The air thickened first, pressing against the lungs like damp fabric, heavy with particles that burned faintly with each breath.
SC stumbled, boots sinking slightly into soil that looked solid but moved beneath him like slow muscle.
Behind him, Kaelen staggered, one hand clenched over his side where dark blood soaked through torn armor.
The forbidden area did not announce itself with walls or warnings. It revealed itself through wrongness.
The sky above was dim, filtered through something organic.
Twisted growths rose like fossilized ribs, some pulsing faintly, others cracked open to reveal glowing inner tissue.
Silence dominated, but it was oppressive, punctuated only by distant wet noises coming from no clear direction.
SC turned instinctively, panic sharpening his voice. "You're bleeding too fast."
Kaelen gritted his teeth, eyes locked forward. "Keep moving."
Behind them, the sound grew louder.
They had fled the outer ruins in chaos.
What had chased them out was no single creature. It had been many things forced into one form, be limbs that did not belong together, carapace fused with fur, jaws layered over other jaws, all moving out of rhythm.
SC's mind searched for patterns and failed. They were not beasts, they were not machines, and they were experiments that had survived their creators.
A scream echoed, sharp and metallic, followed by the sound of tearing flesh and stone.
Kaelen shoved SC forward just as something slammed into the ground where he had stood seconds earlier.
The impact sent vibrations through the earth, knocking SC off balance.
He hit the ground hard, palms sinking into warm, quivering soil.
"Get up!" Kaelen roared.
SC rolled aside as a massive limb slammed down, jointed incorrectly, skin stretched thin over visible mechanical structures.
The creature pulled itself into view or part of it did. Segments twitched independently. One head screamed while another clicked, emitting bursts of static.
Kaelen stepped in front of SC without hesitation, sword already in motion.
Despite blood loss and trembling legs, his strikes were precise and brutal. The blade carved upward, slicing through a scales of exposed tendons and wires.
The creature shrieked, a sound that cut into SC's skull as data implants overloaded trying to interpret it.
Kaelen drove the sword into a joint that should not exist, then kicked free as black fluid sprayed across the ground. The creature recoiled, thrashing wildly, tearing apart nearby growths in its pain, and more sounds answered it.
"They're calling each other," SC said, voice hoarse.
Kaelen grabbed him by the collar and hauled him upright. "Then we leave now."
Branches snapped and curled away from them, reacting like living things disturbed by their presence. SC felt eyes on him from every direction.
Sensors screamed warnings he could not decode.
The Forbidden Area was not just hostile.
It was aware.
Kaelen stumbled, nearly falling. SC caught him, shock cutting through fear at how cold Kaelen's armor had become.
"You can't keep fighting like this," SC said.
Kaelen let out a short, humorless laugh. "I don't plan to."
Ahead, the terrain dropped sharply. A ravine split the land, its depths hidden by glowing mist that pulsed like a breathing organ.
Narrow stone formations bridged the gap, half natural, half shaped by some mind that understood structure but not beauty.
"That's not on any map," SC said.
"Nothing here is," Kaelen replied.
A crash behind them sent stones raining down. One of the creatures burst through the undergrowth, larger than the first, body a shifting mass of insect plating and mammalian muscle.
Mechanical spines rose and fell along its back, arcs of energy discharging intermittently.
Kaelen shoved SC toward the ravine. "Go!"
"What about you?"
Blood poured steadily from his side. Kaelen turned back, sword gripped in both hands. "I will slow it."
SC froze for a heartbeat too long.
Kaelen's eyes blazed. "That's an order!"
SC sprinted across the stone bridge as the ground behind him erupted.
Kaelen met the charging creature head-on, leaping with a roar that carried defiance more than strength.
The sword struck deep, embedding into the creature's hardened plating. The monster slammed into him, both crashing against the ravine wall.
SC skidded to a stop, heart hammering. Kaelen hung from the edge, one hand gripping stone, the other still clutching the sword lodged in the creature. The monster thrashed, claws scraping, trying to dislodge the blade.
Without thinking, SC activated the emergency pulse on his datapad, rerouting power through a broken module he had repaired days earlier. The device screamed, overheating instantly. SC hurled it at the creature and dove aside.
The pulse detonated in a blinding flash. Energy tore through the ravine, frying exposed circuitry and cooking organic tissue. The creature convulsed violently, then collapsed, falling into the mist below.
Silence followed.
SC crawled to the edge, heart pounding. "Kaelen?"
A hand shot up, gripping stone. SC pulled with everything he had. Kaelen collapsed onto the ground beside him, gasping, armor cracked and blackened, blood seeping freely.
They lay for a moment, listening, with nothing followed.
The Forbidden Area seemed to settle, as if satisfied.
SC dragged Kaelen away from the ravine, deeper into the twisted landscape, with partial cover appeared beneath a massive, hollow structure that resembled a rib cage grown from crystal and bone.
Kaelen tried to sit up and failed.
"Stay still," SC said sharply.
Kaelen smirked weakly. "Since when do you give medical orders?"
"Since you started dying on me."
SC tore open Kaelen's armor. The wound was bad, deep, tearing muscle, leaving traces of dirt embedded in the flesh.
" If not treated you will get an infection" SC said as he is cleaning and tending the wounds, then he helped kaelen to rest his back against the wall.
After that SC went to his scanner . "Those things," he muttered, scanning the area with trembling hands, "they're not just experiments. They're adaptive. They're learning."
Kaelen closed his eyes briefly. "Then this place is worse than we thought."
SC activated his scanner, ignoring the flood of error warnings. Readings spiked and dropped unpredictably. Even time markers felt unstable.
"This area," SC said quietly, "it's not abandoned. It's contained."
Kaelen opened one eye. "Contained by whom?"
SC hesitated. "By something that failed," he said finally.
In the distance, movement stirred.
Not fast.
Not aggressive.
Just watching.
The forbidden area had accepted them inside, and it was not done with them yet.