Nate awoke to the heavy buzz of insects and the crackling static of a drone comms channel gone awry. Around him, the Amazon jungle stirred with breathless life—vines hanging like old secrets, birds shrieking in bursts of unknowable code. It had taken them four days to get this far inland, following the third anchor's coordinates into territory few dared enter.
Beside him, Mallory stretched and looked up at the leafy ceiling. "It's louder here."
"Everything's listening," Tuck muttered, swatting a mosquito the size of a bottlecap.
Iris stood by the solar recon table, checking readouts. "This sector's been silent since 1994. The last satellite to pass over here glitched out. Went blind for five minutes."
"What happened?" Nate asked.
"Classified. But I found the logs. Data spike. Same pattern as Mojave. Same as Greenland."
Mallory adjusted her rifle strap. "The third anchor's alive. And it knows we're coming."
---
The team moved through dense brush in a single file. Iris led with a drone interface wired into her goggles, directing a swarm of micro-scouts ahead. Nate carried the shard, encased in a Faraday-lined shell, still humming with quiet defiance. Tuck brought the firepower—a plasma-linked rail rifle that looked more like a miniature spaceship than a weapon. Mallory moved like a shadow, watching the trees.
It wasn't long before they encountered them.
People.
Tribal warriors appeared without sound, stepping from behind trees and stones as though grown from the forest itself. Painted faces. Bronze eyes. No weapons raised.
Their leader stepped forward. An old woman with a face like ancient bark and a gaze like glass.
"You are dream-bearers," she said, in fluent English.
Iris stepped forward. "We don't want a fight."
The woman smiled. "That is good. The jungle hates blood. But it remembers pain."
Mallory asked, "Do you know about the anchor?"
The woman nodded. "We have guarded the Te'Lhara for five generations. Since the sky first split and the blue god fell."
Nate felt his spine chill. "Blue god?"
She pointed at the shard. "He was like that. But whole."
---
They were taken to the village—not visible from any satellite or aerial scan, a place swallowed by roots and grown in tandem with the trees.
The villagers told stories that mirrored what they had seen in Mojave and Greenland. Lights falling from the sky. Songs in the soil. Machines that sang people to sleep for centuries.
"The Te'Lhara sings, still," said a boy of maybe ten. "But no one listens. Only the trees."
Nate held the shard in his lap, sensing it pull toward something deeper.
Mallory asked the elder, "Can we see it?"
The woman nodded, solemn. "But only one of you may enter. If more try, the jungle will feed."
---
They argued for an hour. Tuck insisted on going for protection. Iris argued it should be her for intel extraction. Mallory said it had to be Nate—he was bonded to the shards.
Nate eventually stood. "It'll be me. If anything happens—"
Mallory cut in, "We burn the site. Nothing gets out."
He nodded. "Agreed."
---
The elder led Nate alone through a winding path marked by hanging feathers and bone chimes. Hours passed. Or minutes. Time warped.
Then, the trees opened.
Before him stood the anchor—colossal, crystalline, and humming with unearthly song. It levitated above a chasm, surrounded by vines that didn't sway with the wind.
The shard in his hand throbbed.
He stepped forward.
The shard flew from his hand and embedded itself into the anchor.
Everything went black.
---
Nate opened his eyes to a vision.
He stood on a battlefield beneath a shattered moon. Towers the size of mountains collapsed in slow motion. Above, ships the color of mercury traded lightning with impossible creatures.
And in the center, three figures stood atop a broken anchor, screaming into the void.
He saw himself. Mallory. Tuck. Iris. All standing before a fourth anchor—one that did not belong.
A voice echoed through his skull.
"Sequence complete. Pathway unsealed. Do you wish to remember?"
He whispered, "Yes."
Pain like light.
Knowledge poured in.
The shards were not keys.
They were locks.
Holding something back.
Something old.
Something hungry.
---
He woke on the forest floor, blood pouring from his nose. The anchor was dark. The shard gone.
The elder stood over him. "You saw the Storm."
He nodded. "We're not opening them. We're sealing them."
She smiled sadly. "You are too late."
---
Back at the village, the team packed in silence. Nate told them everything. No one spoke for a long while.
Tuck finally said, "So... we're unsealing a cosmic jail cell?"
Nate nodded. "And we've opened three locks."
Iris whispered, "Then what's next?"
Mallory looked to the east. "We stop whoever's trying to open the fourth."
---
In Washington D.C., Director Vane watched the sky light up with satellite flare.
She dialed a red phone.
"Vox. Initiate Protocol Kassandra."
Vox's voice came through crisp and cold. "Are we sure?"
Vane didn't blink. "We've already failed to stop them. It's time we find someone who can."
---