The Hand's colossal form greeted us, a living platform of bio-steel skin and primal-veined muscle that flexed like a god's idle gesture. We'd barely cleared the Ex-Chronos Labs' temporal aftershocks when it scooped us up from the corridor's mouth—summoned by my psychic ping, its descent a thunderous bloom of shadow through the Gutter Nest's upper vents. Marla's scales scraping faint sparks against the armored hide, and I clung to the top knuckle, the Chronos-Catalyst's mercury-heart still thrumming in my satchel ring like a captive storm.
"Back to the gutter," I commanded, voice barely audible over the rush of subterranean winds whipping through the Hand's joints. It obeyed without question, a creation of the knowledge of some forgotten ancients' bio-machinations, its veins pulsing in sync with the Beast Vein's deeper rhythms. The journey was a blur of ascending shafts and bioluminescent glows, the Hand's treads—those massive, claw-tipped digits—gouging furrows into the earth as it barreled through access tunnels long sealed by CENO's paranoia.
We spilled into the Gutter Nest's central chamber like offerings to some forgotten altar. Koba loomed in the gloom, his war-beetle bulk a sentinel of scarred chitin, mandibles clicking in silent acknowledgment of our return. No breaches: the Nest held. Felicity hopped down first, her cyber-eye flickering as she scanned for tails—chronal echoes or otherwise. Marla followed, a coiled statue of resentment, her gaze sliding past me like oil on water.
I dismounted last, I quickly sent a wisp of intent to my inventory ring recalling the Quantum Chrono-Orb. "Felicity, prep this." I tossed her the Orb—the Catalyst's formal moniker in the Bonekin schematics, it landed in her palm with a weight that belied its size, fractals of borrowed time dancing across its surface. "We have the first and primary part of the harmonic resonance anchor, the second is the anchors power source, the primal Zohar crystal.
She caught it one-handed, smirking through the strain. "Aye, captain. I'll baby it like it's your firstborn. Just don't blame me if it decides to age me a decade while I'm at it."
Marla lingered, her breath a low rasp. "Level 9," I said, meeting those hate-filled eyes. No plea, no apology—just the Disc's compulsion binding her tongue to truth. "Guide us. The vein's rawest Primal crystals run deep there. We mine, we move, or the Cry devours us all."
She nodded once, a puppet's jerk, and climbed back aboard the Hand. I followed, the Rod's hum a constant companion in my grip. Koba's bulk shifted as I and Marla departed atop the Hand, his roar a muffled thunder fading behind us—a guardian's vow etched in beastly timbre.
The descent to Layer 9 was no mere drop; it was a pilgrimage through the earth's screaming womb. The Hand tunneled vein-ward, its form adapting to the narrowing conduits—fingers elongating into drill-limbs that pulverized obsidian walls, oozing lubricant from its bio-steel pores to ease the breach. The air grew thick, pregnant with the tang of unrefined power.
Strangely enough ozone laced with the metallic bite of nascent stars drifted on the air currents. Primal Zohar veins snaked alongside us, glowing fissures that wept crystalline tears, their light refracting into auroral sheens on Marla's scales and Felicity's... wait, Felicity was back at the Nest. No—just Marla and me now, the three of us a misnomer in the heat of command. The Hand counted as kin, in its way.
Hours blurred into a fevered grind, the countdown's ghost gnawing at my resolve: sixty-odd hours left. The walls transitioned from stone to something alive—pulsing membranes of geo-flesh, the Beast Vein's outer dermis, where myth bled into matter. Then, the chasm yawned.
The Hand crested the edge of Layer 9's precipice, its halt a seismic groan that showered us in luminous dust. We dismounted onto a ledge of fractured primal quartz, the void before us a maw that defied sanity. I stepped forward, Rod in hand, Marla at my shoulder—her posture rigid, but even the Disc couldn't stifle the tremor in her exhale.
Below stretched not darkness, but revelation.
A gaping chasm, miles wide, plummeted into infinity, its depths alive with...clouds? Swirling banks of vapor, gilded by shafts of ethereal light piercing from unseen heights. And beneath us was something, impossible: another earth. Verdant continents unfurled like a dreamer's sketch, oceans of liquid mercury churning under twin suns—or were they moons? Structures gleamed on the horizon, spires of bone and crystal that twisted in defiance of gravity, while vast herds of undefined beasts could be observed migrating across open plains that shimmered with inner fire. The air hummed with a symphony of distant calls, primal echoes rising like incense from this hidden world—the true heart of the Inner Earth, a realm CENO's logs had dismissed as gas or spore induced hallucinations by field agents.
My breath caught, the Rod forgotten in my slackened grip. "What... in the Vein's name..." Felicity's absence stung; she'd have quipped something to shatter the awe, her eye mapping the impossible geometry. Marla's claws dug into the ledge, her voice a fractured whisper—hate yielding to wonder, if only for a heartbeat. "The Hollow Earth. Legends said it birthed the beasts. CENO sealed the reports...called it a gas induced hallucination."
Shock rooted us, the Lunar Cry's doom was now a distant thunder against this cosmic jest. Another world, thriving in secrecy, mocking our surface struggles. Temptation clawed: descend? Claim it? But the Engine's hunger roared louder, the schematics burning in my mind. With a guttural curse, I tore my gaze away, the sight searing into my soul like a brand. Marla followed suit, slower, her tail lashing once in futile protest.
"Enough stargazing," I growled, slamming the Rod's tip into the vein-wall. The Hand stirred at my psychic lash, its digits reshaping into hammer drills! "Hand!" I commanded, harvest a Prime Zohar lode, two-meter chunk minimum. No fractures, or it'll cascade on deployment."
The Hand lunged forward, burrowing into the adjacent seam with mechanical savagery. Rock screamed as it tore free a throbbing mass of Primal Zohar—raw crystals the size of man, their facets alive with captured lightning, pulsing in rhythm with the chasm's hidden heartbeat. Shards rained like fallen stars, the air ionizing into a crackling haze that raised the hairs on my arms.
I waved my inventory ring over the primal crystal lode allowing a few thin wisps of my psychic energy to the ring, there was a ''FWOOOSH'' and the Primal crystal lode had been stored inside.
The Hand retracted, coiling for ascent, I stole one last glance into the chasm. The Inner Earth gazed back, patient and vast, a promise or a predator. I would return here one day.
"Up," I commanded, mounting with Marla in tow. The vein swallowed us once more, the revelation a weight heavier than any crystal. Fifty-eight hours. The Bonekin Engine awaited its debut.