Aria huddled at the heart of a circular clothing rack, knees tightly drawn to her chest. Her head lolled to a side as she counted the number of lines that spread across the palm of her hands.

  Why did I even come… To get eaten? Ugh…

  She stared up into the flickering fluorescent mess of colored lights that hung above her like some clown house's spotlight. With tears in her violet eyes and a determined frown she began to stand in defiance.

  It didn’t last long.

  As she fell back into a terrified huddle, the sound of dozens upon dozens of Caused echoed through the increasingly wet air of the atrium Her heart sank into despair.

  I’m so freaking screwed… She leaned into the wall of clothing, peeking through the layers of synthetic fabric. Her eyes darted across the clown house that was this clothing section.

  Nothing.

  The floor was desolate. Racks of colorful clothing standing ominously under the flickering lights. They loomed around her—barriers between here and the horrors just beyond. She shuddered as the liminal loneliness enshrouded her as she pulled her head back into her makeshift fortress.

  Where is Lisk’Ha? Ugh… I hate just sitting here… What if—no! Then it’ll be a pain if she comes back and I’m gone…

  Aria shook her head, dropping it down in despair. “Guess I’ll stay put.” She muttered, dissatisfied with herself. If only I had my gear…

  The Entertainment Floor was misleadingly named. It wasn’t a single level but a vertical hive of about forty floors stacked with distractions—arcades, indoor parks, synth-sport arenas, eateries, and boutique shops. The clothing “store” she was hiding was honestly more like a showroom, since no one had to pay for anything in the Living Graveyard. Free food. Free fun. Free everything.

  Aria was currently on one of the higher floors, far above the plaza and arcade that sprawled across the lower levels.

  She and Lisk’Ha had made it this far together—her Kyyr ability, Hithering Hands, letting them slip through the sea of frenzied Servinae. Amidst the chaos they had tried to find Serfet and Mera, but the crowd of Servinae had turned into a messy, violent, and unpredictable surge of human nature.

  Worse still, more Caused had breached throughout the entertainment floor. Not just from the shattered windows, but through auxiliary points, splitting the crowd like wolves driving prey. As they rushed, the Caused like suicidal wolves.

  Aria and Lisk’Ha had been forced toward the atrium, desperate for the elevators. But that plan didn’t take them very far.

  Caused had breached all throughout the atrium and were now rampaging through the lower entertainment floor. And after barely managing to elude the beasts, Aria had now found herself sitting in this circle of clothes, waiting for Lisk’Ha to return with backup from the ranger facility aboard the Cetarro Sky Scraper.

  Aria pouted. Maybe I should’ve gone with her… She shook her head, remembering the last time she had to team up with her. The cold pressure and claustrophobia of her ability making her skin crawl and her brain hurt.

  Never mind…

  And so, she waited.

  And waited.

  And—

  “This is so lame!”

  Aria sprang up—and immediately smacked her head against the metal bar overhead. “Ugh…” she groaned, collapsing back onto the floor, clutching her forehead with both hands.

  A wave of Cringe washed over her.

  I just wanted to meet my cute new brother… she whimpered to herself, cheeks puffed in frustration as she sulked in solace in the jungle of clothes.

  Down below in the neon entrails of the arcade, Serfet and Mera moved with deadly precision. With each encounter with the abyss, they had carved their grotesque forms with brutal efficiency. With Mera providing disposable blades and her Kyyr Retina to Serfet, he was finally able to truly shine.

  Bathed in gloom and pulsing blacklight, Serfet danced through the chaos, his Vile Rive cleaving the Caused into grotesque displays—clean cross-sections of organs still twitching, entrails unraveling like spilled ribbons.

  “Where the hell is Gira?” he snapped, driving his blade through the neck of a lunging Caused and twisting until the head spun free, arching into the dark with a wet slap.

  Mera ducked low, narrowly avoiding a swipe from another. “I’m having a hard time seeing anything with this much miasma!” she called, eyes narrowed against the ever-thickening abyssal condensation. A Caused’s claw came crashing down—but with practiced grace, she gripped its wrist with her Kyyr-claws, pivoted, and hurled it directly into Serfet’s waiting path.

  Serfet focused on the flailing beast, syncing his movement with Mera as he sliced the incoming Caused in half.

  The Caused collapsed in two twitching halves, its innards squirming under the blacklight. But before the severed body could even begin to regenerate, Mera was on it. She drove her claws into the skull, digging until she found its writhing brain and yanked it out. The two halves shrieked and convulsed violently, then stilled—nothing but spiraling tongues remaining, weakly reaching for the light.

  “Your cuts are too clean,” Mera murmured, black blood dripping from her fingertips.

  Serfet huffed, shaking gore from his blade. “I know! It’s not my fault they’re so easy to cut.”

  Mera smiled shyly, “Kidding…”

  The two continued, slipping through the labyrinth of gutted arcade cabinets, broken simulacrum pods, and other shattered machines.

  Then they saw it.

  The corpse of a Caused was splayed across the floor like a dissected frog. Its upper back was split clean in half, and its skull had been smashed open with raw force. But more alarming than the carnage was what was missing.

  Mera approached slowly, kneeling beside the grotesque remains. “Its bones are all missing…” she muttered.

  Serfet’s eye grew wide with realization. “Gira!”

  Mera looked up, confused. “Wha—?”

  “He was going on about eating bones a couple of days ago.” He leaned in, studying the splayed remains. “Plus, who else is strong enough to rip the skeleton out of one of these things?”

  Mera clutched the Booster in her hand. “ If he’s already this strong…what will the Booster even do?”

  Serfet reminisced for a second; the flash of draconic Kyyr in his memories sent a chill up his spine.

  “Back at Trant,” he began softly, “he overwhelmed a Caused Primar/R/. Just ripped into it like it was straw.” The crimson memory still fresh in his mind, “he tore through all the infected that night like it was nothing…” He glanced at Mera. “And you saw the match with Borren, right? If his Kyyr didn’t scare the shit out of me in the pool room... it sure as hell did during that duel.”

  Mera didn’t respond. She was staring at the mutilated corpse, its spine an empty abyss, its tendrils still writhing like pathetic worms with nowhere to go. She swallowed hard.

  “Yoohoo~” A silky smooth voice called out from the dark.

  They spun around instantly, weapons raised.

  Serfet scowled, “Oh come on! You’re still alive?”

  From the shadow stepped none other than Vidrago, an eerie cold mist trailing from his body. His skin was paler than usual, practically glowing under the blacklight. And his long, flowing hair was pulled back into an elegant ponytail.

  “Don’t be a dick, Serfet,” Vidrago cooed, voice languid. “It’s been such a long—long since we last saw each other.”

  Serfet rolled his eyes. “Why haven’t you killed yourself along with the other Servinae?”

  Mera looked at him shocked. “Serfet!”

  Vidrago’s smile twitched—just slightly. The playful light in his eyes lost in another thought. “I wonder why…” he whispered, his bravado lost in the afterglow. He gave a slow shake of his head, then brushed a hand through his ponytail. “Anyway. What brings you two down here? A date? The games? Or maybe something more… intimate?”

  “None of your business, pervert!” Serfet snapped as he turned his back on Vidrago.

  “Is it the Coarseblood?” Vidrago spoke inquisitively.

  Mera looked between the two, confused by their odd animosity.

  “It’s still none of your business,” Serfet muttered, walking off.

  “Hmmm… just so you know,” Vidrago sang out, trailing behind them with an infuriating air of leisure, “I do know where he is. I’ve been ever so diligently keeping these nasty things away from him…” he gave a lazy kick to a nearby mass of writhing flesh.

  Serfet froze mid-step, groaning as he rolled his eyes.

  “Happy travels, little Serfet,” Vidrago mused, giving a cutesy wave. “Tell your big brother I said hi~,” he said, his voice trailing into the dark.

  “Wait!” Serfet barked, spinning around. “Where’s Gira?”

  Vidrago stopped. His face beaming with smug radiance. “So you were after the Coarseblood.”

  “Yeah and?” Serfet said. “Where is he?”

  Vidrago gave an exaggerated shrug. “Beats me~” he said, followed by a wink. “But I don’t mind tagging along to help.”

  “UGH! You lying piece of shit!” Serfet groaned, dragging his hands down his face.

  “Hee hee~!” Vidrago pressed his fingers into his cheeks and pushed them up into a manic smile, eyes wide with false innocence.

  Mera leaned toward Serfet, still incredibly confused. “Serfet…who’s this lady anyways?”

  Serfet gave her a blank look. “That guy is a pervert. That’s all you really have to know.”

  “Uhhh… oh,” Mera mumbled, growing increasingly confused.

  Vidrago strolled closer, tilting his head with theatrical grace. “The name’s Vidrago—a fan of intriguing things. That’s all~”

  “N-nice to meet you…” Mera bowed her head out of awkward courtesy.

  “My, how sweet,” Vidrago giggled, eyes half-lidded as he twirled a strand of hair between his fingers.

  Serfet had an incredibly annoyed look on his face. “Whatever… we’ll need all we can get anyway…”

  And just like that, Vidrago—uninvited and thoroughly unwelcome—joined Mera and Serfet on their hunt for the Coarseblood.

  Down below the darkened tower under the rising rain and the rolling thunder of the Abyssal supercell and the Inverted sea. Sat Sey, her hands resting gently on ranger Sorroz’s chestplate.

  Each breath he took was a labor, painful but equally soft. It didn’t take much medical expertise for Sey to come to the natural conclusion that—

  He was going to die.

  Amidst the chaos of their encounter with the Cerberus, Sorroz had been thrown into a mangled old tree with so much force that something had ruptured within.

  Now he lay there, unconscious, resting on Sey’s lap, his body churning as his blood pressure dropped and dropped. His chest rose only faintly with each breath, and then—

  Gurgle.

  A soft, horrible sound.

  His lungs were no longer his own.

  They were drowning him.

  Sey looked down with teary eyes hidden by her visor.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Helpless.

  All she could do was accompany her old friend in his final fragile moments.

  Thunder rumbled, the sound lulling Sey into a guilty escapade from the death around her.

  “Sweet Symbols…” she whispered, her voice nearly lost to the esoteric deluge. “Why?”

  But the storm offered no answer, for machine gods cannot answer the prayers of the flesh.

  North near Post 29, Morray stared into the sky as the resounding howls of the Cerberus tore through sky and sea.

  He turned his head, tilting his gaze southward—toward the direction the howls had come from. Even through the abyssal condensation and rising rain, he could feel it—the thrumming pulse of their Kyyr warping the pressure in the sky.

  Around him, the other rangers stopped what they were doing, heads tilting toward the mist-choked heavens. A collective shudder passed through the unit like a ripple of instinctual dread.

  Morray sighed, choosing to focus on one problem at a time.

  He ripped his blazing glaive free from the corpse beneath him with a sizzling hiss. The infected at his feet twitched once, then went limp. It was fishlike, its skull resembling a deformed sardine that was far too large for its own good.

  He looked around, an uneasy confusion within him as he studied the numerous remains of the other fish-like creatures now matched with the echoing howls.

  He studied it closer. It had the same vacant glare that he’d encountered in the other infected. Its jaws filled with teeth, no longer fit to feed, grotesque hands with six fingers and the eerie miasma of the abyss, but.

  They did not regenerate and they lacked the spiraling tongues of the normal Caused.

  Morray pressed his boot down on the chest of the twitching corpse and frowned. Is this the new strain?

  He tilted his head upward, eyes narrowing at the Inverted Sea above. The sky churned violently, waves crashing in reverse motion through the abyssal storm. Lightning shimmered in sickly hues, casting fractured shadows across the rising rain.

  Those howls… are they the same ones from the breach? He clenched his jaw. And where the hell is Draell?

  Letting out a long, frustrated exhale, Morray extinguished the flames of his M.K. Glaive, the searing hum fading into silence. He lowered the weapon, letting it rest across his hands as he scanned the battlefield one last time.

  Corpses, mud, and mangled trees as far as the eye could see.

  With cautious steps, Morray moved forward, trudging through muck and twisted bodies, each step accompanied by the soft squelch of waterlogged soil and the faint hiss of acrid pestilence rising with the rain.

  Morray trudged through the darkened landscape until it gave way to their impromptu shelter—a wrecked StolkGlider, its hull half-buried in the drenched earth.

  Morray ducked beneath the torn threshold of the wrecked StolkGlider, making sure to seal the door behind him with a metallic hiss. The air inside was thick—humid with breath, blood, and the stale scent of wet gear. He reached up, fingers brushing along the jawline of his helmet until he found the latch. With a practiced click, he popped the seal and pulled the helmet free.

  Moisture clung to his skin, dripping down his temples as he wiped his face with the back of his gloved hand. He stepped over a tangle of crates and medical packs, past a few rangers who were quietly tending to wounds or resting in uneasy silence. At the center of the shelter, sitting cross-legged atop a cracked storage crate, was Ranger Okari—her arms folded, expression sour.

  She glared daggers at Morray as he walked in. “The hell was that freaky sound, Hassle?”

  Morray shrugged, “Probably the infected we detected at the initial breach.” He sat down nearby, his gaze drifting toward the fogged glass of the Glider’s viewport.

  Not far from where they were holed up, just beyond a field of mud, roots, and remains in the dreary haze and noise of the rain, was a stretch of buildings that separated the muddy hellscape they were in from Gore’s Vivathecca.

  “Are they coming?” Okari asked, her face still sour.

  Morray tilted his head, thinking for a moment. Then, with a shrug, he offered, “Probably not.”

  “Ugh…” she groaned. “Then can we please regroup with Siegwick or Casket-head?”

  Morray shook his head with grace. “If only comms weren’t down…” he sighed in faux despair.

  Okari’s eye twitched. “If only you asshats at Voltasaxx did a better job monitoring the region, we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

  Morray pulled a little round container from his belt, popping the lid open. “Care for some candy?” he shook the container.

  Okari narrowed her eyes. “Oh, fuck off, that’s not candy,” she hissed, her eyes flickering with contempt.

  “But they really are…” Morray insisted, tipping a few into his mouth with an innocent shrug.

  Okari rolled her eyes, leaning back as she apathetically checked her crystalcomm aimlessly. “You careless douche… If only you were more like your brother.”

  Morray smirked, “Ho—I bet he’d love to hear that.”

  Without another word, Okari sprang to her feet and raised her voice. “Guivre Squad! On your feet—we’re heading to the Vivathecca!”

  Morray tilted his head. “But I just got here?” he mused.

  “Shut it,” Okari snapped, casting one last daggered glare his way before marching past, her squad reluctantly rising to follow her lead.

  Morray shrugged again, his smile fading away as his crimson-gold eyes glimmered against the gray.

  The trio—Serfet, Mera, and Vidrago—had barely ventured deeper into the darkened arcade before the trail of carnage began to thicken. Caused corpses lay in pieces, torn into grotesque heaps of bone and muscle, their twisted limbs scattered across the floor. The surrounding arcade cabinets had not been spared—some were shattered outright, screens cracked and flickering, others bent inwards where bodies had slammed through them with horrific force.

  And above it all, the air trembled with the rising pitch of pained whimpering and alien shrieks.

  SWOOOSH!!!

  Without thinking, all three ducked as the severed lower half of a Caused hurtled overhead, spinning through the air before crashing into a cluster of shattered cabinets and sparking debris. It struck with such force that it rebounded, skidding across the floor in a smear of black ichor before vanishing into the gloom.

  Then came the sound of flesh being wrenched apart: the splintering echo of bone, the squeal of wet sinew, and the pleading shrieks of the Unknown.

  “He’s close,” Serfet breathed, voice tense as he led them forward, weaving between toppled machines and torn bodies.

  There.

  Perched atop a tall, jagged spire of bone loomed Berserkrios.

  His once-pale armor was now slick with blood, dyed black beneath the dim flicker of blacklights. Twin segmented blades now jutted from his forearms—long, curved, and dripping with writhing gore.

  Below him, strewn around the base of the bony pyre, were heaps of mutilated Caused—some twitching, others still screaming. The floor a half-dead hellscape of butchered monsters and trailing innards. His Kyyr was thick in the air, humming with a violent, esoteric frequency that made the trio’s skin prickle.

  Then—movement!

  Four new Caused emerged from the shadows.

  The trio immediately ducked behind a row of shattered game pods, pressing themselves against the wall, hearts pounding.

  Berserkrios let out a low growl—deep, resonant, almost draconic. As the creatures lunged toward him, he didn’t wait.

  He met them mid-air.

  With a screech of rending flesh and splintering bone, he crashed into the group, his bladed arms cleaving through two instantly. Limbs spun off, black blood spattering across the ceiling like ink. One Caused was slammed into the ground so hard the floor cratered beneath it. The last managed to claw at his side, drawing thin lines across his armored scales.

  It didn’t matter.

  Berserkrios turned to it and lunged, jaws cracking open unnaturally wide before he bit down on the creature’s skull. It shrieked in agony as he began to devour it whole.

  One of the dismembered Caused tried to drag itself towards its other half.

  Too late.

  A protrusion of bone erupted from Berserkrios’s side, intercepting the fleeing monster that drove its claws into the carpet trying to escape. But with a flex of his body, the Coarseblood’s serrated tail swept towards it, skewering the creature and lifting it high into the air. It flailed helplessly as Berserkrios continued feeding, his fangs digging deep through muscle and into bone.

  Another dismembered Caused lunged at him from behind, jaws snapping.

  CRACK!

  A spike of bone burst from Berserkrios’s back, impaling the attacker through the jaw and into its skull. It twitched violently, then went limp.

  With a growl, Berserkrios slammed the skewered Caused into the floor, his tail dragging in a wide arc, using the creature’s body like a club to smash it into the twitching remnants of the others. The floor became a canvas of gore.

  Flicking the blood off his tail, he then lunged at the writhing remains, his alabaster jaws ripping through their flesh as he consumed their bones.

  The trio stared, paralyzed.

  Awe.

  Terror.

  Excitement.

  Two more Caused shrieked from the darkness—but Berserkrios was ready.

  He rose onto his hind legs, bones rattling. With one hand, he caught one by the throat mid-leap and slammed it into the floor hard enough to crack its skull. The other tried to flank him, but his tail lashed out, a single elegant slash cleaving its head clean from its shoulders.

  The arcade echoed with the sound of feeding—wet, horrible, primal. Bone cracked like ice. Flesh slurped. Jaws worked rhythmically as Berserkrios devoured his prey.

  Serfet remained frozen, his lips parted slightly. He wasn’t sure if Gira was still in there. The thing before them dripped violent Kyyr like venom, its hunger unbound.

  More Caused surged from the shadows, but they didn’t last. Giant spines burst from Berserkrios’s body—like thorns from a monstrous bloom—slaughtering the pack before they could even reach him.

  He roared, twisting his torso with monstrous force, flinging the mangled bodies across the room in splashes of blood and bile.

  And then, just as suddenly, there was silence.

  With a shuddering breath, Berserkrios turned and climbed back atop his bone spire He wrapped his body tightly around it, tail curling like a serpent’s, limbs folded in—a Faux-Dragon under the blacklight.

  Serfet glanced at his companions—Mera was slack-jawed, her eyes lost in the gore-streaked floor, while Vidrago looked positively delighted, practically drooling at the spectacle before them.

  Serfet sighed and leaned against a shattered arcade cabinet.

  Crrrrrk—THUD!

  The cabinet collapsed beneath him with a violent crash, detonating in a mess of sparking wires and splintered metal. The noise echoed like gunfire in the corpse-strewn silence.

  Serfet froze, the color draining from his face. “Oh shit…”

  He turned toward the bone spire.

  Empty.

  Berserkrios was gone.

  He looked to others.

  Mera was frozen her eyes locked on the subtle movements in the dark.

  Vidrago, on the other hand, looked like a kid on his birthday as he nodded eagerly into the dark.

  Serfet took a step back, focusing, straining every sense to detect where the Coarseblood had gone.

  A thick, viscous drip struck his cheek.

  He flinched in disgust, his eyes shooting upward.

  It was pitch black—but—even with the nothingness of the dark, he knew that he was there.

  From the void above, a snout emerged. Elongated. Fanged. Gleaming. The gnarled visage of the Coarseblood slowly emerged from the shadow, its blackened teeth parting slowly as its head tilted.

  “sErfet…” Berserkrios growled, voice thick and distorted.

  Mera dropped to her knees with a gasp, the vibration of that word crawling down her spine like icy fingers.

  Vidrago, smiling wide, twirled in place with excitement. “Gira~!”

  The Coarseblood descended in a single fluid leap, landing right before them. Though smaller than Serfet expected, Berserkrios still towered over them, exuding a predatory edge the crimson form lacked.

  He stood tall, jaws slightly ajar, speaking with effort. “Good to see… you.” The words grated out awkwardly, the syllables reverberating through his jaw like a broken speaker.

  The words, though slow, finally seemed to click with Serfet as relief washed over him. “Gira… you’re still in there.” His voice cracked with relief. “Thank the Symbols…”

  Berserkrios nodded, the bony tip of his tail rattling as it swayed in slow arcs.

  Then, blinking with visible confusion, he leaned slightly forward. “Vi—deragg…O!?”

  “Howdy, Gira! Did ya miss me?” Vidrago chirped, flicking his ponytail.

  Berserkrios—or rather Gira—tilted his head in confusion. “It hasss nOt been LonG.”

  “Ahhh, don’t be silly,” Vidrago teased. “I know you missed me.”

  Mera, still on her knees, looked up with teary eyes. Relief flooded her as she wiped her face with a shaky hand.

  Gira noticed and leaned toward her, his voice softening. “H-urt?”

  Mera shook her head, quickly, brushing the tears away. “N-no. I was just scared…”

  Gira recoiled slightly, lowering his head. “S…Sorr-ry…”

  Serfet offered a tired smile. “It’s all good, Gira. But… uh, what’s up with your speech?”

  Suddenly, a crack split across Berserkrios’s snout—a shattering smile. “Because he’s learning to speak using Kyyr vibrations!” the voice shifted, growing firmer—clearer, still gravelly but now articulate.

  The trio stared, visibly startled by the sudden shift in tone and clarity.

  Berserkrios noticed their confusion. “Forgive me. My name is Berserkrios, one of the other Giras that reside within him.” He bowed his skull. “Gira just wanted some practice.”

  The Coarseblood vehemently nodded in response to himself.

  “Oh—okay?” Serfet said a little confused.

  “Wait—hold on, multiple Giras? Like—what, clones? Minds? Avatars?” Vidrago gushed, practically bouncing in place. “You’ve gotta tell me!”

  “Gira can tell you all about it later; we’re rather busy at the moment.” Berserkrios said, turning back to his bony spire.

  “W-what are you doing Mishter Bersekiosh…” Mera fumbled her words.

  “Protecting.” Berserkrios said simply.

  Serfet raised a brow. “Protecting what?”

  Berserkrios inhaled deeply, drawing in the heavy Kyyr haze as he hissed. “Family.”

  That word hit Serfet like a punch to the chest. “Wait, who—?” he started, but was cut off.

  With a rumble, bone erupted from the floor—arching structures surrounding the trio in a dome of pale, living ivory. It formed a barrier around them, sealing them inside with unsettling grace.

  “Wait here,” Berserkrios roared, turning back to the spire as his receptors flared in response to encroaching shadows.

  Serfet slammed his fists against the bone, the surface echoing with a dull, hollow thud. “GIRA! What the hell happened?! Talk to me!” he shouted, panic creeping into his voice as the bone refused to budge.

  His words bounced back at him, muffled by the ivory dome—met only by the distant sound of Berserkrios’s roar tearing through the dark beyond.