The tunnels breathed.
That was Ethan's first thought as they stepped beneath the lower levels of Haven, the air thick with damp heat and the faint hiss of settling stone. Every footstep came back doubled, a ghost echo that felt too close, too human. Resin glistened along the walls—Aria's ants had carved a stable path, sealing cracks with translucent green pitch that pulsed faintly, alive with traces of essence.
Five figures moved in single file. Ethan led, lantern held low; the light swam across his armor and caught the dust motes like drifting sparks. Behind him came Kira, silent as her shadow, twin daggers reversed in her hands. Sofia walked a pace behind her, bow strung and ready, arrows tipped with scavenged alloy. Ellie followed with her bear lumbering close, its metallic fur brushing the tunnel's edge with a dull scrape. Maria brought up the rear, the glow of her wrist-mounted essence guns painting her face in shifting hues of blue and violet.
"Signal's steady," Maria murmured. The small sensor in her left palm hummed, a thin coil of light circling its rim. "One major reading twenty meters ahead. Stationary. Heartbeat-level rhythm."
Ethan glanced back. "Just one?"
Maria nodded once. "Feels like it. Big, though."
Kira's smile was quick and sharp. "Then we cut it before it wakes."
No one argued. They'd seen what happened when nests were ignored.
---
The descent twisted through veins of stone and resin, widening into a sloped shaft. The air grew warmer, heavier with a mineral sweetness that clung to the tongue. Drops of condensed moisture hissed when they hit Maria's gun barrels. Every so often the floor trembled faintly—distant, rhythmic, like something enormous breathing through the earth.
They reached a narrow throat that opened suddenly into a low cavern. Blue light pulsed across the walls in gentle waves, and for a heartbeat Ethan thought they'd found the heart itself. Then he realized the light came from inside the shapes scattered across the floor.
Eggs.
Five of them.
Each one the size of a grown man curled tight, their shells translucent and veined with dark strands that pulsed to some internal rhythm. The air around them shimmered faintly, a halo of essence heat rising off the gel that pooled beneath.
Sofia's voice was barely a whisper. "They're beautiful."
Kira crouched, eyes narrowed. "Beautiful things kill you fastest." She pointed to the ceiling, to the cords that climbed up and vanished into darkness. "That's feeding them. Cut the lines and burn the shells."
Maria stepped forward, flicked a switch, and the twin barrels on her wrists came alive with a low hum. "On your mark."
Ethan raised his hand, palm glowing faintly green. "Now."
---
The chamber erupted in light.
Sofia loosed two arrows that burned with compressed essence; they hit the nearest egg and split it like glass. Steam hissed. Kira darted forward, daggers slicing through the feeding cords in quick, economical arcs. Maria's guns kicked and spat white fire—each shot punched a molten hole through a shell, spilling luminous gel that hissed and curdled on the floor.
The System chimed softly in Ethan's vision.
> +2,000 EXP
+2,000 EXP
+2,000 EXP
+2,000 EXP
+2,000 EXP
They froze for half a second, stunned.
"Five of them," Sofia breathed. "That's… ten thousand total?"
Maria laughed once, short and disbelieving. "We could clear an entire tier if there are more down here."
Ethan didn't join the laughter. He watched the gel on the ground creep toward the tunnel's far end, drawn by something unseen. The air carried a low vibration now—not sound, not yet, just pressure. He turned his head and the walls seemed to pulse with his heartbeat.
"Do you feel that?" he asked quietly.
Ellie frowned, resting a hand on her bear's flank. "She does." The creature's metal fur rippled, plates clinking softly. "It's like thunder, far away."
Maria checked her sensor. The light along its rim jumped, once, twice—then began to strobe.
"That's not one heartbeat," she whispered. "That's hundreds."
---
They followed the gel trail deeper, weapons ready but minds unwilling to accept what the data implied. The tunnel narrowed, forcing them to stoop. Resin slicked the floor in uneven ridges; underfoot it felt warm, pulsing faintly, as if the ground itself carried veins.
Kira stopped first. "Do you smell that?"
Sofia grimaced. "Rot?"
"No," Kira said softly. "Breath."
The corridor ended in a crack barely wide enough for one person at a time. Beyond it, a dull crimson glow pulsed like distant embers. Ethan ducked through—and the world opened.
---
The next chamber dwarfed the one before.
It wasn't a room so much as a cathedral grown rather than built, walls curving high overhead into darkness. Columns of fused resin twisted upward like petrified trees, their trunks threaded with pulsing light. Every surface shimmered with moisture. The floor sloped gently downward toward a basin of opaque gel that stretched farther than the lanterns could reach.
And everywhere—everywhere—were eggs.
Hundreds.
They hung from the walls, clustered on the pillars, half-submerged in the gel. Each pulsed in rhythm, the same dull heartbeat Maria's sensor had screamed about. Some were as small as fists, others big enough to hold trucks. The nearest ones shivered as if reacting to the team's warmth.
Sofia's bow arm drooped. "Gods…"
Maria raised her sensor again; the device whined, lights bleeding together. "I can't even get a count. The signal's overlapping itself."
Ethan felt his stomach twist. "Back out. Quietly."
They started to move—but the sound reached them first. A wet pop, like fruit splitting in summer heat. Then another. Then another.
"Don't move," Kira hissed.
Across the basin, one of the large eggs convulsed. A split ran down its side, viscous fluid spilling like thick honey. Something pressed from within—a shape, skeletal, half-formed. The smell hit next: copper and ammonia and something electric, sharp enough to sting the eyes.
Ellie's bear growled low, a metallic rumble that made the floor vibrate.
Then the egg tore open.
The thing that fell out was small—barely human in outline, limbs too long, spine ridged with half-grown plates. It tried to rise, slipped, and screamed. The sound wasn't loud, but it carried, threading through the chamber like a note struck on crystal.
All around them, the eggs responded.
A hundred soft pops became a chorus. The red glow deepened; veins along the walls brightened, pumping faster. The hum that had followed them from above resolved into a single, enormous heartbeat.
Maria whispered, "They're linked. They're all—"
The ground trembled violently, cutting her off. Resin dust rained from above. A second wave of eggs split, spilling light.
Ethan's breath caught. "Move," he said. "Back—now!"
They turned for the corridor. Behind them the newborn's scream climbed in pitch, echoed by a dozen more.
Kira spun once at the threshold, eyes wide. "How many?"
Maria looked at her screen one last time. The numbers blurred and folded into nonsense. "Thousands."
Ethan's lantern guttered. In the last flicker before darkness swallowed the chamber, he saw the walls move—not collapsing, not shaking, but breathing.
---
They stumbled into the narrow passage, hearts pounding, light shaking across slick walls. The tunnel seemed smaller, the air hotter. Behind them came the wet sound of shells splitting, of claws scraping against stone. The first echoing screech rolled after them like a stormwind.
Sofia glanced back once, face pale. "We need to seal this—now!"
Maria braced her guns, fired two quick bursts into the ceiling; molten resin splashed down, beginning to harden in sluggish sheets. The air filled with smoke that smelled like burnt sugar.
Ethan covered her, green threads spinning from his hands to reinforce the collapse. "Run!"
The roar that followed drowned everything.
The tunnel shook as if something enormous had hit the chamber wall. Cracks split through the resin, light bleeding through them like lava through stone.
Kira caught Ethan's arm. "We didn't kill the heart. We just made it angry."
Ethan didn't answer. He could still hear the sound from behind the seal—not random, not animal. It came in waves, precise, organized. Communication.
"They're calling," Maria whispered.
"Calling what?" Sofia demanded.
Maria met her eyes, terrified. "The ones that already hatched."
---
They reached the surface an hour later, filthy and trembling. The beacon light stabbed down through the courtyard fog like a sword. Marcus and Keith were already waiting at the tunnel mouth, alarm written across every line of their faces.
Keith took one look at Ethan's expression and swore softly. "What did you find?"
Ethan's voice was hoarse. "Not a nest," he said. "A factory."
Maria sank to the ground, arms wrapped around her knees, the sensor still pulsing faintly in her palm. "And it's awake."