The air inside the main shaft was thick, tasting of iron and stagnant dust. As the strike team descended into the jagged maw of the canyon floor, the high-powered floodlights of their tactical suits struggled against a darkness that seemed to swallow light itself.
"Stay on the path Crul highlighted! Not a single step to the left or right!" Jasonâs voice hissed through the comms, tense and low. "Weâre moving at a crawl. I want the sonic vibration scanners at 100% sensitivity. If a pebble shifts three miles away, I want to hear it."
The soldiers moved in a tight formation, their boots crunching softly on the uneven rock. Every few meters, a technician stopped to plant a subterranean acoustic probe.
"Sir, the structural resonance is... weird," a young soldier whispered, his eyes darting toward the shadows of the cave walls. "The data Crul sent... that thing down there. Itâs the size of a goddamn mountain. Are we sure the restrictive matrix is still holding?"
"Itâs holding the Queen," Jason snapped, though his own hand was white-knuckled on his rifle. "But the hatchlings? They donât give a damn about the matrix. Theyâre small enough to slip through the gaps. And theyâre hungry."
"Small?" another soldier muttered, his voice trembling slightly. "The report said the âbabiesâ are thirty feet long and can sense your heartbeat through solid granite. I heard one of the scouts from the first team got dragged into a crevice before he could even scream."
"Shut it, Miller!" a veteran sergeant growled. "You keep talking like that and Iâll feed you to them myself just to quiet the room. Watch the ceiling! They like to drop from above and burrow into the soft tissue of the neck."
"Into the skin?" Millerâs voice went up an octave. "You mean they parasitize you?"
"Enough!" Jason barked. "Keep your eyes on your scanners and your fingers off the triggers unless you see a mandĂbula. We fire only when necessary. The last thing we need is the vibration of a firefight waking up the Big Girl at the bottom."
The descent felt like a slow crawl into the throat of a monster. Every hiss of a hydraulic joint or clatter of equipment made the men jump. They passed through narrow, winding tunnels where the walls were slick with a translucent, foul-smelling slimeâevidence of the hatchlingsâ passage.
"Movement! Three oâclock!" a soldier yelled, spinning around.
A dozen red laser sights instantly painted the dark corner. A small, pale scavenger-lizard scurried away into a crack.
"Dammit, rookie! Donât have a heart attack over a gecko!" the sergeant hissed. "Get your head in the game!"
"Sorry, Sarge... itâs just... I can feel it. The pressure. It feels like weâre walking into a mouth."
After what felt like an eternity of claustrophobic tension, the tunnel suddenly opened up. The soldiers stopped dead in their tracks, their breath hitching in their throats.
They had reached the Great Hall.
Even though they had seen the 3D renders Crul had pulled from the satellite and seismic data, seeing it in person was a visceral, terrifying experience. They were nearly two kilometers beneath the surface. The cavern was so vast that their powerful spotlights couldnât even find the ceiling.
"God in heaven..." someone whispered.
"Eyes up! What the hell is that?" Private Miller gasped, his rifle lowered in pure shock.
In the center of the gargantuan hall, there was no monsterâonly a spectacle of impossible light. Encased in a shimmering, translucent cage of ancient golden energyâthe restrictive matrixâwas a dance of fire. Long, serpentine coils of living flame swam through the air, weaving between one another in a silent, hypnotic display. They werenât beasts of flesh; they were illusions of pure power, illuminating the cavern in a soft, amber glow.
"Itâs... itâs beautiful," someone whispered.
"Itâs a warning," Jason snapped, snapping his team back to reality. "Look at the perimeter. Secure the hall!"
The light revealed eight colossal stone doors, each one sealed tight and buried under mountains of fallen debris. The boulders blocking the entrances were jagged and dark, looking as if the mountain itself had tried to swallow the gateways. Jason stepped forward, pressing a gloved hand against one of the stones. It was coldâunnaturally coldâand felt denser than any granite he had ever encountered.
"Seems the Boss wasnât exaggerating," Jason muttered, gritting his teeth as he tried to shove a fist-sized rock. It didnât budge a millimeter. "This stuff is incredibly dense. Itâs like the molecular structure is reinforced by the matrix itself. Jenkins! Bring the manual laser drills up. I want to see if we can make a dent while logistics figures out how to get the heavy trucks down that ramp."
"On it, sir!" Corporal Jenkins stepped forward, unslung a sleek, Royal-manufactured handheld laser, and braced his feet. "Initiating thermal cut. Power at forty percent."
The crimson beam hissed as it struck the outer layer of the debris. To the soldiersâ relief, the first few feet of rock shorn away like warm butter, the red light carving through the stone with a high-pitched squeal.
"Clear the slag!" Jenkins yelled, stepping deeper into the excavation. "Weâre making progress! Moving to the core layer."
But as the laser bit deeper, the sound changed. The high-pitched hiss turned into a low, vibrating hum. Jenkins stopped. The red beam was hitting a vein of pitch-black stone that looked like polished obsidian, but it wasnât even smoking.
"What the...?" Jenkins frowned, adjusting his visor. "Sir, Iâm at sixty percent power. Nothing. Not even a scorch mark."
"Push it to max," Jason commanded, stepping closer to inspect the black surface.
"Max power! Bracing!" Jenkins triggered the override. The crimson beam thickened, glowing so bright it blinded the nearby soldiers, but the black stone remained indifferent. It didnât crack. It didnât melt. It didnât even get warm.
"Cabo, get four more guys on this!" Jason barked. "Sync the focal points! Do it now!"
Five soldiers lined up, their manual drills whining in unison. Five concentrated crimson rays converged on a single spot on the black rock. The air in the cavern began to shimmer from the sheer output of energy. After a full minute of sustained fire, the black stone finally began to glow a dull, faint redâbut as soon as they stopped, the color faded instantly. There wasnât a single scratch on the surface.
Jason stared at the pristine, untouched stone, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck. "Mierda... what the hell is this stuff?"
"Sir," Jenkins said, his voice shaking as he looked at his overheating drill. "We just dumped enough energy into that rock to melt a main battle tank, and itâs like we hit it with a flashlight. If the heavy drills canât bite into this, we arenât getting those doors open in two days. We arenât getting them open in a century."
Jason looked back at the serpentine fire swimming in the matrix. "Crul, are you seeing this? Weâve hit a wall. A literal one."