Days went by.
The group woke to the fiction of normalcy—attending classes at the martial arts academy, bowing to masters who praised their "dedication," blind to the shadows beneath their sleeves. But afternoons peeled back the veneer. They slipped into the abandoned subway tunnels beneath Yǎnyù City, their secret chamber lit by stolen bioluminescent fungi and the cold glow of Kyr'va's holograms.
Kyra (as they'd shortened her name) drilled them mercilessly. Her methods were alien, brutal. She forced them to fight in total darkness, their vials half-drained, forcing their bodies to *remember* the DNA rather than rely on it. "Instinct is the root," she hissed, her voice still jagged with new language. "Your potions… are *crutches*. Break them. *Become* what you borrow."
Progress came in fragments.
Liu Jian learned to channel his wolf form without transforming—a flicker of fangs in his human grin, night vision that left his irises permanently dilated. Aisha's bioluminescence now pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat, a living lie detector. But the cost etched itself into their bodies: Ravi's scales no longer receded fully, leaving his neck mottled like a reptile's; Hiroto's tusks cracked his molars, forcing him to speak through clenched teeth.
Kyra called it *The Nine Celestial Rings*.
"Your martial paths… are not linear," she explained, holograms flaring to life. Nine concentric circles, each split into nine tiers, hovered above her palm. "Each Ring represents… a *fusion threshold*. First Ring: one DNA bond. Ninth Ring: nine. But the ranks… they are *refinement*. Mastery. A beast's essence… must be *eaten*, not worn."
Yumi frowned. "Eaten?"
Kyra's claw tapped her vial. "Your potion… is a cage. To transcend… you must digest the DNA. Let it rewrite your marrow. Become *hybrid*… then shed the beast… and keep its strength."
Meili paled. "You're saying we have to… *absorb* the creatures? Permanently?"
A hologram shifted—a Va'tiri warrior, their form fluid, shifting from wolf to serpent to human without a vial's spark. "The serum's purpose… is evolution. You cling to humanity… like a drowning child. Release it… or drown."
——
The world outside was unraveling.
Yumi's phone buzzed incessantly—news alerts she couldn't ignore. A fishing village in Chile, devoured by tentacled crabs the size of trucks. A nature reserve in Kenya where lions now hunted in coordinated packs, their eyes glowing faintly green. And the *Zhènhǎi* submarine, vanished three days prior in the Mariana Trench, its last transmission a garbled scream about "something alive in the trench."
"It's the energy," Kyra said when confronted. She'd begun to siphon data from global satellites, her claws dancing across stolen laptops. "Our ship's crash… your planet's core… they resonate. A frequency… awakening ancient genes."
Liu Jian scowled. "You're saying we're *mutating* Earth?"
"Not you. *Them.*" Kyra pulled up a thermal map—the buried vanguard's heartbeat syncing with seismic pulses. "Their seed… is a catalyst. Your ecosystems… are *fermenting*."
Ravi laughed, sharp and hollow. "So we're fighting aliens *and* Godzilla now? Brilliant."
That night, Yumi found Aisha in the tunnels, scrubbing her bioluminescent skin raw. "It won't come off," Aisha whispered. "I'm turning into… into a *lamp*."
Yumi had no comfort to offer. Her own dreams were filled with *baihou* whispers, urging her to climb higher, bite deeper.
——
The crisis collided on a Thursday.
Kyra's monitors lit with emergency broadcasts—a tsunami warning in the East China Sea. Not from earthquakes. From *movement*. Satellite imagery showed a shadow beneath the waves, massive, gliding toward the coast.
"Leviathan-class lifeform," Kyra muttered, enhancing the feed. The shape resolved: a shark, but wrong. Gill slits glowing like molten iron, fins edged with serrated bone, its jaws wide enough to swallow a skyscraper.
"The Zhènhǎi…" Hiroto grimaced. "That thing's why the sub went quiet."
Liu Jian stood. "We need to stop it. Now."
Kyra blocked the exit. "You are not ready. Second Ring… requires a second fusion. None of you… have digested your first."
"Tell that to the million people on the coast!" Yumi snapped.
A hologram erupted—Kyra's memory of a planet consumed by such beasts, their bellies full of screaming cities. "This… is a hatchling. If you die here… your world dies next."
They went anyway.
——
The Leviathan breached at dawn.
It dwarfed the aircraft carriers sent to intercept, its roar a subsonic wail that ruptured eardrums. Missiles fizzed harmlessly against its hide, the creature's bioluminescent veins flaring hotter with each strike—*feeding* on the explosions.
From the shore, the group watched. Kyra's final warning echoed: *You cannot kill it. Redirect it.*
Yumi's vial felt like a stone in her grip. "How?"
Liu Jian's eyes glinted feral gold. "We give it a bigger target."
They transformed.
Not into beasts—but *into the coast itself*. Aisha's light seared across the waves, a false sun. Meili's storm-petrel DNA merged with Ravi's serpentine coils, conjuring a phantom typhoon. Hiroto's roar shook the cliffs, a challenge.
The Leviathan turned.
And Yumi, her *baihou* DNA finally *digested*, did what Kyra demanded—she shed the beast. Became human.
But human with claws in her soul.
She leapt.
Not into the creature's jaws, but onto its spine, her hands finding the glowing fissures between its scales. The vial's power surged—not to transform, but to *synapse*.
*Show me*, she begged the DNA in her blood.
The Leviathan's mind flooded hers—a primordial soup of hunger and rage. But beneath it, a *frequency*, the same pulse as the buried vanguard.
Yumi pushed.
The Leviathan shuddered, veering away from the coast, toward open ocean. Toward the trench.
She didn't see the others drag her body from the water. Didn't hear Kyra's grim approval: "Second Ring… achieved."
All she felt was the Leviathan's final thought, echoing as it dove:
*Mother waits.*
——
They returned to find Kyra gone.
A hologram remained.
*You have tasted truth. Now starve… or feast.*
On the screen, a live feed: the Mariana Trench, pulsing red.
The vanguard was waking.