Sorroz and his fellow ranger had retrieved the biotrackers from the infected and the victim. The team had gathered defensively within the pale ruins of the strange structure.

  Sorroz brushed the condensation off his faceplate as he struggled to read who the trackers had belonged to.

  “Sir…” The ranger who’d helped kill the infected spoke up.

  “Who is it, Korro?” Sorroz asked, his age showing in his ragged tone.

  Ranger Korro walked over, putting a hand on his shoulder; “It’s the ranger that the Boreas Squad reported missing. Ty Esther…”

  Sorroz sighed in mourning; he brushed the rising droplets off his faceplate again. He ripped the writhing flesh off the biotracker.

  Sorroz took a deep breath. “It’s Micky…”

  Korro lowered his head as the other rangers tensed and shuddered in the cold, wet rain.

  “Comms are getting spotty… We need to close the gap with Post 15.”

  The rangers nodded as they carefully exited the drenched building.

  Visibility had plummeted; the Inverted Rain now more akin to an upside-down waterfall with how thick the miasma had gotten. Abyssal Polyps had begun to grow on every available surface, the water current ripping the feather leaves off the old trees, leaving them bare and hostile-looking.

  The Squad reignited their sabers, the hiss of the water against the fiery blades drowned out by the howling winds and gurgling of the Inverted Storm.

  They reformed into their wedge-shaped formation, pressing forward through the gloom of the storm. The rain’s echo cascaded throughout, growing louder and harsher as the sky got darker and darker.

  Each ranger unit for this mission was separated into groups of 9, but with Mick dead, the rangers of Post 14 were already one man short.

  Sey held the right flank that was one man short. She was surprisingly calm despite the cold pressure of the Inverted Rain. She had endured more than most in the year since the incident in Trant. But through it all, she’d become one of the most reliable Kyyr users in the Guivre Squad. This had come from her unfortunate fortune. You see, in most Kyyr-rich worlds, her abilities would’ve been considered a rare gift. But Esthes-3 was stingy with Kyyr; its atmosphere was barren of the proper amounts of Kyyr required for such an arduous ability. Not to mention her Kyyr efficiency was by all means absolutely the worst.

  Bad habits upon bad habits had built up over time and she was now well-known for wasting Kyyr for the most mundane of things. But—

  Under these storm-lashed skies, Sey wasn’t one to goof around. She was vulnerable. Afraid. And yet—composed. Her breaths were steady and her M.K. Blade was angled at the ready for any sudden strikes. Her quiet resolve had become her greatest strength. It was the reason she was still here when so many others had succumbed to the abyss.

  There was no sign of life. The forest had been drained of color and essence, warped into the mangled seabed of an alien dimension. The Sorroz unit had reached Post 15 only to find it barren and destitute.

  Post 15 had been built around an old abandoned Servinane structure. Constructed of silvery pillars and strange alien statues for support, the building looked like an old Greek pantheon warped and twisted by the imaginations of aliens.

  The Ranger Unit pressed forward, making sure to broadcast their location through subtle Kyyr pings only other humans would detect.

  But there was no response.

  As they approached the aperture of the structure, they made sure to peer up.

  Dark water had pooled under the roof of the structure’s entrance. They amplified their visual modules but there was nothing in the murk of the entrance, but inside it was another story.

  “What the hell?” Sorroz whispered, his weary gaze scanning the horrid mess within Post 15.

  Bodies.

  Or rather, body parts.

  Were floating in the air, slowly rising with the rain. They had all been slaughtered. Torso and leg were slowly drifting upwards, their blood seeping upward and into the deep pool of water that was forming in the cavernous ceiling of the structure.

  They scanned the water carefully, but there were only remains. The thing behind all of this was gone. They carefully pressed in their formation, shifting into a crude diamond as they studied the mangled remains.

  Sey examined the remains, her guts wrenching as she studied the seemingly floating bodies.

  “Fuck!” One of the rangers broke the tension. “FUCK! NO! No, no, no, no, no, no… FUCK!” He cried as he held a corpse in one hand and a biotracker in the other.

  “What’s wrong, son?” Sorroz, asked the trembling ranger.

  Ranger Holden was crying as he held the torso tightly in his arms, “It. She…FUCK!” He cried out.

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  “Holden.” Sorroz, said gently. “Please.”

  “But sir… they killed her. My little sister… They killed Syl! THOSE FUCKING THINGS, THEY SHREDDED MY SISTER TO FUCKING SHREDS!” he hugged the torso tightly as he cried under his helmet. “AAAAAAGH!” He wailed.

  The other rangers had repositioned around Holden and Sorroz simply sat there staring at the weeping ranger.

  He didn’t say anything; he simply let the young man cry as they held their post in earnest.

  Another ranger spoke up amidst the weeping, “Sir, permission to secure the area.”

  Sorroz nodded. “Yes, remain hidden. Avoid dark corners, and be wary; whatever did this might still be nearby.”

  The rangers nodded as they fanned out slightly, carefully checking if any supplies had survived the attack and the rain.

  Sorroz sat next to the ranger, making sure to keep his guard as he quietly sat next to the weeping man.

  Sey looked back, her star-framed eyes soft with remembrance. Syl was such a nice girl. Sey recalled the faint memories she had of the girl once known as Syl. She was straightforward and spirited, much like her brother. But now…

  She turned back, scanning the corpses that were eerily hanging in the air.

  Weird. They’re all torsos…

  Sey narrowed her vision, enhancing her visual module. Limbs floated separately, fragmented and wrong. Leg, leg, torso, torso, leg... Something wasn’t adding up. Slowly, cautiously, she approached one of the torsos.

  Rain—tinged faintly dark red—was slipping up through the lacerations. There must be water inside…

  The corpse’s legs were mangled, twisted so far out of alignment they bent nearly backward. It was difficult to even tell which side had once been the front; the whole midsection had been warped and broken beyond recognition.

  It looks like a glider crashed into him…

  She examined the aperture where their stomach should’ve been. The top half of the spine was gone, leaving behind a mangled mess of muscle, loose tissue, and a crushed pelvis embedded in a tangle of intestines.

  Such power... this has to be the new anomalies? Or Rak’da?

  She shook the thoughts away, returning to the oddest aspect. Why are only the arms and heads missing?

  She sighed, prying a biotracker from the corpse’s boot.

  She read the ID.

  Tomx? One of the Voltasaxx guys? What was he doing here? She looked around carefully, counting the corpses.

  Nine... eight... ten? Eleven, twelve… There’s three extra bodies.

  She tapped her comms. “Sey speaking. Anyone else notice the extra corpses? Because I just found a Voltasaxx member in a Boreas Post.”

  Sorroz’s voice came through a moment later, clipped and confused. “What? Why? Gather the bodies.”

  Korro chimed in, static cutting across their voice. “Sir—some remains are up in the ceiling. It’s well over 15 meters up.”

  There was a beat of silence as Sorroz weighed the information. “Gather the ones within reach. Stay close. Nobody moves alone.”

  The rangers carefully managed to gather eight bodies, including Tomx and Syl. All had similar wounds. Their bodies had been struck with immense power, their organs either missing or twisted into their bone along with their mangled legs.

  Six of the bodies belonged to Boreas Squad—Syl, Melvin, Yaw, Baraka, Cydir, and Artyom. The other two were Voltasaxx members: Tomx and Hammel.

  Sorroz frowned beneath his visor. “These two are from Post 9. That’s southwest of us… So how the hell did they end up here? And why?” He exhaled sharply. “If only we’d prepped for an Abyssal Storm this bad. I swear, if this spirals any further, I hope the fallout lands square on Draell’s desk.”

  Nearby, Korro crouched beside Sey, who was studying the bodies. “Anything new?” he whispered, while Sorroz continued grumbling in the background.

  Sey gave a subtle nod. “Turn on your thermals. Check this out.” She gestured to Korro, who switched his visual module.

  Korro toggled his visual module and squinted through the rain. “Damn, it’s bloody hard to see with all this rain,” he muttered—then paused. “Wait… this one’s green… and that one’s dark blue?”

  “Mhm. That means?”

  “One’s colder.”

  “Exactly!” Sey said with a little too much excitement, startling the nearby rangers.

  Sorroz looked over. “Exactly what?”

  Sey perked up, “These outliers were brought here,” she said, garnering a dreadful exchange of looks between the rangers.

  She continued, “Judging by the temperature drop and blood clotting, the attack here happened minutes before we arrived.” The other rangers grew tense. “ But these two? They’ve been dead for 10, maybe 20 minutes. Whatever killed them must’ve passed us on the way here… Not to mention it was carrying these bodies…”

  There was silence among the rangers, only interrupted by the distant grumbling of thunder.

  One of the rangers—Lucien, the one in charge of motion detection—stepped forward. “Wait… are you saying whatever did this was undetectable?” His voice shook as he stared at the motion-sensor panel on his gauntlet.

  Korro glanced at Sey as he anxiously cracked his fingers. “There’s a chance it happened while we purged that Stage One… The forest is huge, and—”

  “Korro!” Lucien snapped. “You know damn well there are dozens of motion-detection lines running in parallel around the entire city. Even in this storm, I would've been pinged!” His voice was strained, fear bleeding into anger.

  “Lucien. Steel yourself,” Sorroz cut in, calm but firm.

  “But…” Lucien took a sharp breath, recalling his training. “...Sorry, sir.”

  “No. You’re right to be scared.” Sorroz’s voice dropped. “Whatever did this isn’t just fast—it’s a ghost. It moved without alerting a single line.”

  He looked at the line of bodies that were slowly drifting upwards. “If these things are moving North that can only mean one thing.”

  The rangers tensed as the realization dawned on them.

  “Their goal is the Thalassorhax Vai’Tolant.”

  The name alone made the pressure in the air feel suffocating. The thought of an infected Vai’Tolant—a being of that size, that power, consumed by the Abyss.

  It wasn’t just terrifying. It was apocalyptic.