The silence that followed was heavier than the wind.
Arin took a slow step back, his boots grinding against the ivory ground. His eyes were locked on the swarm. Ten of them. Twenty. They moved with a jerky, synchronized rhythm, like puppets strung on the same wire.
Click. Click.
The sound of bone plates sliding over their neck gaps—the kill zone Arin had just exploited—was the sound of a door slamming shut.
"They... they covered it," Kael stammered, clutching his bleeding arm. The large man tried to stand, but his legs were jelly. "How did they do that?"
" adaptation," Arin murmured, his mind racing at a fever pitch. Biological resonance. One dies, the rest receive the data. It's not just a hive mind; it's a hive immune system.
He looked at the chisel in his hand. It was a precision instrument. Against fully armored tanks, it was a toothpick.
SCREECH!
The lead parasite shrieked—a command. The pack lowered their bodies, tensing their needle-like legs for a charge.
"Move!" Arin shouted.
He grabbed Kael by the collar of his leather armor and yanked him backward just as the swarm lunged.
Three parasites crashed into the spot where they had been standing, their serrated jaws snapping at empty air. The bone floor sparked where their claws raked it.
"To the lift!" Kael screamed, scrambling to his feet. "We have to get to the lift!"
"Too slow," Arin said, not looking back. He was sprinting, his breath coming in sharp, painful gasps. The lift was five hundred meters away—a marathon across open ground. "They'll run us down in ten seconds."
They reached a cluster of large, fossilized dorsal fins—giant spikes of bone protruding from the Titan's spine like a stone forest. Arin dove behind one, dragging Kael with him.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The swarm slammed into the other side of the bone fin. The cover shuddered. Claws scratched frantically at the surface, trying to climb over.
Arin looked around. They were trapped. To his left, the sheer drop into the abyss. To his right, the open ribcage swarming with monsters. Behind them, the Queen was rising.
The ground beneath them groaned. A massive shadow eclipsed the sun.
Arin looked up and felt his stomach drop.
Rising from the crater of the "incubation sac" was not a wolf-sized creature. It was a monstrosity the size of a house. The Queen. She was a nightmare of translucent blue chitin and pulsating sacs of marrow. She didn't have legs; she had hundreds of scythe-like appendages that stabbed into the Titan's bone to drag her massive bulk forward.
She opened her maw. No teeth. Just a hollow, vibrating tube.
WOOOOOOOOOOOM.
She didn't scream. She released a Sound Wave.
The air distorted. Arin felt the vibration hit him like a physical punch. His vision blurred. His teeth rattled in his skull.
"My ears!" Kael wailed, curling into a ball, blood trickling from his nose.
Arin gritted his teeth, fighting the nausea. It's a sonic attack. She's liquefying our organs.
He looked at the swarm. The smaller parasites were energized by the Queen's song. They were climbing over the bone fin.
Arin looked at his useless chisel. Then, his gray eyes darted to the environment. He looked at the crate of mining explosives Kael had dropped during the panic.
Standard Sonic-Charges. Useless against their armor. The blast wave is too weak.
Then he looked at the exposed vein of Azure Marrow still leaking from the hole the Queen had crawled out of. The blue liquid was pooling on the ground, bubbling aggressively in response to the Queen's scream.
Marrow reacts to sound, Arin thought. The Queen is using sound to empower her children.
A crazy, desperate equation formed in Arin's mind.
If I amplify the frequency...
"Give me your resonator," Arin barked at Kael.
"What?" Kael blubbered, half-blind from pain.
Arin didn't wait. He reached into Kael's belt and ripped out the Mining Resonator—a tuning fork-like device used to crack small rocks. It was a weak tool. But it had a frequency dial.
Arin grabbed a Sonic-Charge from the dropped crate. He jammed the Resonator directly into the explosive gel.
"Hey!" Kael shouted. "That's unstable! You'll blow us off the Titan!"
"Better to fall than be eaten," Arin snapped.
He turned the dial on the Resonator to the maximum setting—a frequency forbidden by safety protocols. The device began to whine, glowing hot orange.
The first parasite crested the top of their cover, hissing.
Arin didn't throw the bomb at the monster. He threw it into the pool of leaking Azure Marrow.
"Cover your ears!" Arin tackled Kael, pressing his face into the hard white ground.
The humming Resonator sank into the blue liquid. The Marrow, already volatile, reacted to the discordant frequency. It didn't just explode. It shattered.
BOOOOOM!
A shockwave of pure blue energy erupted. It wasn't fire; it was concussive force.
The blast caught the swarm mid-air. Their armor was hard, but their insides were soft. The shockwave passed through their exoskeletons, turning their internal organs to jelly. Dozens of parasites dropped out of the sky, dead before they hit the ground.
The force of the blast threw Arin and Kael skidding across the bone surface. Arin hit a ridge, the air knocked out of his lungs.
He gasped, coughing up dust. He looked up.
The swarm was decimated. The smaller parasites lay twitching, leaking blue fluid.
It worked, Arin thought, a rare flicker of triumph in his chest. Fluid dynamics. A shockwave travels faster through liquid than air.
But the triumph died instantly.
The smoke cleared. The Queen was still there.
She was massive. The blast had cracked her outer shell, but it hadn't killed her. If anything, it had annoyed her.
She turned her eyeless head toward Arin. The hollow tube in her throat began to glow. She was charging up a second scream—one point-blank. One that wouldn't just hurt; it would vaporize Arin's bones.
Arin tried to stand, but his legs wouldn't work. He was out of tools. Out of tricks.
So this is it, he thought, his analytical mind finally going quiet. I calculated everything, except the difference in raw power.
The Queen lunged.
Arin didn't close his eyes. He wanted to see his death.
But the death didn't come.
Instead, a sound cut through the air. Not a scream. A melody.
A single, pure musical note—sharp as a razor—rang out from the sky.
ZING.
A flash of silver light fell from the clouds like a meteor. It struck the ground between Arin and the Queen.
The impact didn't crack the bone. It didn't make a mess. It was elegant.
Dust swirled. Standing in the crater was a figure. A man in pristine, white-and-silver armor, wearing a long coat that fluttered in the wind. In his hand was a sword—a beautiful, translucent blade that hummed with a low, harmonious song.
The Queen recoiled, confused by the new frequency.
The stranger didn't look back at Arin. He raised his sword casually.
"A Fifth-Octave infestation," the stranger said, his voice bored. "How noisy."
The Queen shrieked and thrust her massive body forward, aiming to crush the tiny silver man.
The stranger simply flicked his wrist.
"Resonance Style: Silent Waltz."
He didn't touch the Queen. He swung his sword at the air.
The air split.
A visible wave of distortion, thin as a wire, shot from the blade. It passed through the Queen's neck.
For a second, nothing happened. The Queen kept moving.
Then, slowly, the massive head began to slide.
Squelch.
The Queen's head separated from her body. It crashed to the ground with a wet thud, followed by the collapse of her massive carcass. Blue blood pooled around the stranger's silver boots, but not a drop touched his coat.
Silence returned to the Titan's back. Real silence.
Arin stared, his mouth slightly open. He wasn't looking at the dead monster. He was looking at the sword.
He cut the sound, Arin realized, his eyes widening. He didn't cut the flesh. He cut the vibration holding her atoms together.
The stranger turned. He wore a mask that covered the lower half of his face, revealing only piercing blue eyes that looked at Arin not with pity, but with mild curiosity.
"You," the Knight said, pointing his singing blade at Arin's chest. "You're the one who detonated the Marrow vein?"
Arin swallowed hard, nodding slowly. "I... I had to improvise."
The Knight tilted his head. "Crude. Dangerous. And illegal."
The blade lowered slightly.
"But effective," the Knight added. "For a rat."