Chapter 22 – Echoes in the Crater
The land ended abruptly.
Beyond the final ridge, the earth simply collapsed — not in chaos, but in terrifying precision.
A hollow that should not exist stretched before them, a crater so vast it could swallow a city, its edges curved like the rim of an open wound.
The wind that rose from below carried no sound. Only heat — and a low, almost imperceptible hum.
Alicia exhaled slowly, eyes wide as the readouts on her wrist scanner flared with unstable colors.
Shin leaned over the edge and whistled low.
Vaibhav said nothing.
The ground around them was laced with glowing fissures — crimson light pulsing in rhythm, as though something deep beneath was breathing through the crust. Steam coiled upward in threads, distorting the air like the surface of a fever dream.
> "That's not a crater," Shin muttered, voice hushed despite himself.
"That's… a scar."
Alicia crouched, brushing ash away from the surface of a fissure. The light beneath was too bright, too rhythmic. Her brow furrowed. "No volcanic activity reads like this. The Qi saturation here is… off-scale."
"How high?" Vaibhav asked.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she adjusted the scanner.
> "Nine hundred and forty-two percent above Ignis Prime baseline," she whispered.
"That's higher than any recorded in history."
Shin blinked. "You're saying this hole is basically the planet's beating heart?"
Alicia shook her head. "Not the heart. The infection."
The crater's slope descended gradually at first, a gentle incline of black rock glazed with fused glass. The further they went, the more distorted the light became — red halos pulsing beneath every step.
The air grew heavy, thick with metallic taste. Breathing felt like inhaling molten dust.
Shin adjusted his rebreather mask. "I can barely breathe down here."
Vaibhav said nothing, but he could feel it too — the weight of the Qi, pressing against his chest like invisible gravity. It wasn't passive energy. It moved when he moved, responded when he exhaled.
Alive.
The deeper they went, the clearer it became:
This wasn't just a wound in the earth. It was a mouth.
The slope led them to a plateau halfway down, where the crater's walls curved inward like ribs.
Strange growths jutted out — crystalline formations that pulsed faintly with crimson light.
Each pulse matched the rhythm of that distant heartbeat — the one Vaibhav could almost feel echoing in his own veins.
Alicia reached out, touching one of the crystals lightly. "It's… warm. Almost organic."
Shin grimaced. "Don't tell me it's growing."
"It is." Her voice trembled slightly. "It's expanding with each pulse. This isn't static matter — it's reactive Qi crystallization."
Vaibhav knelt beside one of the fissures, eyes narrowing.
Tiny motes of red light swirled within, rising and sinking like sparks trapped in syrup.
He didn't need to touch it to know — that energy was wrong.
Unstable. Hungry.
> "Let's keep moving," he said quietly. "Whatever's causing this… it's deeper."
Their footsteps echoed strangely as they followed a spiraling path around the crater's wall. The deeper they went, the more the environment shifted.
The rock gave way to smooth surfaces — black glass laced with red veins.
The light dimmed, the only illumination coming from the fissures that lined the descent.
The hum grew louder now, turning into something that almost resembled a voice.
Not words — but rhythm.
An ancient resonance that pressed against the mind, like a heartbeat trying to crawl inside their skulls.
Shin stopped suddenly. "Did you hear that?"
Alicia frowned. "Hear what?"
He looked pale. "It… said something."
Vaibhav turned his head slightly. "No. It didn't say. It echoed through you."
Shin hesitated. "Meaning?"
Vaibhav didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
They all felt it now — that faint, whispering vibration threading through their bones, a call that wasn't sound but sensation.
They reached a cavern-like opening — a hollow chamber carved into the crater wall, its ceiling glimmering with red light. At its center lay a beast carcass, massive and grotesque.
Except it wasn't dead.
Not fully.
Its chest rose and fell faintly, even as its body twisted unnaturally. Its fur was gone, replaced by translucent crystal plates that pulsed under its skin, each beat echoing in time with the ground beneath them.
Shin's jaw tightened. "That thing's breathing."
Alicia lifted her scanner — readings spiked instantly. "Qi fluctuation unstable. It's mutating as we speak."
The beast stirred — a wet, grinding noise. Its head snapped upward, eyes hollow yet burning red from within. The crystals under its skin flared.
> "Contact!" Shin barked, already moving.
The creature lunged with unnatural speed — its claws slicing through molten rock like paper. Shin met it mid-air, twisting with trained precision, slamming his heel into its jaw.
The impact sent a shockwave across the chamber, shards of crystal scattering like glass rain.
Vaibhav's hand twitched toward his blade but he stopped himself. Shin had it under control — at least, that's what he wanted to believe.
The beast roared, a sound like metal grinding through bone.
Shin ducked low, spun, and drove his knee into its ribcage.
Bones cracked.
Qi flared crimson.
Then, in a blur, he drove his fist through the creature's chest, shattering its core in a burst of light.
Silence fell.
The beast convulsed once… twice… then collapsed, its crystal veins dimming slowly.
Alicia exhaled shakily, lowering her weapon. "Reading stable. The Qi signature should—"
She froze.
The scanner screamed.
The beast's Qi wasn't dissipating.
Instead, it bled into the ground — liquid crimson light seeping from the corpse, crawling across the rock like roots. Wherever it touched, the surface pulsed — absorbing it.
Alicia stumbled back. "It's feeding the crater."
Shin stared at the spreading glow. "That's not normal Qi behavior, right?"
"No," Vaibhav said quietly. "It's reclaiming energy. Like the planet itself is hungry."
The red mist began to rise — faint at first, then thicker, coiling around them like a living fog.
The temperature dropped.
Sound dulled.
For a moment, everything slowed — even their breathing.
Then Vaibhav felt it.
A pulse.
Deep. Heavy. Inside his chest.
His heartbeat… aligned.
Bum.
Bum.
Bum.
Each beat matched the rhythm echoing from below. His vision blurred, the edges of his sight flickering red. He could feel something brushing against his consciousness — vast, cold, and curious.
Not hostile. Not yet.
But aware.
> "Do you hear it?"
A voice. Not human. Not beast.
A resonance that vibrated through his bones.
Vaibhav's eyes snapped open — the world spun. He was still standing, but everything around him pulsed to that rhythm — the mist, the walls, even Shin and Alicia, their silhouettes flickering in and out like mirages.
He clenched his fist, forcing his Qi to stabilize. The distortion around him flickered once — violently — and the world snapped back into focus.
Alicia's voice broke through the static. "Vaibhav! Are you alright?!"
He nodded once, though sweat ran cold down his neck.
"Something down there… it's calling."
Shin spat. "Then we better ignore it."
Vaibhav's gaze drifted to the mist. "It's not giving us that choice."
The mist pulsed — faint whispers filling the cavern. The dead beast's crystal veins twitched one last time before disintegrating into glowing dust, vanishing into the fissures below.
The crater hummed louder now, the rhythm turning erratic — like a heartbeat accelerating.
Each vibration seemed to pierce through the ground, into the marrow.
Alicia's scanner malfunctioned completely — symbols and readings looping in unreadable patterns. She tore it off, throwing it aside. "It's no use. The energy field's rewriting my sensors."
"Then we trust instincts," Vaibhav said, his voice low, steady, but edged with unease. "We move fast, we don't touch anything else."
They pressed deeper.
The air shimmered around them — reality bending at the edges. Time itself felt sluggish, as though every second stretched just a little too long.
The path twisted, walls breathing faintly, light throbbing in sync with something below.
It wasn't just energy. It was conscious.
And for the first time, Vaibhav realized the truth.
This crater wasn't formed by impact or eruption.
It was born — a manifestation of something awakening beneath Ignis Prime's crust.
By the time they reached the inner edge, the mist had grown thick enough to obscure vision. Shapes moved within — slow, deliberate, undefined.
Shin's knuckles tightened. "We're not alone."
Vaibhav nodded slightly, but his voice came distant. "No… we're standing on the threshold."
Alicia swallowed hard. "Of what?"
He looked down — at the heart of the crater far below, where a faint crimson cocoon glowed amidst molten shadows, its light pulsing like a living thing.
> "Of whatever the planet's been trying to hide."
The heartbeat beneath the land thundered once — deep, resonant, filling every atom of their bodies.
The mist surged upward, and for a single instant, they all saw it — a silhouette, vast and serpentine, coiled deep within the fissures, watching them through the veil of crimson light.
Then silence.
The hum ceased.
The mist sank back.
The crater stilled.
But Vaibhav's chest didn't.
His pulse continued to echo — faintly, impossibly — in the same rhythm.
Later, when they made camp near the crater's edge, the world above seemed deceptively calm. The crimson sun dipped low, painting the glass ridges in molten gold.
Alicia sat wordlessly, recalibrating her broken scanner. Shin tried to joke, but his voice carried no confidence.
Vaibhav stood apart, staring into the endless dark below.
He didn't know if what he'd felt was connection or contamination. But one truth pressed heavy against his mind — when that rhythm entered his chest, something in the crater had listened back.
And in the depths, unseen by them all, the crimson cocoon stirred — cracking faintly, bleeding threads of red light into the sleeping veins of Ignis Prime.