The stone beneath their feet trembled again, faint at first—barely noticeable amid the stillness that followed the hooded figure's chilling proclamation. But then, like a drumbeat of doom, it grew. A pulse. A throb. A rhythm of some monstrous heartbeat echoing from the walls and floor of the throne room.
Lieutenant Sato barely had time to register the tremors before the rift behind the throne yawned open again—violently, unnaturally. The black-purple tear in space flared outward like a bleeding wound in the air itself, its edges sparking with arcs of unearthly energy. The throne cracked and split as jagged claws the size of steel girders curled around its sides.
And then it came.
It didn't just emerge—it unfolded.
First came the chittering. A piercing, spine-gnawing screech that echoed through the vast chamber, like nails dragged across bone and steel. Then the limbs—eight of them, each armored with glossy black chitin, ending in barbed talons that gouged through stone like wet clay. Behind them, a long, segmented tail arched high into the chamber, tipped with a venomous stinger thicker than a man's torso, already dripping with acidic ichor.
The creature's body was a grotesque fusion—its lower half unmistakably arachnid, but fused grotesquely with the twisted bulk of a desert scorpion. Its mouth, or what passed for one, opened into four gnashing mandibles, and inside them rows of spinning, spiraled fangs rotated like meat grinders. Its eyes—dozens of them—glowed a haunting, milky red, fixated on the stunned crowd below.
The room, which had fallen into a quiet storm of tension just moments earlier, now erupted into chaos.
"OPEN FIRE!" Sato's voice cracked through the chamber as he raised his sidearm and began firing, more out of instinct than belief that it would help.
The front ranks of the task force obeyed without hesitation. Bullets, plasma shots, and incendiary grenades flew through the air in a desperate bid to suppress the monstrosity. But every shot that landed on its armored hide ricocheted harmlessly or sizzled out as if the creature absorbed heat and kinetic energy alike.
The creature lunged—so fast that the air exploded in a shockwave behind it.
A swath of soldiers were ripped apart before they could even scream. Its legs speared through bodies with brutal efficiency, and the stinger impaled three men at once, hoisting them into the air and flinging their twitching corpses against the far wall. Their armor melted from the acidic venom as their flesh boiled.
Lieutenant Sato ducked behind a broken column as the monster screeched again. His mind raced, blood thundering in his ears. Every instinct told him to run. Every trained fiber of his being screamed for a strategy. But what strategy could they possibly use against something born from nightmare and fury?
Across the chamber, Genghis Asura had already leapt into the fray, eyes blazing with a wild, animalistic rage. His flesh pulsed and rippled as his mutations surged to the surface—his arms grotesquely stretching, claws forming over hands, bone and muscle twisting into tools of destruction.
"BRING IT DOWN!" he bellowed, rallying his mutant squad.
His warriors charged with primal screams—massive, weaponized infected, grotesque and terrifying in their own right. They leapt and struck at the creature's legs, slashing at joints and tendons with blades, claws, and elemental bursts. One of them, a brute with molten skin and iron fists, punched directly into the chitin, cracking it slightly.
The hybrid shrieked. It spun.
It retaliated.
One of Genghis's team—his second-in-command, a horned mutant named Rakka—was caught mid-air by one of the creature's claws and slammed into the ground hard enough to crater the floor. He didn't move after.
Another mutant tried to leap onto the creature's back, but the stinger impaled him through the spine mid-flight and shattered his ribcage from the inside with a twitch. The corpse convulsed before being hurled into the burning wreckage of a military vehicle that had been dragged into the dungeon for transport.
Sato crawled toward two wounded soldiers pinned beneath rubble. "Stay with me!" he barked, his hands trembling as he tried to lift debris, but he was too slow.
The monster was already upon them.
With horrifying speed, it reached out and snatched one of the men with a claw. Sato tried to shield the other—but blood sprayed across his face as the soldier beside him was torn in half.
"FALL BACK!" someone screamed, but it was too late. The room was a killing field.
Genghis roared again—an unholy sound that was barely human—as his claws gouged into one of the creature's eyes. Black ichor sprayed, and the beast screeched in agony, finally reeling back.
But the victory was short-lived.
Another of his mutants—a young one named Seiji—was caught and flung into a wall so hard his spine broke audibly. Another, Yuka, had both legs sliced off by a swipe of the claws and was dragged away screaming into the shadows behind the throne.
By now, less than a third of the task force remained standing.
Lieutenant Sato, armor cracked, face bloodied, crouched low behind a destroyed weapons cache. His body shook—not from fear, but from rage. Helplessness. He had led his men into this place. He had believed this mission was strategic, calculated. But this… this was madness.
His fingers reached for a detonator.
If they were going to die, then at least they'd take this creature with them.
"Genghis!" he shouted across the battlefield. "We can trap it—beneath the collapsed chamber pillars! We need to bait it!"
Genghis was barely recognizable now—covered in the blood of both his enemies and allies, his body mutated with spikes and armored plates. He turned briefly to Sato and gave a grim, savage nod.
"Make it count," he growled, before charging back in with the remnants of his team.
Asura moved like a berserker, leaping onto the creature's tail and slashing at its joints with bone claws. His mutants joined him, swarming the hybrid. They died one by one—horribly—but they kept the beast distracted.
Sato gave the signal.
A series of explosives went off across the chamber. The ceiling above groaned, then began to crack. Dust fell like rain as massive chunks of stone and steel began to dislodge.
As the hybrid reared up, roaring in pain and rage, the ceiling gave way—burying the creature in an avalanche of debris.
The tremors stopped.
For a moment, the throne room was silent—save for the flicker of flames and the choking coughs of the wounded.
Only a handful remained—Genghis, battered and on one knee, his team nearly annihilated. Sato, breathing heavily, his eyes hollow. Blood stained every surface. And yet, the rift behind the throne still pulsed. The hooded figure was gone—vanished during the chaos.
But the message was clear.
This was only the beginning.