The silence after the Primordial's song was a different kind of weight. It wasn't the absence of sound, but the presence of a terrible understanding. The enemy had a name now, and a nature: a sentient parasite, a cancer quite literally woven into the very fabric of this living universe. The K'tharr and Ravoda weren't just monsters; they were perversions, the Primordial's own devoured lifeforms twisted into instruments of its torment. and they were just two of many other forms of creatures.
Aryan looked at his hands, still feeling the ghostly echo of the void-tendrils. The Null-Shard within him hummed, a cold, dark mirror to the vibrant, diseased life around them. A parasite of entropy, feeding on creation. And he, a man who wielded the power of the nothing concept.
"No," Aryan said, his voice low but firm, carrying the unsettling certainty that had settled in him. "We don't poison it. We don't cut it out." He met their gazes. "We sever its supply lines. The song showed us a nexus attached to a lymphatic processor. It's feeding, using the Primordial's own systems against it. We cut that link. We starve it."
Jaya nodded slowly, her eyes alight with the new focus. "Isolating the nexus from the main ichor sources... that could work. It would contain the corruption, potentially weaken it enough for the Primordial's own defenses to rally. It would also reduce the possibility of the corruption spreading to survivors in the marrow labyrinths" She looked at the crude map on her data-slate. "But the path there... the Primordial's biology is a chaos of the coagulated realities it has devoured in its lifetime. It's not a static map. It's a living, shifting piece of work. We'll be navigating blind half the time."
"Then we move fast, before the terrain changes too much," Rohan grunted, trying and failing to sit up fully. The effort sent a fresh wave of pain across his face, a stark reminder that their most formidable warrior was a liability.
Their first steps on the newly defined mission led them out of the muscular antechamber and into a new, unsettling biome. The walls transitioned from hard, striated muscle to a softer, spongy tissue, covered in a forest of glowing, mushroom-like growths. The air grew thick with a sweet, cloying scent, and a fine, iridescent pollen drifted in the still air. Jaya's scanner identified it as the Mycological Weald, a symbiotic fungal network that helped filter the Primordial's system.
It was beautiful, and it was deadly.
They had been navigating the soft, springy ground for a few hours when Elian, who was leading the way, suddenly held up a hand. "Wait. The air... it's changed."
The sweet scent had intensified, becoming syrupy. Aryan focused his perception, and his blood ran cold. The concept of the [Air] was being subtly rewritten. [Oxygen] was being suppressed, while another, alien concept was being amplified: [Complacency].
"Don't breathe deeply!" Aryan warned. "The pollen... it's a pacifier."
As if on cue, the giant mushrooms pulsed with a hypnotic light. A low, droning hum filled the air, urging them to rest, to sleep. Elian, his senses most attuned to life energy, was the most vulnerable. A dreamy smile touched his lips. "It's... so calm..."
"Elian, no!" Jaya grabbed his arm.
Aryan acted. He couldn't erase the pollen, but he could target its effect. He narrowed his focus, his Null-Shard humming as he isolated the concept of [Complacency] in the air around them. He didn't erase it; he imposed a new, overriding concept: [Urgency].
The drowsy warmth vanished, replaced by a jolt of adrenaline. Elian gasped, blinking back to awareness. The hum was now a distant annoyance.
"Good work, Aryan" Rohan approved from his sled.
But the Weald had other defenses. The ground itself began to move. Thick, cord-like mycelial roots erupted, lashing out to entangle and immobilize.
Jaya drew her plasma cutter, severing roots with sizzling bursts. "They're drawn to movement and heat! Aryan!"
Aryan's mind raced. Suppressing [Movement] for his team was impossible. Instead, he looked at the roots' core concept: [Reactive Aggression]. He reached out with his power, not to negate, but to deceive. He wrapped the concepts of [Stillness] and [Ambient Temperature] around their group like a cloak. To the fungal network, they became as interesting as a rock.
The lashing roots hesitated, then retracted.
"By the Spark," Jaya whispered in awe. "You're tricking an alien."
"It's all a system," Aryan said, a trickle of blood leaking from his nose. "If you understand the rules, you can find loopholes."
They pressed on, each challenge a lesson in this deadly, living system. After a day's travel, they found a clear hollow—a natural safe zone. As they settled in, a new sound echoed from behind: the skittering of countless chitinous legs. A K'tharr patrol.
"We can't fight them here," Rohan stated, his hand clenching around his maul, useless in his current state.
Aryan looked at the entrance, then at the pacifying forest behind them. A dangerous, cunning idea sparked. A mischievous smile played at the corners of his lips. "We don't have to fight them," he said. "We can let the Weald fight for us."
As the K'tharr swarm poured into the clearing, the reactive mycelial roots erupted, lashing at the new, aggressive movement. The K'tharr shrieked and fought, but the pacifying pollen clouded the air. Their furious clicks turned into disoriented chitters. One by one, they stumbled, collapsed, and were entangled, lulled into a permanent sleep.
The team watched in silence as the swarm was neutralized and began to be absorbed into the soil for digestion
Rohan let out a slow breath. "A surgeon's mind. You're learning, Aryan."
But Aryan didn't feel triumphant. He felt the cold, calculating nature of the void within him. Using one horror to destroy another felt right, and that in itself was terrifying. He had taken his first real step on the long road to starve the parasite. But as he looked ahead, into the deeper, darker biomes the shifting map promised, he knew the greatest battle would be to hold onto his humanity while wielding a power that sought to unmake it. The journey to sever the corruption's link had begun, and the parasite would now know it had a specific enemy to crush.