The fall was not a fall.

It was a swallowing.

Mira, Jonah, and Soren plunged through a collapsing throat of ice and steam, the ropes snapping above them like brittle bones. The air roared past their helmets. Heat vents pulsed from below in violent bursts, illuminating the darkness in flickers of red and amber.

Then—

WHAM.

The three slammed onto a slope of softened ice that buckled like flesh under pressure. They slid downward, spinning, gasping, tumbling until friction finally slowed their descent. Mira’s shoulder cracked against a frozen ridge. Jonah’s knee smashed into the ground. Soren nearly flipped over the edge of another pit before Mira grabbed him by the harness.

Breathing hard, dizzy, trembling, they lay on a surface that shouldn’t be possible.

Ice shouldn’t feel warm.

Ice shouldn’t pulse.

Jonah coughed. “Tell me… we didn’t just fall into its stomach.”

Mira rolled to her knees, visor cracked on one side. “You’re alive. That’s what matters. Move.”

Soren pointed ahead with a shaking finger.

The cavern stretched downward into an impossibly wide tunnel — walls curved like the inside of a ribcage. Except the ribs were translucent towers of ice fused with something darker, threaded, organic. They branched like nerve bundles or tendons, encased in frost.

Every few seconds, a deep thud moved through the walls — a pulse that made the ground vibrate.

Jonah whispered, “We’re inside the structure that made those tunnels.”

Soren corrected, voice thin. “Not structure.”

He placed a glove on the wall.
Pulled it back fast.

“Tissue.”

Aria rolled out from under the collapsing platform, coughing as ice dust filled her lungs. She scrambled to her feet, headset screaming with error tones.

“Mira! Jonah! Soren! Respond!”

Static.

She smashed her palm against the control pad. Nothing. The winch was dead, rope snapped, platform ruined.

Her eyes burned.

“Please… come on…”

A faint signal flickered in.

Jonah’s voice… but distorted. “Aria—don’t—down—Vincent—moving—he’s—”

His audio cut into static mixed with wet, rhythmic sounds she’d never heard before.

Aria staggered back from the chasm’s edge.

“…God help them.”

She ran for emergency beacon flares.

She was going down.

No matter what waited below.

The three descended deeper into the tunnel. Their helmet lights illuminated shapes half-embedded in the walls — not bones exactly, but structures reminiscent of skeletal frames fused with glacial mass. Some curved outward like massive ribs. Others spiraled like vertebrae. Their translucent surfaces carried veins of darker material, slowly pulsing.

“Captain…” Soren whispered. “This isn’t geology. This is biology encased in frozen mineral.”

Jonah swallowed. “Are we walking through the inside of a dead creature?”

Mira’s jaw tightened. “No. Because it’s not dead.”

A tremor shook the cavern. The rib-like walls pulsed, expanding ever so slightly then contracting. Like breathing.

Soren pointed at the floor beneath Jonah’s boots. “Don’t move.”

Jonah froze.
Light flickered beneath the ice — a dozen small shapes, clustered, moving.

Mira crouched to look closer.

Little filaments. Like tendrils inside the ice. Curling. Uncurling. Reacting to their presence.

Soren whispered, horrified, “The ice is fused with a cellular network. Like connective tissue. It’s all one structure.”

Jonah’s eyes widened. “You mean… this whole place is part of its body?”

Before Mira could answer—

Her boot struck something hard.

She looked down.

Then froze.

“Vincent’s helmet…”

It lay half-buried in the softening ice. Frost clung to the visor. Mira picked it up slowly.

When she turned it over—

The inside wasn’t cracked.

It was crushed outward.

As if something had pressed from the inside of the helmet toward the air.

Jonah whispered, voice breaking, “Oh god…”

Soren stepped back. “Captain… where is Vincent’s body?”

Mira stared at the crushed helmet and felt something she rarely felt.

Fear.

“We move. Now.”

Vincent’s consciousness drifted in pulses.
Dark.
Light.
Pain.
Then nothing.

He lay against a wall of ice that felt too soft, too warm. Voices whispered around him — Mira’s, Jonah’s, Aria’s, even ones he barely remembered. Layered. Distorted. Repeated.

But the creature’s voice — the mimic — spoke clearest.

“Vincent…”

He tried to move. His limbs felt heavy.

Something slid near him. Smooth. Wet. Curious.

He tried to scream but his throat barely produced sound.

A large, translucent limb curled around him protectively.

Like it didn’t want him to die.

Like it wasn’t done with him.

Jonah scanned the tunnel with his seismic pad. The device vibrated violently, nearly bucking out of his hands.

“Captain… I’m getting—Jesus—this can’t be right.”

“What is it?”

“Multiple pulses. Dozens. Maybe more.”

“More what?”

Jonah lifted the scanner. His voice cracked.

“Heartbeats.”

Mira’s blood went cold.

“Not one creature,” Jonah whispered. “A whole network of them.”

A tremor rippled through the ground beneath them — different from before.

Not a heartbeat.

A footstep.

Heavy.

Slow.

Measured.

Soren grabbed Mira’s arm. “Captain, something’s coming.”

Mira raised her rifle. “Lights off.”

The three clicked off their helmet beams.

And as the darkness swallowed them, the tunnel ahead began to glow faintly on its own — veins of orange light streaming through the ice like bio-luminescent blood.

A silhouette formed in that glow.

Tall.
Wide.
Moving with unnatural fluidity, like a body made of shadow stretching through walls.

Jonah whispered, barely audible:

“That’s not the one we saw earlier.”

The silhouette stopped.

Head turning.

Listening.

The ground pulsed beneath their feet.

Closer.
Closer.
Closer—

Then it walked into the wall.

Through the ice.

As if the ice was only an illusion.

Jonah nearly dropped the scanner. “Captain, it’s— phasing?”

“No,” Soren whispered. “It’s using the biological network. It’s part of the structure. It moves through it.”

The wall beside them bulged outward — not breaking, not cracking, but stretching like membrane.

The silhouette pressed against it, inches away.

Jonah shook so hard his equipment rattled. “It’s surrounding us…”

Mira steadied her breath. “Stay quiet. Stay still.”

But the creature wasn’t hunting.

It was observing.

And then—

It spoke.

But not with sound.

The ice vibrated beneath Mira’s hand.
Patterns. Rhythms.

A message.

Soren whispered, horrified, “It’s… communicating.”

But before Mira could answer—

Jonah’s scanner produced a single shrill beep.

One new heartbeat signal appeared.

Close.

Very close.

Then another.
And another.
And another.

Dozens.

Soren checked his display and nearly screamed.

“Captain… the heartbeats— they’re beneath us.”

The floor pulsed in response.

Mira raised her rifle.

“RUN.”

As the three sprinted through the ribbed cavern, Jonah glanced at the scanner one more time.

His face lost all color.

“Captain—these aren’t heartbeats from one or two creatures—”

The scanner pulsed violently as the readings multiplied.

“…there are hundreds.”

The ground beneath them bulged.

Then ruptured in a burst of steam—

And something huge began rising from below.