Chapter 32 — Pulse of the Awakening
The deeper they walked, the more the hive felt wrong.
Not hostile.
Not even threatening.
Just… aware.
The walls were no longer simple chitin; they were threaded with lines of shifting crimson light, glowing in slow, rhythmic pulses that matched neither breath nor heartbeat. It was like walking through the arteries of something enormous that didn't care about their presence, but still felt every step they took.
Vaibhav placed one hand against the wall as they passed.
Heat radiated outward—alive, steady, unnatural.
"Still going down," Shin muttered. His voice bounced lightly across the curved passage. "Feels like this path never ends."
Alicia didn't answer. Her eyes stayed fixed on the sloping tunnel ahead.
After Immortal-class shards, after thousands of dead beasts, they had expected resistance—something, anything—to stand in their way.
Instead, the hive was quiet.
Too quiet.
Only the low, distant hum rose from below, vibrating faintly against their boots with each step.
Minutes stretched.
Passages widened.
Heat thickened.
The tunnel bent sharply, guiding them into a larger opening. The red veins around them brightened, forming a dim illumination that revealed the scale of the chamber they had reached.
Shin stopped first.
Alicia followed, breath drawing in sharply.
Vaibhav stepped between them, eyes narrowing.
They had reached the center.
A cavern larger than anything they had seen so far opened before them—circular, perfectly symmetrical, its ceiling lost to darkness. The floor rose into a natural platform, where crimson chitin formed a cradle-like structure.
And inside it—
A cocoon.
It was massive, nearly ten meters tall, shaped like a curved spindle of hardened chitin and crystal. Obsidian-black plates wrapped around its form while violet cracks flickered across its surface, glowing slowly like a heartbeat. Each pulse sent faint tremors through the platform.
The cocoon was alive.
And it was breathing.
Alicia stepped forward. "This… is what absorbed the life force?"
Shin clicked his tongue. "This thing is way bigger than Immortal class."
Vaibhav didn't respond.
He took one step closer.
The pressure leaking from the cocoon wasn't murderous or explosive—it was ancient. Old power, compressed and restrained, trying to seep out through every crack. He recognized the sensation from the tiny bent threads of energy he had tracked earlier.
Every stolen life force.
All the redirected power.
All the dead beasts.
It had all been pulled here.
The cocoon pulsed again—once, heavy, enough to shake loose dust from the ceiling.
A faint, ocean-deep sound echoed inside it. Something between a rumble and a breath. Then the cracks brightened, glowing bright violet for a moment.
Alicia stepped back. "It reacted."
"No," Vaibhav said quietly. "It's waking up."
The air shifted.
Not wind.
Not heat.
Something else entirely.
A ripple passed through the hive's walls, racing outward like a shockwave carried not through air, but through the structure itself. It flowed past them, out of the chamber, through every connected tunnel.
Shin's eyes widened. "The F@ck was that?"
The hive answered before he finished.
A chorus of roars exploded from every direction at once.
Not a few.
Not dozens.
Not hundreds.
All of them.
Every beast in the hive.
Every beast in the fire region deep underground.
Transcendent to Immortal class beasts in the ignis prime — Frost regions. fire regions. thunder regions. mountain regions. forest regions.
Their roars shook the walls.
Their howls vibrated through bone.
It was not rage. Not fear.
It was instinct.
A response.
A submission.
Alicia grabbed Vaibhav's arm. "We need to get out. Now."
Shin had already turned. "Move!"
The three sprinted back the way they came.
The tunnel buckled with noise as the roars continued, echoing endlessly through the hive. The ground shook in uneven pulses as if the entire place was reacting to the awakening happening at its heart.
Halfway up the rising slope, the tremors intensified. Pebbles and small fragments rattled down the walls, and the deep hum that had accompanied them for hours now transformed into a pounding vibration.
Shin shouted without looking back, "Of all times for this thing to wake up—"
"That cocoon didn't move randomly," Alicia said sharply while running. "It responded to us."
"No," Vaibhav muttered. "It responded to me. It was familiar."
The words weren't reassuring.
Light flickered violently behind them as the pulses grew stronger.
Something was changing.
Something was about to break open.
When they finally reached the upper split of tunnels, their path shook again—harder this time—and Shin nearly lost balance.
"Go! Keep going!"
They reached the final sloping passage, the one that led toward the hive's entrance. Their steps echoed rapidly, every footfall drowned by the roars that had now begun sounding slightly distorted—warped, like the beasts screaming were no longer entirely themselves.
Alicia looked back once.
Even from this far, she could feel the pulses growing heavier.
They were almost at the surface level when—
Meanwhile in the centre of the hive.
A sound erupted.
A crack.
Deep.
Sharp.
Bone-like.
The cocoon.
The air tightened around them, suddenly heavier, as if the hive's oxygen was being sucked inward toward the center.
Another crack sounded through the hive.
A deeper one.
Then another.
And another.
The trio broke into a full sprint.
They burst through the last tunnel into the topmost chamber.
This part of the hive still looked like a cavern—stalactite chitin, wide flooring, and one giant opening that led out into the ash-covered fire region.
Beasts outside were still roaring.
Their voices shook the sky.
Shin didn't stop moving until he reached the exit.
Vaibhav turned once more toward the tunnel.
Meanwhile… The pulse from the cocoon hit the walls like a physical shockwave.
The cracks were no longer slow—they were rapid now, constant, like something inside was clawing to get out.
Shin grabbed both of them by the wrists.
"Out. We ain't dying inside this hive."
They sprinted out into the open fire-lit valley outside the hive entrance—ashen ground, molten rivers in the distance, dust rising from millions of beast roars.
And inside the hive—
the cocoon cracked again.
A piece of black outer shell fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
A pulse of violet energy radiated outward.
The trio felt it even from outside.
Vaibhav stared into the darkness of the tunnel. "Something above immortal-level is waking up."
The hive went silent for one breath.
Then the cocoon split down the center.
A shockwave of violet energy burst out, surging through the entire hive and outward into the region as a massive roar tore through every cavern, every chamber, every tunnel.
Cracks spidered under their feet.
Dust rained from the cliffs.
Hundreds of beasts outside the hive reared back, howls snapping upward.
Alicia whispered, barely audible, "It's awakening…"
They stood at the entrance of the hive, breath steadying, the roars continuing around them in waves—violent, terrified, instinctual.
The moment the trio stepped fully out of the hive's mouth, the sky shook.
The roars that had filled the fire region moments ago twisted into something uglier—
a choking, rasping sound.
Alicia froze.
Shin swore under his breath.
Vaibhav's eyes widened.
All across the scorched plains, beasts were twitching.
Their claws spasmed.
Their bodies convulsed.
Their backs arched unnaturally, tendons snapping tight like drawn wires.
One by one—
They collapsed.
No struggle.
No breath.
No resistance.
Just death.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Every beast across the fire region fell at once, hitting the ground with dull, sickening thuds that echoed into the distance like rolling drums.
Shin whispered, "What the actual—"
But Vaibhav was already watching the air.
Thin green streams—life force—were rising from the corpses like smoke trails, bending sharply toward the hive.
All of them.
Not a single thread tried to enter him.
Every line of life was being pulled backward into the tunnels, straight into the cocoon they had seen.
Vaibhav's eyes followed the streams. "It's… taking everything."
He swallowed once. "This is what I've been seeing. From the beginning. Every time my bars filled—the leftover life force didn't vanish. It was being pulled here. To the center."
Shin turned his head slowly toward the hive entrance.
"So this entire region… was feeding that thing."
A silence settled—heavy, throbbing, suffocating.
Nothing moved now.
No beast cried.
No wind stirred.
The fire region—the most violent zone they had seen so far—became a graveyard in minutes.
They waited.
Minutes crawled by.
Every breath felt too loud.
An hour passed.
Then—
The ground under their feet shifted.
A low groan rose from beneath them, deep in the earth's bones. Pebbles bounced. Cracks formed across the ashen surface. The slope leading into the hive vibrated, then sagged inward.
Alicia stepped back. "It's collapsing—move!"
The trio jumped back just as the entire entrance caved in.
Rocks, chitin, melted soil, shards of glowing crystal—everything fell into a spiraling sinkhole that swallowed half the valley.
A massive plume of dust blasted upward, rushing past them in a wave.
They shielded their faces.
More tremors followed—rhythmic, growing, violent.
Shin steadied himself with one arm. "It's coming up. Whatever's inside—it's pushing everything aside."
Vaibhav felt it too.
A pressure rising.
Stronger than the cocoon's pulse.
Stronger than the Transcendents.
Stronger than the Immortal-class Beasts.
The air thickened.
Heat warped the space in front of them.
A sudden shockwave shot through the earth—
BOOM—
a deep blast of force that swept dust and ash across the valley.
Alicia looked toward the collapsing pit.
"Something's awakening."
A roar followed.
Not a normal roar.
Not a beast's cry.
Not something meant for lesser creatures to hear.
This roar was layered—
multiple tones stacked together—
deep enough to shake bones, sharp enough to stab through eardrums.
It rolled across the valley, hit the cliffs, bounced back, and filled the region like thunder trapped in a cage.
Dust lifted off the ground.
Shattered chitin vibrated.
Even the dead beasts' corpses twitched once from the force.
The trio didn't speak.
There was nothing to say.
The ground beneath their feet vibrated, alive and shifting.
Something huge was coming.
Something powerful enough to make thousands of beasts scream until their throats tore.
Something strong enough to absorb the life force of everything in the hive and still hunger for more.
Something above Immortal-class.
Something awake.
A final crack echoed from deep below.
The awakening had begun.