The chamber became a war zone.
Julius fired into the fray, each pulse round carving molten arcs through the nearest Hive drones. Chitin cracked and shrieked. Limbs twitched and reformed. But they didn't stop coming.
And then Vara charged.
She was a blur—Seraphel's tendrils twisting and flaring around her in jagged, living armor. She leapt, caught a Hive brute mid-air, and tore it in half with a sound like wet fabric being shredded.
The symbiote howled with her. A shared scream. Pain and triumph fused together.
"Seraphel is stabilizing," Echelon reported. "Host-symbiote bond locked. Combat capabilities exceeding baseline."
Brinley rejoined the fight, blaster cracking shots into drone skulls. "You two planning to leave some for me?!"
Julius smirked, even as another wave poured through the corridor. "Wouldn't dream of it."
A larger shadow filled the breach. Vorr's scouts.
These weren't the half-starved scavengers from before. These were elite morphs—taller, armored in obsidian-black plating, fused with Hive tech that shimmered with Hive language glyphs. Vorr had sent lieutenants.
Three of them entered. Eyes like molten silver. Their jaws distended, and the Hive's voice echoed in unison.
"The Ash Core has stirred. Return it to the fold. Consume the resistance."
Julius and Vara stood side by side.
He nodded. "No plan?"
She cracked her knuckles. "Same plan as always. Kill everything that screams."
They lunged.
Julius's blade-arm extended with a flicker of green flame, Echelon's new protocols igniting on impact. The first Hive lieutenant parried with a tendril blade of its own, and the two clashed—symphonies of metal and bone.
Behind him, Vara and Seraphel moved like synchronized dancers of war. Where Julius was precision and force, Vara was chaos incarnate. She ducked low, lashed a leg out, swept one creature from its feet, and crushed its skull beneath a spike-formed heel.
Another lieutenant extended a rail-spear—firing it toward Julius in a blur.
But Seraphel intercepted—her armor blossoming into a kinetic shield that cracked from the impact but held.
"You're not alone anymore," Vara said, voice calm in the storm.
Julius stepped forward and severed the lieutenant's head with one clean slice.
Only one remained.
It paused, analyzing, adapting. Then its limbs began to shift, becoming longer, denser. Echelon's warning flared.
"Warning: Hive Morph Prime detected. Evolution event triggered."
Vorr wasn't waiting. He was sending pieces of himself.
The morph screamed—and exploded outward in a burst of mutating limbs and neural hooks.
Julius gritted his teeth. "We're not ready for that thing."
"No," Vara said, summoning another blade, her face calm. "But she is."
Seraphel surged forward, dragging Vara with her, and the air trembled as symbiote met Hive-born fury in a cataclysmic clash of energy and rage.
The fight had only just begun.