The cavern swallowed Vincent whole.

Mira’s fingertips scraped the edge of the new chasm, snow biting under her nails as she leaned dangerously over the rim. Nothing but echoing darkness answered back — a vertical abyss splitting the ice shelf open like a wound.

“Vincent!” she shouted again, voice cracking.

No reply.

Only the distant groan of shifting ice, like something vast turning over in its sleep.

Aria knelt beside Mira with shaking hands. “His heat signature… it’s dropping fast.”

Jonah paced in tight circles, muttering curses under his breath. “We need ropes. Harnesses. Something. We can’t leave him down there.”

Elias clutched the containment box with the twitching tissue sample, staring at it like a bomb. “The collapse wasn’t random. It pulled the platform down. It pulled Vincent down.”

Soren moved slowly — too slowly — his gaze fixed on the depths. “This isn’t a pit. It’s an opening. Something hollowed it deliberately.”

Mira finally pushed herself back from the rim and forced her breathing under control. “Gear up. NOW. Descent pack, lights, emergency comms, thermal harnesses.”

Jonah blinked at her. “We’re going… in there?”

Mira looked him dead in the eyes. “He’s still alive.”

A beat of silence.

Kade swallowed. “Then we better move before whatever did this comes back.”

The team scrambled around the supply crates stacked near Base Pod Theta. Every motion was frantic but restrained — like they expected the ground to give way again at any second.

Aria strapped a thermal pack to her chest. “Temperature in the cavern is unstable. I’m reading pockets below −60°C and others above freezing.”

“Heat tunnels,” Elias muttered. “They run everywhere under us. Like arteries.”

Soren handed Mira a reinforced harness. “We’ll anchor three lines. Two primary, one fail-safe.”

Jonah threw him a look. “What about the platform? It fell straight through. If the ice gives again—”

“Then we react,” Soren said simply.

Jonah stared, incredulous. “React? To what, a hole that’s alive?”

Mira cut in sharply. “Jonah. Focus.”

He exhaled through his teeth but nodded.

They returned to the cavern, each carrying coils of rope and collapsible grapples that dug deep into ice. Mira drove the first anchor spike down with a hydraulic punch. It sank with a solid crack.

Soren tested the tension. “This one holds.”

Kade tested the second. “So does this.”

Elias set the third anchor, then stepped back nervously from the twitching containment box. The tissue inside kept thumping faintly, like a heartbeat trying to synchronize with the glacier.

Aria noticed. “It’s more active.”

“It’s reacting to something close,” Elias whispered.

Jonah glanced at the chasm. “You mean something down there.”

The team clipped in.

Mira double-checked every harness, every knot, every lock, every cam device.

“Descent one meter at a time,” she instructed. “No free drops. Keep comms open.”

Soren went first, sliding down with steady control.

Aria followed, breath trembling but posture firm.

Jonah and Kade descended together, their lights scattering over the fractured ice walls.

Elias went next, hugging the containment case close to his suit as though the tissue might leap out.

Mira brought up the rear.

One by one, they disappeared below the rim — swallowed by the abyss.

The walls were smooth in places. Not melted. Worn.

Carved.

Eroded by something that moved through them frequently.

Soren’s voice echoed through comms. “Thirty meters down.”

“Visibility?” Mira asked.

“Good. The walls are… patterned.”

Aria scanned the surface with her light. “These grooves… they run in spirals. Like they were shaped by pressure waves.”

Jonah muttered, “Like something brushing past it.”

Elias said nothing. He was staring at the tissue sample.

Because it was glowing faintly now.

Pulsing.

Almost answering something deeper in the dark.

At forty meters down, the comms crackled.

A faint signal cut through the static.

“…M…Mira…?”

Every rope trembled at once as everyone froze.

“Vincent?” Mira shouted, hope slamming into her chest.

“—down… here— hurt— don’t— come—”

His voice warped, stretched, and dissolved into garbled static.

Jonah’s face drained of all color. “What the hell was that at the end?”

Aria swallowed hard. “That distortion… I’ve heard it before.”

“When?” Kade snapped.

“In whale-song recordings,” she whispered. “When something mimics human sonar.”

A horrible silence settled.

But Mira refused hesitation.

“Vincent’s alive. Everyone continue.”

At fifty-five meters, the shaft opened into a massive cavity. Their lights spilled over a frozen cavern the size of a cathedral — but natural was the last word anyone would use.

Every wall was lined with veins of translucent ice that pulsed faintly with warmth. They branched outward like a nervous system under glass.

Soren landed first on the uneven floor. “Touchdown.”

Aria stepped beside him. “This… is impossible.”

Jonah’s beam swept across the cavern. “What are those?” he whispered.

Dark shapes, half-embedded in the ice, shifted slightly at the edges of the light. Not alive — or not moving — but enormous.

Elias landed and quickly set down the containment box. The tissue inside was vibrating.

“It’s reacting to the environment,” he murmured. “It recognizes this place.”

Kade’s boots hit the ice. “Recognizes? Like it belongs here?”

Elias didn’t answer.

Mira descended last, landing with a crunch of compacted frost. Her eyes scanned the entire cavern — but she saw no sign of Vincent.

Until—

Aria gasped. “Heat signature! Directly ahead!”

They sprinted forward.

The cavern floor sloped downward into a shallow trench filled with thin mist. At the far end, tangled in a sheet of cracked ice, lay Vincent.

Supine.

Barely moving.

Mira slid to her knees beside him. “Vincent! Can you hear me?”

His visor was cracked. Frost crusted his eyelashes. His skin was pale with early hypothermia.

But his eyes fluttered open.

“Mira… you came…”

“Of course we did.”

He swallowed hard, then whispered:

“It’s alive down here.”

“We know,” she said softly.

“No…” His voice dropped to a terrified rasp. “Not the creature.”

Mira’s breath stopped.

Vincent raised a trembling finger and pointed past her.

“…The entire cavern.”

Before Mira could turn, the ice beneath them rippled.

Just a subtle shift.

A tremor.

Then a pulse.

Deep. Slow. Massive.

Aria screamed, stumbling backward. “Thermal spike! The entire floor is warming!”

Jonah spun. “It’s waking up!”

Cracks split across the cavern in glowing lines, branching like lightning. The walls flexed inward, as if the ice itself inhaled.

Soren dragged Vincent gently away from the trench. “We need to get out NOW.”

But the cavern wasn’t done.

A sound rose from below — not a growl, not a roar, but a chorus of vibrations. Harmonics so deep they rattled teeth.

The chasm behind them widened.

Elias stared at the tissue sample in horror as it writhed violently. “It’s communicating! It’s calling to itself!”

Kade shouted, “Mira, rope! We climb—”

He didn’t finish.

Because the cavern floor tilted, throwing them sideways.

Jonah slammed into a wall.

Aria rolled, coughing, as her pack clattered across the floor.

The lights swung wildly, casting frantic arcs across the walls —

— and then everyone saw it.

Not a limb.
Not a tentacle.
Not a creature.

A structure.

A massive curvature of translucent tissue beneath the ice, dozens of meters across — like the dome of a skull or the upper portion of something encased, sleeping, dreaming.

The cavern wasn’t a cave.

It was a chamber surrounding a body.

A giant.

An organism.

A mind.

And the cracks they drilled weren’t random.

They were wounds.

Aria whispered, “Oh my god…”

Elias’s voice broke. “We’re standing on it.”

Jonah choked. “We have to GO—”

The creature pulsed again, harder, shaking frost loose from the ceiling.

The cavern floor lurched, splitting open beneath Jonah’s feet.

Mira grabbed Vincent and pulled him close. “Everyone get to the ropes! NOW!”

Kade reached the nearest harness first.

Aria sprinted toward her line.

Soren threw his rope to Mira and began climbing.

Elias scrambled for his gear—

Then the cavern roared.

Not with sound — but with pressure.

An upward force blasted through the floor, lifting a huge slab of ice like a slow-moving tidal wave.

Jonah screamed, “HOLD ON!”

Ropes swung. Harnesses jerked.

Mira clutched Vincent and clipped him to her.

Aria clung desperately to her line.

Kade dangled mid-air, feet kicking wildly.

Elias almost lost his grip—

The creature knocked from below.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

The same rhythm.

But this time, it wasn’t a greeting.

It was a warning.

The cavern ceiling began to crack.

Mira looked up and whispered in terror:

“It’s collapsing… it’s bringing the whole chamber down.”