****
The pod hissed open, vapor spilling into the cave like the breath of a long-dead god. Inside, the alien lay motionless, its chest rising in shallow, mechanical hitches. Liu Jian stepped back, the others tensed—vials in palms, muscles coiled. Three years of scavenging alien wreckage had taught them: nothing alive in this war was innocent.
The creature's eyes snapped open.
Pupils like fractured quartz, irises shifting hues—violet to cobalt to a venomous green. It lunged before its legs could fully unbend, a guttural snarl tearing from its throat. Claws raked Aisha's arm, drawing black blood. Meili's wings batted it sideways, but it twisted mid-air, slamming Hiroto into the cave wall with a feral precision that belied its frail frame.
"Contain it!" Liu Jian barked.
They moved as one—Ravi's serpentine tail constricting its limbs, Yumi's borrowed *baihou* reflexes pinning its thrashing head. The alien spat a viscous, iridescent fluid that sizzled against stone. Weak, but not helpless.
"It's… *terrified*," Yumi realized. The creature's pupils dilated, its breaths shallow rasps. Not aggression. Survival instinct.
Aisha pressed her glowing palm to its chest. The bioluminescence pulsed—a mimicry of the predator's holograms. The alien stilled, its gaze locking onto the light. Slowly, hesitantly, it raised a clawed hand, mimicking Aisha's gesture.
——
Communication began in fragments.
The alien—self-named *Kyr'va*—traced symbols in the cave's biofilm, its claw etching star maps and spiraling equations. It spoke in clicks and harmonics, but the vials, they realized, acted as conduits. When Yumi pressed her vial to Kyr'va's temple, images flooded her mind:
*A cosmos bleeding.*
Legions of faceless horrors, their forms ever-shifting—carapaces of living shadow, jaws unhinging like fractals. They devoured worlds, not for conquest, but *erasure*. Civilizations scorched to ash, their histories unwritten.
*The Coalition.* A patchwork alliance of survivors: crystalline warriors who sang battles into existence, hulking sentients forged in dying stars, and Kyr'va's people—the *Va'tiri*—biochemists who weaponized evolution itself.
"The *Ordeal*," Kyr'va whispered, its voice a raspy mimicry of their language, learned through synaptic echoes. "Our… *gambit*."
Decades of research. Sacrifices. Va'tiri scientists melding their DNA with cosmic leviathans, with predators that hunted dark matter. A serum refined through generations, allowing a host to absorb, *adapt*, and *merge* genetic codes without degradation. Not just strength—*evolution*.
"We carried it… to the front," Kyr'va said, claws trembling. "To turn the tide. But *they*… found us."
The ambush played in Yumi's mind: a Va'tiri fleet torn open by claws of void-black, their ships' screams echoing through Kyr'va's memory. Escape pods jettisoned—some with serum, others with refugees. Decoys. All destroyed. All but one.
"They will come," Kyr'va said, quartz eyes drilling into Liu Jian. "The serum here… your world is a beacon now. They *smell* it."
——
The cave's bio-luminescence dimmed, as if the walls themselves recoiled.
"How long?" Meili asked.
Kyr'va stared at the shattered pods. "They are… patient. Invasive. They hollow worlds from within, unseen. Your people… will not fight. They will *fall*, and never know the blade."
Liu Jian's vial warmed, the wolf-DNA stirring. "Then we don't let them land."
A bitter laugh escaped Ravi. "Us? Seven kids and a ghost?"
Kyr'va stood, frail but resolute. It pressed a claw to the cave's biofilm. The walls ignited with holograms—Va'tiri schematics. "The serum in your vials… it is crude. *Primitive*. A shadow of the Ordeal." Its gaze fell on Yumi. "You… spliced with lesser beasts. We can… *refine* it."
Aisha stiffened. "Refine how?"
"The serum seeks potential. The greater the host… the greater the fusion." Kyr'va's claw tapped Yumi's vial, now streaked with silver. "This creature… clever. But earth holds… *older things*. Buried. Sleeping."
The holograms shifted—a planet's cross-section. Deep, *deep* below the crust, heat signatures pulsed. Massive. Ancient.
Hiroto grunted. "You want us to play tag with *dinosaurs?*"
"No." Kyr'va's eyes hardened. "What sleeps here… is not of your earth. It is… *seed*. Left by *them*."
The image zoomed—a gargantuan, fossilized skeleton, miles long, entombed in the mantle. Its ribs curved like scythes, its skull a nightmare of tusks and hollow sockets.
"A vanguard," Liu Jian breathed. "Buried to… what? Wait for activation?"
Kyr'va nodded. "They plant their rot… in every world. You must reach it. Merge with it. *Control* it… before they wake."
Silence.
Yumi's hand found her vial. "And if we can't?"
Kyr'va's voice fractured. "Then your world… becomes their womb."
——
That night, Liu Jian found Yumi at the cliff's edge, staring at the valley below. The wreckage of the predator's ship glinted, a scar in the moonlight.
"You hesitated today," he said. "When you drank the vial."
She thumbed the silver-streaked glass. "It's changing me. The *baihou*… I feel its thoughts. Its… *hunger*."
"We're all changing." His wolf-DNA stirred, a low growl in his veins. "But Kyr'va's right. The vials are just a taste. If what's buried down there is half what the holograms showed…"
"We'll lose ourselves." Her voice trembled. "Whatever we fuse with… it'll rewrite us. We won't be human. We might not even be *alive*."
Liu Jian watched the stars. "You think the coalition had a choice? Or the Va'tiri? Survival's a butcher. It carves you into what it needs."
She turned to him. "And after? If we win?"
He had no answer.
Somewhere, deep below, the vanguard dreamed. And in the dark between stars, the enemy stirred—patient, relentless, claws tracing the scent of serum.
The grindstone had spoken.
They would be its edge.