The jungle bleeds.
Azhur stumbles through thick vines, clutching his ribs. His serpent Qi coils erratically, no longer confident—corrupted and cracked. His once-fluid movement now jerks with pain.
Behind him, the air is filled with whispers—the jungle mocking him.
"Beast flame... heir…"
"Unworthy, unrooted, unchosen…"
He spits venom onto the moss and snarls.
"You dare choose him… flame-whelp… over me?"
But he dares not look back.
Because behind him, something had awakened—and it did not choose him.
—The Return to the Brood Nest—
Days later, under the rotted canopies of the Serra spine Ravine, Azhur enters a massive pit choked with thorns and bone-carved altars. This is no sect—it is a hive, carved from flesh and stone.
Beast corpses hang from vines, still leaking Qi into siphoning cauldrons. Serpent banners flutter, inked in blood.
Azhur kneels before a great stone maw, carved like a serpent's open mouth.
It breathes.
And from within, she speaks:
—Enter: The Matriarch of Fangs, Mother Xil'a —
A dozen viper heads slither out of the shadows, forming the coiling silhouette of a woman cloaked in scales and whispers. Her face is never fully seen—only fangs and glowing emerald eyes, always shifting.
"You failed, my little venom ling."
Azhur gasps.
"The relic… chose another. A boy of flame. He bore the Beast borne Mark."
A moment of silence.
Then, a slow, echoing hiss.
"So the jungle answers to flame again. Curious…"
She descends—not walking, but gliding on hundreds of serpentine limbs.
She touches Azhur's head.
"You were to be the vessel. The jungle was meant to kneel."
"Instead… it fed him."
With a flick of her nail, Azhur screams—his venom Qi forcibly uncoiled, tortured into submission. But she does not kill him.
"You are not dismissed, Azhur. You are repurposed."
—Plans in Motion—
Mother Xil'a turns to a writhing nest of bone eggs—each housing a hybrid beast-child, experiments meant to imitate Beast borne lineage by force.
"If the jungle gives him its love… we shall drown him in its pain."
She gestures to a shadowed figure—taller, armored in black chitin, bearing a serpent-fused core.
"Unleash Molmara, the Beast Skin Devourer. And inform the Dark Tide Cult that their… flame-kin has stirred the jungle."
"Let them make contact. War tastes better when it simmers."
Far away, Feng Xian meditates under Nai'Esha's watchful eye, unaware that Mother Xil'a has marked him—not just as a threat, but as a thief of destiny.