He stood in the center of the chamber for what felt like minutes. Maybe hours. The light from his field lamp flickered, not like a dying battery—but like it was being reconsidered by the space itself.
The air didn’t move. It pressed.
He stepped forward again, and the floor didn’t echo. It didn’t even respond. He could hear his breath but not his boots. He could hear the hum behind his teeth but not the quiet snap of his glove tightening.
Sound wasn’t gone. It was being eaten.
He walked until he couldn’t pretend it was just disorientation anymore. The space wasn’t behaving. Distances stretched and shrank. His body felt like it was leaning when he stood still.
Then he saw it.
A shape. Half-formed. Pressed into the far wall like something grown, not built.
It wasn’t stone. It wasn’t metal. It had no color, but it had texture—a slick, bone-like surface that refused to reflect anything.
Not a machine.
Not natural.
It was waiting.
He didn’t touch it.
He didn't need to.
The moment he got within a few feet, the light from his pack dropped out completely.
And then the sound came.
Not loud. Not piercing. Just…
wrong.
A low, rhythmic pulse like a heart with no body. A vibration that bypassed his ears and settled into his spine. He tried to step back, but his body forgot how to obey. He wasn’t paralyzed—he was disconnected.
And in the center of that hum, he heard something that wasn’t sound.
A word. Not spoken. Not even formed. But there.
Simir.
It didn’t come from outside.
It came from beneath.
Beneath his memory. Beneath everything he thought was real.
His vision folded.
Not like sleep.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Like collapse.
A jungle with no birds.
A sky that didn’t move.
Somewhere—too far, too close—two shapes watched him from across a broken valley.
One coiled like a jaguar, breathless, waiting.
The other… heavier. Bear-like, but not right. Its skin didn’t look carved. It looked grown.
Neither moved.
But they knew him.
Or knew something in him he hadn’t met yet.
He gasped and snapped backward like his chest had been yanked by a hook. He was on the floor of the chamber, hands clenched. His lamp was shattered. His mouth tasted like copper and static.
The shape on the wall was gone.
No.
It wasn’t gone.
It had never been there.
Or it was part of him now.
He stood on shaky legs, pulled the emergency flare from his vest, cracked it. Orange light spread over blank stone.
Nothing on the walls.
No seams.
No symbols.
Just a low resonance, now behind him, now fading.
He didn’t speak as he climbed back up the slope.
Not because he was afraid.
But because something in him was still listening.
And it wasn’t done.
He surfaced just past nightfall.
The air outside felt colder than it should have. Not cold like temperature—cold like distance. Like the atmosphere had stretched a few degrees too thin between him and the rest of the world.
The jungle hadn’t moved. Not visibly. But something was different.
No birds.
Still.
Not silence—a silence pretending to be silence.
Elian looked back at the seam in the ground. It was closed. Gone. Covered by moss and slope like it had never been there. His flare was still burning, half-buried in soil, casting slow, hungry shadows.
He didn’t go near it.
The trek back to the outpost was automatic. He didn’t remember every step. Just the feel of the path beneath his boots and the slow pulse behind his eyes. No one stopped him when he crossed the perimeter. No one asked why he was back early.
The comms tent was empty when he entered.
He stripped his gloves, set the recorder down, and opened his field notes. His hand hovered over the first line.
He didn’t write anything.
Not because he forgot.
Because he remembered too much all at once.
There was no way to explain a shape that didn’t exist.
No way to describe the sound that hadn’t passed through his ears.
No language for the hum still coiled inside his chest, like a second heartbeat that hadn’t decided to beat yet.
He looked at his hands.
No shaking. No burns. No blood.
But something was off.
A vein along his forearm pulsed wrong—out of sync with the rest. Just slightly. He pressed a thumb to it, then stopped. It wasn’t pain. It wasn’t numb.
It was like part of him had been re-threaded.
He didn’t know what it meant.
But he didn’t feel entirely…
alone.
Footsteps outside. Sharp. Not rushed.
He closed the notebook, fast.
The officer entered without looking up from his slate.
“You cut the run short.”
Elian said nothing.
“We spent a week planning insertion. You lasted two hours.”
“I found what I needed.”
“That’s not how this works. You don’t get to decide when the field’s done with you.”
Elian looked up, just slightly. “Wasn’t aware it was the field calling the shots.”
A pause. The officer almost smiled.
“We burned resources getting you here. Rotated staff. Shifted a schedule. You said you understood the assignment—and you walked out without protocol, without comms, without a report.”
He stepped closer.
“Some would call that insubordination. I don’t. I call it exactly what we expected. Trouble, wearing your father’s name. And your brother’s legacy.”
Silence.
Then:
“Debrief’s at oh-six-hundred. You’re on standby until then. We’ll see if there’s anything worth keeping.”
He left.
Elian stared at the slate after he was gone.
The pulse behind his ribs was louder now.
Not physical. Not measurable.
But still there.
Still listening.
