The machetes went in together.
Steel bit through chromatic scale and sank deep into the Veil Basilisk's skull, right where refracted light collapsed into something solid enough to kill. The creature convulsed, camouflage stuttering violently—its body flickering in and out of existence as if reality itself were rejecting it.
Aegis leaned his weight forward and twisted.
The jungle shook.
The basilisk let out a final soundless scream—its presence tearing, unraveling—and then it was still. No fading. No vanishing. Just a massive corpse slumped against warped roots, blood shimmering like spilled oil as it soaked into the soil.
Aegis stumbled back, chest heaving.
Then the world rewrote him.
Pain detonated behind his eyes as the Catalog finished its work. His vision fractured into layers—light, heat, probability, expectation. His skin burned, then went numb. Sound folded inward until it felt like he was listening to the jungle through someone else's memory.
Camouflage didn't activate.
It asserted.
Aegis ceased to be a priority of reality.
The forest adjusted first—leaves no longer rustled where he stood, insects diverted their paths, light slid around him like he was a suggestion instead of matter. Then the machines reacted.
At the perimeter of the fourth-tier threshold, Axiom Vale operatives froze mid-step.
Optics flared. Cybernetic implants whined.
"Target status?" one operative barked, visor flooding with static overlays.
"I—" another hesitated. "I had him. I had him, he was right—"
They turned.
Aegis stood ten meters away.
None of them saw him.
Not because he was invisible.
Because their minds, organic and artificial alike, refused to keep him.
He moved.
The first operative fell without understanding why.
Aegis slipped behind him, blade sliding cleanly between augmented vertebrae where synthetic plating met flesh. There was no scream—just a soft exhale and the dull sound of a body collapsing into undergrowth that did not react.
The second operative spun, sensors finally screaming anomaly warnings.
"CONTACT—!"
Too late.
Aegis grabbed the man's shoulder, twisted, and drove his machete under the jaw. The blade scraped against internal augments, sparks flaring, but Chitin Weave and Kinetic Damping absorbed the backlash as he ripped free.
Blood hit the ground.
The jungle remembered that.
The rest of the squad scattered instantly, training taking over. Pulse rounds tore through foliage, thermal scans swept the clearing, drones lifted into the canopy.
They couldn't see him.
But they could see the effects.
"Fall back!" someone shouted. "He's still here—he's just—he's wrong!"
Aegis exhaled slowly.
I can't fight them head-on.
He knew that. His shifts favored survival, evasion, adaptation—not open warfare. Every kill cost him position, cost him time. And time was the one thing the fourth-tier danger zone never gave freely.
A shockwave hit the clearing.
Not mechanical.
Organic.
The ground buckled as something massive moved beneath it. Trees snapped. Roots exploded upward like ribs tearing through skin. A pressure rolled through the forest that made even the operatives hesitate.
Then something screamed.
It wasn't animal.
It wasn't human.
It was hunger given sound.
Axiom Vale's trackers spiked at once.
"What the hell is that?"
"Readings just jumped—this isn't on any local index—"
"Stage four just escalated—no—no, this is deeper—!"
They didn't realize what was happening.
They were pushing Aegis inward.
The jungle opened.
And the thing stepped out.
It was lizard-based—once.
Now it was everything it had ever eaten.
Its body was massive, plated in overlapping armor grown from a dozen different species—obsidian chitin, crystalline bone, flexible metallic sinew. Six limbs supported it, four clawed legs digging trenches into the soil, two larger forelimbs folded like a mantis's, edged with disintegration scars burned permanently into the air around them.
Wings unfolded from its back—not feathered, not membraned, but layered constructs of hardened scale and energy-veined cartilage. They didn't flap. They shifted, folding space beneath them.
Its head was wrong. Too many eyes. Too many jaws. A mouth within a mouth within a mouth, each lined with different teeth.
And at its core—
Devour.
The monster didn't roar.
It vanished.
Axiom Vale's lead operative died first.
One moment he was there. The next, half his body ceased to exist, disintegrated at a molecular level as the creature reappeared behind him. Blood didn't spill—it vaporized.
The squad opened fire.
It didn't matter.
The creature moved through space the way a thought moved through a mind—teleporting, reappearing, tearing operatives apart with contemptuous efficiency. Energy weapons bent away from it. Physical rounds shattered against layered defenses grown from things that should never have been eaten.
Aegis moved without thinking.
Then it found him.
The monster reappeared inside his blind spot.
Claws like compressed gravity tore across his chest.
Pain erased the world.
Aegis flew backward, hit the ground hard enough to crack stone, and screamed as blood poured freely. His Chitin Weave split. Kinetic Damping overloaded. His ribs screamed in protest as something deep inside him gave way.
Fatal.
The operatives saw it.
"He's down!" someone shouted. "He's dead—"
The Living Law disagreed.
Something inside Aegis locked.
Not healed—preserved.
His heart stuttered, then forced itself to beat. Blood flow rerouted, slowed, thickened. Pain dulled just enough to keep him conscious. The Living Law wrapped around his failing systems like a judge's gavel.
Not yet.
The monster loomed over him, jaws opening.
And then—
The Catalog screamed.
Not in warning.
In acquisition.
NEW SHIFT ACQUIRED
Designation:Devour
Source: Apex Composite Predator (Unindexed, Stage IV+)
Function: Assimilation of traits, abilities, and biological data from consumed entities.
Secondary Assimilation Detected…
Tertiary Assimilation Detected…
Aegis gasped.
The world exploded into information.
Every creature the monster had ever eaten screamed through him—data flooding neural pathways, genetic blueprints unfolding, traits stacking and compressing. Defense. Speed. Flight. Spatial displacement. Sleepless endurance.
And something else.
Disintegration.
The scar across his chest burned as Living Law stabilized him, flesh knitting slowly, painfully, imperfectly. The wound would remain- a reminder.
He stood.
The monster recoiled.
For the first time in its existence, it hesitated.
Aegis looked at it through borrowed instincts and stolen hunger and understood something terrifying.
I can eat you, too.
The jungle held its breath.
And deeper in the danger zone, something ancient noticed.