers broke from the line, rushing across the uneven ground. The air still sizzled from the acid, the steam rising like ghosts of the dead.
“Washington, this is your last warning,”
Still no answer.
Guerra growled and turned to the comms operator.
“Confirm airstrike coordinates. Twenty second countdown. Drop everything.”
“Confirming. Package armed.”
As the soldiers reached the clearing, one lunged for Washington’s arm.
The first soldier’s foot struck a shallow puddle—what looked like harmless runoff pooling in the cratered soil.
It wasn’t.
The liquid snapped upward with a hiss, wrapping around his shin like a living whip. His scream tore through the air as his leg dissolved beneath him, flesh peeling away from bone, his weight collapsing into himself as the acid climbed.
He fell to the ground, melting—not burning—melting. His skin ran like wax, and within seconds, his screams gave way to gurgling as smoke rose from the ruin of his body. Around the twitching corpse, fresh sprouts pushed up through the soil, vibrant and green.
The jungle was already feeding.
The second soldier tripped over debris, his momentum carrying him face-first into a patch of glistening blackened mud. He landed hard, and his uniform began to steam immediately.
He clawed at the straps on his vest, trying to tear free, but his arms blistered before his fingers could grip anything. His body jerked once, then slumped, half of his chest fused to the ground in a mess of boiling fabric and flesh.
The third soldier skidded to a halt just before the same fate. He didn’t fall.
But he saw everything.
He watched his comrades burn, melt, vanish before his eyes. And he froze—paralyzed by the certainty that one more step meant death.
He looked at Washington’s back and he turned and ran back to the command post.
The countdown echoed faintly over the comms.
“Seventeen. Sixteen. Fifteen…”
He reached the barrier.
It loomed—massive, wet, living. The bark shimmered where it had fused into root and thorn, covered in trails of acidic mist. But as Washington stepped closer, it didn’t hiss or pulse.
It waited.
Slowly, he lifted his hand and placed it flat against the surface.
A quiet hum vibrated beneath his palm. The bark warmed.
A pulse of green light spread from his hand across the wall. It trembled—then opened, like a living gate, the vines pulling apart into a perfectly shaped archway.
The path led inward.
Without hesitation, Washington removed his helmet. He let it fall to the earth with a thud. His backpack followed.
He stepped forward into the wall of green.
The opening sealed behind him, quiet as breath.
Inside, the jungle was alive.
Not wild. Not chaotic.
Breathing. Harmonized. Ancient.
The vines above shifted to let filtered light through, the air cool and fragrant. Flowers bloomed as he passed, and every leaf turned slightly in his direction. He stood in awe, breathing it in.
Then he felt it.
The weight. The presence.
The ground trembled softly.
And from between the massive trees, Acrid emerged.
Its body was vast, silent, its skin like bark covered in ancient armor. Vines flowed from its form like a cape. Its eyes locked onto him—glowing, primal, but not violent.
Washington took a single step back, stunned by the scale.
But he understood now.
He had not forced his way in.
He had been called.
The green tree brand then burned into his neck, but he felt no pain.