The flickering green light in the Matron's eyes was the first catastrophic leak in her façade—the parasitic truth emerging from behind the pink curtain of her aura.
She didn't flinch, but her posture tightened, the shimmering silks of her gown drawing taut across her chest, where her enlarged, shifting organs churned in a rhythmic, unsettling dance.
"Lurking?" she echoed, the word dripping with a sudden, sharp edge that sliced through the jasmine-scented air.
"We didn't lurk, Soren. We waited. There is a difference between a coward and a predator who understands the length of the season."
She began to pace in a wide, predatory circle, her feet barely touching the cooling slag on the floor.
The pink mist followed her like a loyal hound, swirling in agitated, chaotic patterns.
Every time the fog neared the invisible boundary of Soren's thermal field, it hissed and turned to grey steam, unable to penetrate the "Black Sun" radiation he was emitting to protect Liora.
"You think your grandfather—that old relic of a Patriarch—was protecting this tribe?" She spat the title as if it were a curse.
"He didn't protect us. He stagnated us.
He kept the Ignis locked in this forge, breathing soot and dreaming of 'honorable' steel while the rest of the world was evolving.
He treated the Eden bloodline like a holy relic that must never be touched, never be shared.
He was a hoarder of potential."
Soren's eyes followed her every micro-movement, his 3D Energy Vision mapping the sudden surge in her internal biochemical furnace.
Her temperature was rising, and the "Pink" aura she projected was no longer softly churning like a persuasive invitation; it was beginning to aggressively vibrate at a frequency designed to demand neural paralysis.
"I read the ledgers you tried to burn," Soren said, his voice a low, mechanical resonance that vibrated past the air, and hum within the stones.
"The Oman didn't bring a new future to the Ignis. They brought a filtration system.
You didn't invite them to help out the Ignis; you invited them for a culling.
You allowed them to plant a Rotten Root so you could remain the Matron of a dying hive."
Liora, still trembling within the safety of Soren's thermal bubble, looked up with hollow, dilated eyes.
The chemical trance was fading, replaced by a cold, sharp horror.
"The children... the nursery in the lower district... they didn't have the 'Green Fever,' did they? You gave them to the Envoy as fertilizer."
Upon hearing this, the Matron abruptly stopped pacing.
Her gaze swept over Liora with a cold, terrifying pity—the look a gardener gives a beautiful flower, just before plucking it.
"They were the first to be saved, child.
They became the soil.
Without their sacrifice, the beast would have woken up centuries ago and eaten the entire tribe.
I didn't kill them; I repurposed them."
She turned her gaze back to Soren, her expression shifting from pity to a deep-seated, ancient resentment.
The maternal mask was almost gone now, the white powder on her face cracking like sun-dried mud to reveal skin that looked like aged parchment, with veins of sickly green pulsating beneath the surface.
"You look so much like him," she whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of hatred and awe.
"The stranger from the stars, with the eyes of a winter storm.
Your mother thought he was a god.
She thought he was the key to unlocking the Eden bloodline without The Withered Hand's 'help.'
She thought his 'Celestial' logic could save us from the earth's hunger."
The pink light in the room shifted, turning a shade darker, nearing a violent violet.
The pheromones in the air became more aggressive, no longer offering the "Pink Dream" of comfort, but demanding absolute biological submission.
"Your mother had the chance to unify us," the Matron hissed. Her fingers curled into claws, the silk of her sleeves tearing as her muscles bunched with unnatural strength.
"She could have taken the Withered Hand's legacy and merged it with the Eden Clan's.
We would have been the masters of this Kingdom, and even the Empire at large, soaring above the rot!"
She leaned forward, her face just inches from the heat-haze that protected Soren.
The air between them crackled with the collision of two different realities—his cold, thermal logic and her chaotic, biochemical insanity.
"But instead, she chose purity.
She chose a ghost.
And when he left, she was nothing but a broken vessel holding a child she couldn't understand.
A child whose very existence was an insult to the choice I had to make."
The sweetness in her voice finally snapped.
"Indeed, the Oman House was weak back then," she hissed, the sweetness in her voice curdling like spoiled milk...
"But your mother was a fool, Soren. She was enamored by a stranger from the stars who ended up abandoning you both.
Then the Oman grew stronger, and I knew I had to make a choice.
So, I chose survival.
I chose to become an Oman."
"No, you chose to be a pet," Soren corrected.
He took a step forward.
The heat from his body intensified, causing the pink mist near his shoulders to hiss and evaporate.
It was unable to withstand the thermal output of the Black Sun.
"And now, you are just a gland. You exist to keep the males docile while the Envoy feeds."
The insult landed with physical force.
The Matron's face twisted, the motherly mask dissolving to reveal the monster beneath.
"Docile?" she shrieked.
The sound of her voice came in a sonic attack that shattered the remaining glass in the windows.
"I control the blood of this tribe!
I control the urge to breed, to fight, to die!
I am the Queen!"
She threw her arms wide, her silks snapping like sails in a gale.
[Technique: Crimson Cloud]
All of a sudden, the pink mist exploded.
It turned a deep, violent red.
It morphed from just an ordinary gas fog, imploding into an acidic mist.
Soren felt the sting immediately.
The red mist ate into the stone floor, hissing as it dissolved the minerals.
It corroded the iron tools on the walls.
It lashed against Soren's skin, sizzling as it tried to digest his Star-Iron plating.
The Master Builder Gene sent several intense surges of warnings that zapped through Soren's nerves in short electrical bursts.
"External dermis integrity: 98%.
Acidic compound detected.
Recommendation: Thermal Sterilization."
Sensing the nature of the situation, Soren burst into motion.
He didn't attack the Matron; no, he turned and swiftly grabbed Liora.
The latter was already convulsing on the floor, the red mist searing her skin.
Soren wrapped his massive arms around her, pulling her into his chest.
He violently expanded the even horizon of his Black Sun to its maximum safe limit.
~WHOOM~
A sphere of intense heat erupted from Soren's body.
It wasn't fire; it was pure thermal radiation.
It pushed the red mist back, creating a small bubble of safety.
The air inside the bubble was superheated, dry, and clean.
"Liora," Soren shouted, shaking her. "Wake up!"
Liora gasped, the pain of the heat snapping her out of the trance.
She looked at Soren, then at the red fog swirling around them.
"The tribesmen!" she choked out, stuttering, as she struggled to replace the toxic air in her lungs with clean sterilized breaths.
"She... she didn't just sell the Tribe. She marked them!
The Shamans... she gave the order to purge the bloodlines!"
The more Liora spoke, the more the Matron grew agitated.
The red mist swirled violently, forming into spectral claws that raked at Soren's heat barrier.
"Silence, girl!" the Matron screamed.
"Those bloodlines were flawed!
They resisted the Green!
They had to be pruned!
I am the gardener of this tribe, and I cut away the dead wood!"
Soren looked at the Matron through the distortion of the heat waves.
He saw the truth now.
The Matron wasn't just a wicked traitor; she was a cancerous tumor who selected which humans were suitable for parasitism and which were to be discarded.
"You killed my mother," Soren said.
It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact, cold and heavy as a gravestone.
"I gave her to the Root," the Matron sneered, her voice echoing from everywhere at once.
"She is part of the machine now. Just like you will be."
Soren felt the ground tremble beneath his feet.
It wasn't just the Matron's power; something else was moving.
A deeper vibration.
The mist, the pheromones, the Green Rot—it was all just the surface symptoms of a deeper disease.
He looked down at the floor, his eyes narrowing as he engaged his Seismic Sense.
"Where does the Green Qi come from?" Soren asked, his voice low and dangerous.
"This isn't natural. The earth doesn't bleed poison like this."
The Matron laughed—a wet, bubbling sound that made the hairs on Liora's arms stand up.
"You think this is poison?
It is power!
And you are standing on the lid."
The Matron pointed a trembling, manicured finger at the smithy floor, then swept it around to encompass the entire building.
"The Star-Iron wasn't just for weapons.
It was to weigh down the earth.
To keep the Beast beneath us asleep while we milk it."
Soren narrowed his eyes.
He dropped his defenses for a microsecond, focusing his hearing not on the room, but on the geology below.
He sent his awareness past the stone foundation, past the soil, deep into the crust.
And indeed, he felt it.
Deep, deep beneath the stone; a rhythmic thrumming.
~Ba-Dump~
~Ba-Dump~
It wasn't a machine.
It wasn't the shifting of tectonic plates.
It was a heartbeat.
A massive, sick heartbeat buried under the Artisan District.
It was slow, sluggish, and incredibly powerful.
Every beat sent a ripple of nausea through the entire region.
It felt like the earth itself was suffering from a fever.
"A beast?" Soren asked.
"A generator," the Matron sneered, her eyes wide with fanatical devotion.
"A root that drinks the world.
The Oman had long planted it, even before you were born.
And now... it's hungry for you."
The realization hit Soren with the force of a physical blow.
The tribe, the Elites, the Matron—they were just the ticks feeding on the dog.
The real monster was the dog itself, buried alive and festering.
The Green Rot wasn't an invasion; it was an infection spreading from the core outward.
Soren looked at the Matron.
She was panting now, the effort of sustaining the acid mist draining her.
The pink light in her eyes was dimming, revealing the terrified, hollow woman beneath.
She was already dead, in a way.
The Envoy had eaten her soul years ago and replaced it with this desperate need for control.
"Thank you," Soren said.
He didn't kill the Matron.
He didn't need to.
Killing her now would be a mercy she didn't deserve, and a waste of energy he couldn't afford.
She was already broken, her spirit burnt out by the effort of controlling the ineffective pink and then red mist of pheromones.
She was no longer a player on the board; she was a discarded piece.
He simply turned his back on her.
"Soren?" Liora whispered, confused. "She's..."
"She is nothing," Soren said. "We are leaving."
He faced the sealed doors at the back of the smithy—the ones reinforced with cold iron to keep the heat in.
They were massive, thick slabs of metal designed to withstand the fury of the forge.
He drew back his arm.
His muscles coiled like steel cables.
He didn't use a technique. He simply used mass.
He channeled the weight of the Star-Iron into his fist and then pounded it with his most aggressive punch.
~BRANG~
The sound was deafening.
The cold-iron reinforced door didn't just open; it exploded outward.
Wood turned to dust. Iron hinges sheared off like clay.
The door frame itself was ripped from the stone wall, sending shards and splinters flying into the alleyway beyond.
Then the cool night air rushed in, mixing with the smell of ozone and burnt meat.
It swirled into the room, diluting the pink acid and the cloying jasmine scent.
"Liora, move," Soren commanded.