April 2014 — The Borneo Basin
The jungle had gone quiet.
Not the natural kind of silence — not the lull before dawn when insects pause to breathe — but an emptied quiet, hollow as a held breath.
In the lowlands of Borneo, mist draped itself across the mangrove canopy like torn silk. Rainwater slid down massive leaves, dripping into black water that no longer rippled with life.
The Hollow Serpent had returned to the river.
He moved with the patience of something that no longer needed to hunt to survive. His body glided under the surface, a sinuous continent of muscle and armor. The moonlight caught along the scales of his back, shimmering faintly — the metallic plates of the pangolin's gift reflecting ghost-pale light.
Every motion was deliberate, slow, silent.
Every thought precise.
He remembered the humans. Their machines. Their sound.
He could still taste the tang of their electricity in the air — sharp and hot, like lightning swallowed and kept behind the teeth.
He did not hate them.
He did not fear them.
But something deep inside — older than thought — had recorded the moment when one of them fired upon him. That sting of metal, that shriek of artificial thunder.
So now, whenever the clouds cracked with lightning, he remembered.
And he waited.
Inside the Hollow Mind
If one could enter Serpentis's mind, it would not feel like a human's. It would be like falling into an ocean of color and vibration — sensations more than words.
But there were fragments of thought, shaped long ago when the Hollow Earth energy had fused with human DNA during his gestation. Fragments that echoed like whispers across instinct.
Observe.
Endure.
Change only when needed.
He watched Monarch's machines retreat weeks ago, yet he could still sense their presence far beyond the jungle's edge — satellites, listening stations, ships at the coast. They pulsed faintly, distant but familiar, like echoes in his blood.
He knew their gaze lingered on him.
He simply chose to let it.
A petty amusement stirred inside him — a spark of something almost human.
He found it… entertaining to know they feared him and yet still sought to understand him.
Sometimes, when the jungle grew too still, he'd stir just enough to trigger their sensors — a ripple, a tremor, a shadow on their radar — before disappearing again.
He did not do it out of anger.
He did it because he could.
The World Shifts
Far below the forest floor, the Earth trembled.
It wasn't the kind of quake caused by fault lines or storms — this was a rhythm, deep and pulsing, like the beating of a vast heart.
Serpentis stopped moving.
He sank deeper into the muddy waters until his golden eyes were the only thing above the surface, glowing faintly in the stormlight.
He listened.
The tremor wasn't local. It came from beyond — from the ocean.
Something massive stirred there, and the Hollow Earth energy inside him resonated with it like a chord struck across a string.
The serpent closed his eyes.
Images flickered behind them — not visions, but impressions:
Tides shifting.
Currents churning.
A roar that wasn't sound but pressure, echoing through the mantle.
The sea stirs.
The King moves.
He did not know the creature's name — Godzilla.
But he felt him.
Another apex, ancient and eternal, crossing the ocean's bones.
For the first time since his awakening, Serpentis felt something close to unease.
It was not fear.
It was recognition.
Monarch Field Station Echo – Classified Audio (Transcription)
GRAHAM: "You're sure that reading's accurate?"
LARSEN: "Positive. The signal from the basin is fluctuating — seismic harmonics. Like he's responding to something offshore."
GRAHAM: "Godzilla?"
LARSEN: "If that's what the Japanese ping picked up in the Pacific, then yes. Whatever's moving out there — he's hearing it."
GRAHAM: "…then they're connected. Hollow Earth resonance—two apex signatures in communication."
LARSEN: "Ma'am, what do we do if they meet?"
GRAHAM: "…We pray they don't."
Borneo — Three Days Later
Rain. Endless rain.
Thunder muttered through the sky like the voice of something waking from a long sleep.
Serpentis rested beneath a flooded hollow, his body coiled around the roots of a massive tree. The water shimmered faintly where his breath rose to the surface.
He was aware of every heartbeat in his territory — from the smallest frog to the distant flight of a crane. The jungle was his network, and he was its silent mind.
When the first tremor hit, every creature went still.
Birds rose screaming into the air.
Fish vanished beneath the current.
He uncoiled slowly, tasting the water.
It reeked of salt and iron — the smell of the ocean, carried on the wind.
Something had crossed from sea to land.
Something old.
Something loud.
And for the first time, Serpentis did not feel like the center of his world.
In the Sky — Monarch Reconnaissance Log
Visual contact: Borneo Basin, anomaly site.
Infrared readings show movement — temperature spike exceeds 800°C at core mass.
Subject is rising from submersion. Repeat: Serpentis is surfacing.
The helicopter's rotors cut through mist as lightning lit the valley below.
In the camera's lens, the jungle itself seemed to rise.
Water exploded upward as the serpent broke the surface, towering above the treeline. His scales reflected the lightning in ripples of gold and green. His tongue flicked, tasting ozone. For a moment, he looked straight toward the sky — and the camera.
"Oh my God," one of the pilots whispered.
"He's looking at us."
He wasn't just looking.
He was studying.
Then, without warning, the serpent released a deep, thrumming hum — a sound that vibrated through the valley, rattling the aircraft's frame.
It wasn't a roar.
It was a signal.
Miles away, deep in the ocean, another signal answered.
And just like that, the Hollow Serpent fell silent again — sinking back into the earth as if retreating into thought.
Inside His Mind
Another comes.
Not prey. Not rival.
Something older.
The sea's child.
He closed his eyes. In his chest, the Blood Orchid glow pulsed once, softly.
He would not seek the other.
Not yet.
He was cautious — always had been.
But curiosity had begun to gnaw at him, slow and inevitable.
He felt the sea calling through the veins of the planet.
He felt the Monarch machines crawling toward his basin again.
He sighed — if such a creature could sigh — and sank deeper into his cavern, wrapping his coils around himself.
Let them come.
Let them watch.
I will learn again.
The Hollow Serpent closed his golden eyes as the first rumble of distant battle echoed from across the Pacific.
Godzilla had risen.
And the world was finally remembering what it meant to tremble.