The tunnels of Rust-vault Spine echoed with the distant screams of the fallen Splicers. Agony of the Scarlet Maw stood victorious, the vault containing Herja-X securely in her possession. Her eyes gleamed with a mix of triumph and anticipation as she surveyed her new acquisition. "Who wants to level up," she had asked, and now one of her followers, Hammer-fists, stood transformed, her body pulsing with newfound power.
Meanwhile, Doctor Syn and the remaining CENO agents were in chaos. The loss of Herja-X was a devastating blow, and Syn knew that she had to act fast to recover her daughter. She had promised to help Herja, and she was not about to let anyone else control her fate. "Commander Vance," Syn said, her voice steady despite the turmoil within her. "We need to find Herja-X before it's too late. We can't let Agony or anyone else use her power for their own gain."
Vance nodded, his expression grim. "We'll need all the resources we can get. CENO will mobilize every available unit to track down the Scarlet Maw. But we can't do it alone. We'll need help from one of our special assets, I call for Marla." As they planned their next move, Syn couldn't shake the feeling that Herja-X was watching, waiting. The crystal held ancient power, and Syn knew that it would not be easily contained. The hunt for Herja-X had only just begun, and the stakes were higher than ever.
Deep in the Arizona Flesh-pit, a forgotten amniotic sac twitched. It hung low in the cavern's throat, swaddled in bone-skin vines, pulsing slow as a funeral drum. Inside, Felicity—unaged, dormant, fetal-curled—floated in warm, choral fluid. The sac sang in frequencies no living creature remembered. It dreamed of war. Above, in another part of the world, Herja-X released a wave powerful Intent.
It struck like a tsunami—ripping through air, wire, soil, nerve. And far below the crust, it found her. The sac seized. The fluid churned into wine-dark whirlpools. The vines recoiled. The lullaby enchantment ruptured. Then—split. A velvet tear down the center of the womb. Silver ichor spilled across the pit's floor like spilled prophecy. Felicity gasped. Her lungs remembered air. "Herja" she whispered, mouth slick with birth-fluid. Her eyes opened, glowing like fevered relics. Beneath her collarbone, a searing brand ignited—a sigil in motion, coiling and splitting like a serpent devouring its own name. Flashes of war raged behind her pupils!
Two towering Zohar Lords locked in spiral combat beneath a blood-starred sky. Claw against fang. Name against name. Her body spasmed with ancestral memory. Her voice cracked into an old dialect. One not spoken aloud in ten thousand years. Naked. Blood-slick. Barefooted. She stumbled from the ruptured chamber, dragging wet limbs toward the slope of bone that led upward.
A warning siren buzzed low. Inside the undercover van, Marla Cruz and Koba stared at the telemetry feed. Two red spikes rose on the beast net interface, jagged and unmistakable. Koba frowned. "That's not possible." Marla leaned in, whispering like someone recognizing a face from a nightmare.
"One ripple was expected." Marla swallowed. "Where the hell did the second one come from?" The sac membrane sloughed away as she rose into a moaning ribbed tunnel. The walls pulsed. Fluid dripped upward. She heard the Pit whisper, "Welcome home, heir of marrow. Up you go." A mouth opened at the end of the corridor—not a door, a mouth—and she stepped through, barefoot and blood-laced. She slowly walked through an endocrine gutter; the Pits steroid drainage system. Felicity rested a moment in an alcove carved from glistening meat stone and fossilized cartilage. Her breath steamed in the wet air. The walls pulsed faintly, as if remembering a rhythm from when they were still part of something alive. Her body itched. Her spine throbbed. She twitched. Then came the flash.
A psychic rupture slashed through her mind her memory, images of what would be. A tower of stone and glass. The chant of an arena. A gigantic silver hand? Felicity gasped. Her fingernails scraped the bone wall as Herja's presence surged across the beast net. Felicity's mouth twisted. Her Beast crystal flared in her chest.
The top-side world taunted her. It was loud. Bright. Alive. And it had forgotten her. Felicity stood. The alcove shuddered, as if rejecting her weakness. She wiped the ichor from her arms and stepped back onto the sinew path. Her bare feet left no sound, only heat. The air thickened with light.
Storms of bioluminescent spores churned through the narrow fungal chasms, pulsing in waves like a living aurora. The spores clung to her skin, crawled into her mouth, her ears, the corners of her memory. Each breath dragged the past deeper into her lungs. Then a memory from deep in the genome ignited. Her pupils blew wide. Her limbs locked. Her heart staggered. She remembered how she died. She stood beneath a cracking red sky, flanked by legions of Genome Beasts howling like choirs of metal. Flames danced across her flesh. Her body—once titanic, silver-veined, divine—was wrapped in barbed tendrils of some ancient war-machine. She remembered a Zohar Lord, veiled in void-light, cradle her as the moon split like a cracked egg above them.
She saw her own mouth scream without sound. She felt the beast moon tear in half. The memory wasn't symbolic. It was real. She had burned. She had died. And she had come back. Felicity collapsed to her knees, coughing spores. Steam poured from her shoulders. The Beast Crystal in her palm hissed and glowed. Her fingernails hardened. Her breath fogged violet. The sigil under her collarbone pulsed like a countdown. She rose, trembling—but whole. She turned toward the fungal storm's heart and stepped through. Felicity climbed up and into the abyss tunnels, leaving the fungal storm behind like a fever burned off. The light dimmed. The walls grew slick and porous, like the inside of a vast creature's throat. No wind, no sound—only the sound of her own blood, which now beat out an unfamiliar rhythm.
Then the tunnel widened into a hollow chamber, Felicity passed through the membrane-threshold and entered silence. The fungal storms behind her faded into memory. Ahead: sterile corridors lined with rusted surgical arms, bone-laced data terminals, and stretchers sealed in amber. The stench was formaldehyde and failure. Felicity ascended through a spiral shaft made of fractured shell and calcified placenta, emerging into a stinking, steaming basin of broken Beast eggs. Some had been clawed open. Others had never finished hatching.
The chamber pulsed with ancient failure. The floor squelched beneath her feet—slick with sac-fluid and marrow fragments. Embryonic limbs twitched in shadows, still half-alive. She moved slowly, scanning with her new metallic eye, tracing heat and DNA echoes across the slurry. Then—a shift. Her vision flared red. Something was watching.
A triple-jawed apex predator emerged from the egg-thicket like a stalking god. A ridge of ossified antennae twitched above its skull. Its body was hunched, muscular, built for silencing bloodlines. The crystal spines down its back pulsed to her heartbeat. It smelled lineage. "Phage... hatchling," it hissed in a voice she felt in her bones. It pounced.
Felicity dove backward, barely dodging a slash that shattered a rib-sized egg nearby. Her cloak tore. Her breath caught. The predator was too fast. Too evolved. Her vision blurred. Then something stirred in her silver blood. Bones cracked. Skin peeled in fractal spirals. Her back erupted in a pair of sleek circular bat wings, still slick with transformation mucus. Her spine grew barbed and extended into a whip-like tail. Her feet split into talons. Her fingers warped into elegant black claws. Twin ram horns curled backward from her skull, glossy and ridged like obsidian. Her skin shimmered between flesh and void-glow, a succubus silhouette sharpened for execution.
Her left eye was an ancient cybernetic— it locked onto the beast.
"You want phage blood?" she whispered.
"Come drink."