Chapter 9: The Cost of Curiosity

The order was simple: control the source of the power. Study it. Harness it. Take what can be taken. That’s how the Ferox had built empires—through force and fire. But this world resisted more quietly.

Each day the Ferox crews would return to the site only to find equipment damaged, weird drawings all over their machinery, but that was the least of their problems. At least once the crew began to go missing. But still, the Ferox persisted.

The soil around it was warm—too warm. Touching it caused tremors of memory, often not your own. Drones sent inside short-circuited. Footage revealed walls that folded inward impossibly. Engineers reported hearing their own screams from the walls before vanishing completely.

But still, the Ferox dug.

Inside, a humming began—low at first, like the breath of something asleep. The closer they came, the more that breath became a voice. One that whispered commands not in words, but in compulsions.

The Ferox didn’t awaken the Void.

They invited it.

And the Shrine, long dormant, pulsed once more—no longer in warning, but in anticipation. And then suddenly, from the jungles brush, came an arrow flying through the air striking a marine. As the soldier lay dying and the men began to look around. All they could see staring back at them from the jungles thick fauna, was the hundreds of glowing green, lizard like eyes.