Echelon of genesis:Rise of anok

Arc II: Veins of Mourndusk

The descent began in silence.

Asha held her lantern low, its flickering silver glow casting ghostlight along the spiraled stone steps winding down beneath the Hollow Shrine. The ancient Pulse-Seer sanctuary groaned with age, every breath of wind through its cracked bones a whisper from a long-dead era. Yarri walked just behind her, hand on her shortblade. Nemea trailed close, her eyes shifting with unease.

Vrakon came last.

He made no sound, his footsteps feathered despite the shattered shale beneath his boots. The fractured memories he carried—of screams, ash, and hollowed faces—pressed like invisible frost at the edge of his thoughts. But he didn't flinch. He hadn't since the shrine.

"This is wrong," Asha muttered. Her voice cracked in the stale air.

Yarri glanced back. "You feel it too?"

Asha nodded. "The Pulse here... It's not dead. It's hiding. Or scared."

Vrakon didn't respond. He had felt it from the moment they entered: the Pulse wasn't gone. It had been consumed.

---

The stairwell ended at a large circular chamber. Pillars of blackened bone-root spiraled up to the ceiling, grown into the walls themselves. Between them stood empty altar-hollows. Some still bore the old Seer-markings: fractured sigils that once glowed with Genesis light. Now, only scorched residue remained.

"This was a sanctuary," Asha whispered, kneeling by a burned etching.

Nemea shivered. "Why does it feel... starving?"

Vrakon looked toward the far end of the chamber. A sealed archway, warped inward, held a faint humming behind it. Not power—but pressure. Something breathing slowly. As if asleep.

"Soul-famine," Asha murmured suddenly. "That's what the records meant."

Yarri turned. "What?"

"There was a time, decades ago. Some shrines lost their connection to the Genesis stream. Not because of a fault. Not war. But... something devoured the Pulse. Ate it whole. Fracta-Wielders who survived called it a soul-famine."

Nemea's eyes widened. "But that's myth."

"So was Vrakon, two days ago."

The group fell silent.

---

They moved slowly through the shrine's lower halls—each corridor more warped, each breath heavier. Along the cracked stone lay remnants of old robes, rusted pulse-rings, fractured Fracta sigils long extinguished.

Vrakon paused beside a strange growth along the far wall: a veined mass of hardened silver and black spore-like husk. It pulsed faintly.

Yarri stepped beside him. "That... that's not just ruin."

"It's cocooned Pulse," Asha said. "Used to be part of a Seer's Core. Twisted now. Still hungry."

"Something's feeding it," Vrakon said.

He stepped back.

---

The final chamber was sealed by half-melted soulstone. Vrakon reached toward it, but the surface rejected his touch with a spark of ashlight.

"Don't," Asha warned. "That seal's not keeping us out. It's keeping it in."

From behind the door came a distant groan. Wet. Inhuman.

A crack split the barrier. Not from Vrakon. From inside.

"Move!" Yarri pulled Nemea back as the door exploded outward. Shards of soulstone flew like knives. Asha's shield lit just in time.

Beneath the Hollow Shrine, the air doesn't just hum with Pulse—it hungers. What sleeps behind the soulstone seal was never meant to wake. But it has. And it remembers the ones it devoured.

What crawled out was not a creature.

It was a mistake.

Its body was layered with plates of malformed pulse-metal and rotting flesh. Faces—half-absorbed Fracta-Wielders and Pulse-Eaters alike—twitched beneath its translucent skin. It had no eyes. Only a single gaping maw, layered with core-light. Five appendages twitched with half-formed weapon limbs: a spear, a claw, a tendril, a molten whip, and a mirrored blade that reflected nothing but black.

Nemea screamed. Not from fear. From recognition.

"That's... that's what devoured Serin's team."

Yarri stepped forward. "Fifth realm. Domain-Class. It shouldn't be alive..."

Asha drew her blade. "It isn't. It absorbs realms. That's how it lives."

The thing lunged.

Vrakon didn't move. Not yet. The air shifted. Somewhere inside his chest, a coil tightened. Not pain. Not memory.

Instinct.