Chapter 2 - Ash-Eaters
The fires of the laboratory still smoldered long after the screams had died. The ruins were silent now, save for the slow crackle of ember and the occasional metallic creak of scorched beams collapsing under their own weight.
Kael Sorrén stood ankle-deep in ash.
Smoke curled around his boots like lost ghosts. His once-white coat, now blackened and torn, hung off his shoulders like a tattered flag. Cuts crossed his cheek, and blood stained the collar of his undershirt. But his eyes—those cold, storm-tinted eyes—were sharp, calculating, and very much alive.
The air stank of chemicals and death. The remnants of the last experiment still writhed faintly in one of the shattered tanks, its spine twitching with a final neural spark. Kael didn't look at it. He had already buried the part of himself that cared.
The Codex hummed in the back of his mind. Not as a voice, but as an awareness. Like a second skin of data crawling over his nerves. When it activated back in the ruins, it had flooded his neurons with alien code—an interface that fused knowledge directly into instinct.
[Initiating protocol: Hybrid Cognition Interface. Welcome, Operator Sorrén.]
"Took you long enough," Kael muttered, spitting out blood. "How much is left?"
[Seventy-two percent of the original genetic databanks are compromised. The ArkHive remains dormant. Permission to execute auxiliary recovery routines?]
Kael looked around. Burned-out walls. Dead power cells. A world that didn't care.
"Do it."
The Codex pulsed.
A flash of light—more sensation than vision—coursed through his spine. The pain returned. Sharp, gnawing, evolutionary pain. Bones itched. His skin prickled. For a second, Kael fell to his knees, fists digging into the ash.
And then he heard it.
A low groan.
He spun.
Not fifty meters away, a creature stirred in the haze. Its silhouette lumbered—tall, spined, reptilian.
Kael backed away slowly, eyes narrowing. This wasn't JiRuun. It was smaller, less armored. But it was definitely hybrid.
[Specimen: Type-Δ23. Behavioral profile: semi-feral. Dominant genome: Therizinosaurus + Crocodilia. Subtraits: Pack-bonding potential high. Neural interfacing: viable.]
Kael blinked. A feral hybrid, but one he might bond with?
He reached instinctively for the neural node embedded in his wrist. The interface shimmered.
[Warning: Symbiosis not yet stabilized. Risk of mental feedback.]
"I don't have time to wait for safety protocols."
He approached the creature.
It turned its head, golden eyes tracking his movement. A low rumble escaped its throat. It didn't charge. Not yet. It sniffed.
Kael raised his arm, blood still dripping from his knuckles. He thought of the hunger he saw in its eyes—the same hunger he felt in his gut.
The Codex shifted. Kael felt a jolt in his brain, a sudden echo of the creature's mind.
[Neural tether established. Synchronization... unstable.]
The hybrid snarled. Then paused.
Then lowered its head.
Kael exhaled.
The bond had begun.
Far off, beyond the burning ruins, JiRuun watched from the edge of the jungle.
Its eyes narrowed.
The new wielder of the Codex had awoken.
And for the first time in a thousand years, the Ash-Eaters would rise.