The transition from grove to wasteland was like stepping between realities. The temperature dropped fifteen degrees in the space of ten steps. The air, filtered and clean within the grove's influence, became thick with particulates that their masks had to work to process. Colors drained from the world like paint washing away, leaving only grays, browns and the occasional yellow of toxic puddles.
The ground changed with every step forward. Within the grove, soil enriched by decades of Crystalist root networks supported small plants, insects, even the occasional small mammal. Outside, the earth was cracked and dead, scarred by acid rain and radiation. Nothing grew here except the occasional patch of mutant fungus, and even that struggled to survive.
They moved in their practiced formation—Jyn on point with his rifle ready, Elesa ranging ahead as scout, Xander in the back tinkering. They'd run this route dozens of times over the years, knew every landmark and danger zone. But the wasteland was never the same twice. Wind patterns shifted the dunes of ash. Radiation zones expanded and contracted according to laws no one understood. And the threats... the threats were always evolving.
"Remember the first time we came out here?" Xander asked, his voice muffled by his mask. "We lasted about an hour before running back."
"We were children," Elesa pointed out. "Stupid children who thought the wasteland was an adventure."
"It is an adventure," Xander protested. "A horrible, toxic, definitely fatal adventure."
They walked for an hour without incident, following a route that took them around the worst of the radiation zones. Jyn's foster parents had mapped these routes years ago, using equipment that they imitated and invented from old-world tech.
In the ruins of the old world that surrounded them. Here, the skeletal remains of an office building, its steel frame twisted into impossible shapes by the heat of atomic fire. There, a parking lot full of vehicles that would never move again, their occupants long since turned to dust or worse. Road signs in languages that some could still read, pointing to destinations that no longer existed.
The shard pulsed steadily, its whispers just below the threshold of Jyn's consciousness. But sometimes, when Jyn concentrated, he could make out fragments:
Nepheos... the echo sounds...
He'd never told anyone about the whispers, only Xander and Elesa. How could he explain that the artifact his parents died researching was talking to him? Dreams that showed him visions of places that couldn't exist?
"Movement," Elesa said suddenly, dropping into a crouch.
They froze, weapons ready. In the wasteland, everything was a potential threat. Mutant animals, radiation-sick humans, and worst of all, the Hollowborn.
"Where?" Jyn called to her from behind, scanning through his rifle's scope.
"Two o'clock, about three hundred meters. In the ruins of that gas station."
He adjusted his aim, finding the structure. For a moment, he saw nothing. Then—movement. Shadows shifting in ways that had nothing to do with the wind.
"Hollowborn," he confirmed. "I count six, maybe seven."
"They're moving strangely," Elesa observed. "Look at the pattern."
She was right. These Hollowborn weren't wandering aimlessly like the ones they usually encountered. They were searching, moving in a clear pattern through the ruins. One would check a building while the others maintained a perimeter. When it emerged, they would all move to the next structure.
"That's... not possible," Xander said. "Hollowborn don't use tactics. They can't. The fungal infection destroys higher brain functions."
"Tell them that," Jyn muttered.
The shard pulsed harder, its whispers becoming louder briefly:
They search... they hunger... Nepheos calls to them...
One of the Hollowborn stopped suddenly, its head—or what remained of it—turning slowly toward their position. Even at this distance, Jyn could see the fungal growths that had replaced its eyes, glowing with a faint phosphorescence. It stood perfectly still for a long moment, then released a sound that carried across the wasteland—part shriek, part moan, all wrongness.
The entire pack turned toward them in perfect unison.
"Well, shit," Xander said eloquently.
"How did they detect us?" Elesa demanded. "We're downwind, and too far for thermal detection."
The shard burned against Jyn's chest, and he had his answer.
"Questions later," he said. "Lets fight now."
The Hollowborn charged.
They moved nothing like the shambling corpses from pre-war entertainment. These creatures sprinted with inhuman speed, their fungal-enhanced muscles providing bursts of tremendous power. Their bodies were nightmares given form—once human, now twisted by parasitic infection into something that existed only to spread. Limbs bent at unnatural angles. Fungal growths erupted from flesh like obscene flowers. And their faces... what remained of their faces showed no emotion, no recognition, no humanity.
"Three hundred meters," Jyn called out, settling his rifle against his shoulder. "Xander, get in line are your cryo charges ready?"
"Always!" His friend's rifle hummed as it powered up, frost already forming on the barrel dripping ice.
"Elesa, can you flank if they get close?"
"On it," she replied, adjusting her position.
"Two hundred meters," Jyn continued his countdown. The Hollowborn were covering ground fast, too fast. At this rate, they'd be on them in less than thirty seconds.
"One-fifty. Weapons free."
Jyn's rifle cracked, the sound sharp in the dead air of the wasteland. His first shot took the lead Hollowborn in the head, the hollow-point round expanding on impact to create massive tissue damage. The creature's skull exploded in a shower of fungal matter and bone fragments.
But it kept running.
The body continued for another ten steps before finally collapsing, the fungal network taking precious seconds to realize it had lost critical mass.
"Shit," Jyn muttered, adjusting his aim. "Headshots aren't immediately effective. Target center mass, destroy as much tissue as possible."
His next shot hit another Hollowborn in the chest, the hollow-point round tearing a fist-sized hole through its torso. This one stumbled but kept coming, fungal strands already working to seal the wound.
Xander's cryo rifle hissed, launching bolts of supercooled particles. The temperature in a two-meter radius dropped to near absolute zero in an instant. Two Hollowborn caught in the effect froze solid, their momentum carrying them forward until they shattered against a concrete barrier.
"That's more like it!" Xander crowed, already lining up his next shot.
But there were still four Hollowborn closing fast, and they were learning. They spread out, making it harder to target multiple creatures with a single cryo blast. One used the ruins for cover, darting between obstacles in a way that suggested planning and higher thinking.
"Fifty meters!" Jyn called out, switching to rapid fire. His rifle barked repeatedly, each shot carefully placed. He targeted joints—knees, hips, shoulders. Mobility kills rather than instant deaths. A Hollowborn couldn't charge if it couldn't walk.
One creature went down, both legs severed at the knees. It continued crawling forward, pulling itself along with its arms, but its speed was greatly reduced. Another lost an arm at the shoulder, fungal matter spraying from the wound like pale blood.
"Too close!" Elesa announced, and then she was moving.
She flowed across the wasteland like liquid death, her falcon blade singing as it cleared its sheath. The ceramic edge, honed sharp, it carved through fungal flesh with disturbing ease. Her first strike took a Hollowborn's head clean off. Unlike Jyn's bullets, the blade's clean cut seemed to disrupt the fungal network more efficiently. The creature dropped immediately.
She spun, the blade's momentum carrying her into a second strike that bisected another Hollowborn at the waist. The two halves fell separately, twitching but unable to coordinate.
The last standing Hollowborn lunged at her, its fingers elongated into fungal claws. Elesa dropped beneath its grasp, her blade sweeping up to remove both arms at the elbows. Before it could react, she reversed the strike and removed its legs.
"Clear?" she called out, not even breathing hard.
"Clear," Jyn confirmed, putting a final round into the crawler to ensure it stayed down.
"Clear and very impressed," Xander added. "Remind me never to make you angry."
They stood for a moment, weapons still ready, watching for any movement. The Hollowborn corpses lay scattered across the ground, already beginning to decompose as the fungal matter lost cohesion.
"That was different," Elesa said, cleaning her blade with a specialized cloth that neutralized fungal spores. "They detected us from too far away, moved with too much coordination."
"And they were searching for something," Jyn added. He could feel the shard pulsing, almost eagerly. It wanted him to understand something, but the message was just out of reach.
"We should collect samples," Xander suggested, pulling collection vials from his pack. "If these are some new variant, the Confederacy needs to know."
They spent a few minutes gathering tissue samples, careful to avoid direct contact even through their protective gear. Fungal spores were insidious, and infection meant a slow, horrible death as your body was converted from the inside out.
"Look at this," Xander said, examining one of the corpses more closely. "The fungal growth pattern is different. More organized. And these structures here—" he pointed to crystalline formations within the fungal mass, "—I've never seen anything like this."
Jyn knelt beside him, The crystalline structures were familiar somehow, like echoes of something he'd seen in dreams.
Nepheos bleeds through... the threshold weakens...
"We should keep moving," he said, standing abruptly. "This area might attract more."
They gathered their samples and continued east, leaving the corpses for the wasteland to reclaim. The encounter had shaken them all, though none wanted to admit it. Hollowborn were supposed to be predictable, mindless. If they were evolving, adapting, learning... the implications were terrifying.
The wasteland stretched before them, a tapestry of destruction and decay. Here and there, signs of the old world poked through—a street sign too tough to rust away, a concrete foundation too massive to crumble, a toy somehow preserved in the toxic soil. Each artifact told a story of the world that was, the billions who had lived and laughed and loved before the bombs fell and the rifts opened and everything changed.
"Storm coming," Elesa announced, pointing to the horizon.
The sky, already a sickly yellow-green, was darkening to the color they were used to. Clouds roiled and twisted, Jyn could see the telltale green tinge that meant acid rain.
"How long?" he asked.
"Twenty minutes, maybe less."
"There's a cave system about a kilometer north," Xander said, consulting his map. "We've used it before."
They changed direction, moving faster now. Acid rain was one of the wasteland's most common dangers, but that didn't make it less deadly. The rain couldn't eat through their protective gear, but exposed skin would be gone in minutes.
The first drops began to fall as they reached the cave entrance, hissing against the rocks like angry serpents. They squeezed through the narrow opening just as the storm unleashed its full fury unleashed.
Outside, the world disappeared behind a curtain of corrosive rain, each drop a tiny chemical weapon against anything organic. The sound was overwhelming—a constant hiss like the world's largest frying pan cooking the world's worst meal.
They were safe, for now. But as Jyn settled against the cave wall, the shard started vibrating slightly against his chest, he couldn't shake the feeling that something fundamental had changed. The Hollowborn were evolving. The whispers were getting stronger. And somewhere out there, beyond the acid rain and the toxic wasteland, something called Nepheos was waiting.
The echo of Aurorite had begun to sound, and he was only beginning to understand what that meant.