Akiko stepped forward, her gaze sweeping the dim chamber. The mana was just as thick here, maybe thicker. The walls pulsed faintly with embedded crystal veins, casting shifting reflections across their faces.

The rhythmic pounding on the sealed door had faded to background noise. Steady, distant, almost hypnotic.

Then came the crackle. A hiss of static cut through the stillness. The facility's intercom clicked to life, and a voice slid into the room. Low, smooth, every word chosen with precision.

"Ah. New subjects. Excellent."

Everyone froze.

Akiko's ears twitched. A chill ran up her spine.

"The others… they failed to grasp the frontiers we've begun to cross," the voice continued, calm in a way that made it worse. "But you. You've come farther already."

Joran's grip on his rifle tightened. "Who the hell is that?"

"I welcome you," the voice said, ignoring the question, "to join me on this path. I see one of you has already taken the first step."

Akiko's leg flared, a feeling that was sharp, electric. Like something alive, pulsing under the skin where the mana-bitten wound lay. She shifted her weight off the leg, jaw tightening.

"Akiko?" Raya stepped closer, voice low and tight. "What's wrong?"

"I…" Akiko's voice came out thin. "It's the wound. It's—"

"Ah," the intercom cooed, as if he could hear her hesitation. "You feel it. The spark. The change. Isn't it beautiful? A gift. The beginning of what you could become."

Quinn's voice cut in, sharp. "Who are you?"

A soft chuckle followed. "Once, I was Dr. Elias Karn. Lead researcher here. But such titles feel… small, now. Call me Karn. And know this: your arrival is not an accident. It is evolution."

Akiko's hand clenched. "Subjects?" she spat. "We're not signing up for your creepy science cult."

Karn sounded amused. "Ah, but you misunderstand. This is not an offer. It is simply what is."

Joran stepped forward, rifle raised toward empty air. "Try us, and see how long you last."

The intercom buzzed, but when Karn spoke again, his tone had sharpened.

"Do not mistake my hospitality for weakness. You are here. You will serve a purpose. Willingly… or not."

The static cut out. The silence left behind felt heavier than before.

Joran turned, voice grim. "We move. Now. He's watching."

Akiko took a breath, but the tingling in her leg wouldn't fade. She met Raya's eyes. "We need to find out what he did. To this place, and to me."

"We will," Raya said, jaw set. "But first, we get you out alive."

"I couldn't trace the signal," Quinn said, stepping away from a console. "He's patched into everything. Running this whole place like a maze."

"Then we stop playing," Akiko said. "We find him. We end it."

Joran nodded. "Agreed."

They moved.

The halls darkened as they pressed deeper. The mana in the air thickened. Oppressive, almost like it was watching them. It swirled around them in unstable eddies.

Crystal growths pulsed faintly, lighting their path in flickering veins of blue. The shadows around them lengthened.

The next door opened.

Akiko stopped short.

The chamber beyond was massive. Dimly lit, lined with containment pods.

Dozens.

Inside each pod: something changed.

Humanoids twisted into glittering mockeries of themselves. Animals misshapen, crystalline growths blooming from bone and muscle. Even plants: thorns like razors, leaves like knives, suspended in blue-tinted stasis.

Akiko stepped forward slowly, breath shallow.

"Gods," Raya whispered behind her.

The crystalline bodies shimmered in the sterile light. Unmoving. Watching.

"This… is wrong," Raya murmured, stepping closer to one of the pods.

Inside, a humanoid figure was frozen mid-transformation. Jagged mana crystals split its skin, distorting its limbs. Its mouth hung open in a silent scream, and its eyes glowed faintly, as if aware, but not alive.

Quinn worked at a nearby console. "Pods are still active," he said grimly. "They're keeping these things alive."

"Experiments," Joran muttered. His rifle swept across the dark chamber. "He's using them."

"Not just people," Raya said, moving to another pod. A twisted bird floated within, feathers transmuted into glittering blades, talons like glass scythes. "He's trying this on anything he can catch."

Akiko's tail flicked behind her as she stepped toward the center of the room. Her fingers twitched toward foxfire, but she held back, eyes fixed on Quinn.

"I've got something," he said, voice tight. A screen flickered to life.

Footage rolled: a pod like the ones around them, its occupant mid-conversion. A man in a security uniform writhed inside, his skin crawling with emerald veins. Jagged tusks split through his jaw. His eyes glowed with raw, mana-fed rage.

"Karn!" the man screamed, distorted by containment audio. "What have you done to me?!"

A second figure entered frame. Tall. Thin. A ruined lab coat clung to his frame. Karn.

His voice was calm, clinical. "You're becoming something extraordinary."

The man slammed bloodied fists against the glass. "You turned me into a monster!"

Karn leaned in, eyes bright with detachment. "Monsters are merely the pioneers of progress."

The man roared, then convulsed. Crystals erupted from his limbs. He went still, tusked and silent, his blank eyes fixed on the camera.

The footage cut.

Quinn stepped back, jaw clenched. "This is a nightmare, not research."

"He's making weapons," Joran growled. "And he's enjoying it."

Akiko's fists clenched. Her foxfire flared in her palms, blue flames dancing in rhythm with her pulse.

"He's not experimenting," she said. "He's playing god."

Raya placed a hand on her shoulder. "Then we stop him. Whatever it takes."

A sound interrupted her.

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Thump.

Soft. Rhythmic. Deliberate.

It wasn't the door.

They all turned.

The far end of the chamber. One of the larger pods. Inside, a mass of crystalline vines twisted and writhed, slamming against the glass.

"Is that... glass?" Raya asked, voice tight.

"Uh, guys?" Quinn stepped back. "I think it knows we're here."

CRACK.

The pod's surface fractured—once, twice—then exploded outward in a rain of crystal and containment fluid.

Vines shot through the air, razor-tipped and glowing with mana.

Akiko dove aside as one slammed into the console she'd just stood beside. It detonated in a burst of sparks and debris.

"MOVE!" Joran shouted, opening fire.

Bullets struck the vines, shattering chunks, but the creature didn't slow. It was growing, roots slamming into the floor, punching through steel like it was wet paper.

The main body emerged. A grotesque mass of bark and glowing crystal, pulsing with unnatural life. More vines spilled from its core, lashing outward with wild precision.

"It's rooting itself!" Raya shouted, ducking as a vine sheared overhead. The screech of metal-on-metal filled the chamber as crystalline roots split through the floor, anchoring deeper with every pulse.

Akiko rolled to her feet, foxfire claws blazing to life. She slashed at a vine, searing heat cracking its crystal hide. It recoiled, but two more lashed out, forcing her back.

"It's growing faster!" Quinn called out, squeezing off a shot at the central mass. "Feels like it's sucking the whole room dry!"

He wasn't wrong. Even without touching the roots, Akiko could feel it, the drag of ambient mana peeling away from the air, from the floor beneath her boots. It was consuming everything it could in the room, including mana. It was monstrous and hungry, like the facility itself had decided to wake up.

"If we let it finish, it'll rip the whole place apart!" Akiko shouted, dodging a strike that tore a console in half. The roots beneath her feet pulsed brighter, glowing as they burrowed deeper.

"We take it down," Joran growled, firing precise bursts. "Or we don't walk out."

"Easier said than done!" Raya called, ducking behind cover as vines shredded the space she'd just occupied.

Akiko's breath came fast. The floor trembled with each pulse. There wasn't time for a slow victory.

"We need to cut it off at the source!" she yelled. "Quinn, if this thing brings the floor down, can you get us out?"

"Working on it!" Sparks flew as a vine clipped the console near him, but he stayed locked in.

Akiko narrowed her eyes. Her claws flared brighter.

"Keep it busy," she said. "I'm ending this."

Joran shifted to cover her, his shots hammering the roots. Raya slid in beside Quinn, stabilizing the console with one hand, her other keeping pressure on a cracked panel.

Akiko surged forward, ducking under vines, leaping over tangled roots. Her claws flicked and burned, clearing a path toward the core.

Then she stopped.

"Stand back!" she shouted.

The others froze.

No time to explain.

Akiko grabbed the sapphire at her mana necklace's center, her claws dimming as she funneled everything inward. The gem pulsed, then blazed with foxfire, light erupting from its facets in a blue-white flare.

"What are you—" Joran started.

Applied Spellform Initialized: Foxfire Pulse Vector (Tier I)

Mana arced down her arm. Volatile, compressed, coiled for release.

Akiko slammed her palm forward. A single, concentrated plume of foxfire erupted from her hand, jetting in a narrow stream like a fusion lance carving through the room.

The pulse flared blue-white at the center, shedding embers as it bored through the creature's core. Chitin blackened. Vines shriveled in a burst of steam and ash. The whole thing convulsed, trying to retract. Too late.

Foxfire ripped through the heart of it, clean and merciless.

Akiko gritted her teeth. The recoil nearly lifted her off her feet, but Ashara's gravity held her down. She braced, heels digging into scorched metal as the torrent poured through her.

Pods shattered around the chamber. Glass melted. Containment liquefied. Every twisted experiment vanished into smoke and flame.

The central mass burned brightest of all, its frame cracking.

The light faded. What remained of the monster collapsed in on itself, scorched roots twitching, then falling still.

Then, silence. The last of the flames flickered out, leaving only smoke and glowing slag.

Akiko staggered, knees buckling.

Raya was there in an instant, catching her before she fell. "Akiko!"

"I'm... fine," she gasped, voice hoarse. "Just... tired."

Her legs trembled. The mana well inside her felt scraped dry, echoing with the ache of overuse.

"But hey," she added with a weak grin, "it worked."

Joran scanned the ruined chamber. "Worked is one word for it."

"You torched everything," Quinn said, a mixture of awe and relief. "That thing was trying to grow the whole facility into itself."

Akiko let out a breathless chuckle. "Guess I saved you the trouble of cataloging all this."

Raya shook her head, exasperated. "Next time, warn us before you vaporize the room."

"No time," Akiko said, her grin fading. She looked at the melted pods, the scorched vines. "If I'd waited, it would've finished rooting."

The smoke drifted in curls around them. The metal crackled and cooled. Somewhere in the wreckage, a glowing shard pulsed once, then faded.

The threat was gone. But Akiko could still feel the empty space where her mana had been. Hollow. Quiet.

For now.

"We keep moving," Joran said, voice low and firm. "Whatever that thing was, it's not the last surprise this place has for us. And Karn's not done yet."

Akiko straightened, brushing Raya's hand away as she forced herself upright. Her legs wobbled, but her jaw stayed set.

"Let him throw whatever he's got," she said. "I'm not stopping until we finish this."

The others nodded, weapons ready as they turned toward the next corridor. Behind them, the ashes of the plant monster still smoldered, a testament to the fire Akiko could unleash.

The intercom crackled to life.

"Truly a fascinating specimen you are," Karn's voice oozed through the static, smooth and amused, like a man admiring a particularly clever rat in a maze.

Akiko froze.

"You are aware, of course, of the mana crystals' true nature? They do not simply produce mana. They consume it. Absorb it. Transform it. A perfect cycle."

Raya stiffened, glancing sharply at Akiko's leg.

Karn chuckled, the sound cold and clinical. "So do be careful, my dear. Overindulging too soon tends to... complicate the transformation. Fuel for the fire, rather than the beautiful evolution I envisioned."

Akiko's stomach twisted. The tingling in her leg had intensified, no longer ignorable. A buzzing heat, alien and insistent, thrumming beneath her skin.

"Akiko?" Raya's voice was quiet but firm. "What's happening?"

"It's nothing," Akiko lied, too quickly. "Just burned too much mana."

Raya wasn't buying it. "Is it?"

Karn's voice sliced through again. "You feel it, don't you? The spark. At first, it's a tingle. A warmth. But soon… it becomes undeniable. Irreversible. Embrace it."

Akiko's tail lashed in agitation. Her fingers sparked with weak foxfire, then sputtered out, her mana reserves still hollow.

"Shut up," she muttered.

"Akiko," Joran said, gaze hard, "what's he talking about?"

"Nothing I can't handle," she snapped. But the burn in her leg said otherwise.

Quinn's voice was low and grim. "If those crystals feed on mana... and you just threw half your reserves at that thing…"

Akiko didn't answer.

The weight of Karn's words settled over them like smoke.

"We need to move," Joran said, cutting through the tightening air. "Standing here arguing plays into his hands."

Raya stepped closer, voice softer now. "Let me see it. Please."

Reluctantly, Akiko leaned back against the scorched wall. A thought sent her suit retracting from her injured leg. The cooler air hit her skin, and the wrongness bloomed.

Raya knelt, peeling away the last of the bandages.

She sucked in a sharp breath.

Veins of faintly glowing crystal spiderwebbed from the wound, branching outward in delicate, shimmering lines beneath the skin. The flesh was discolored: pale green laced with sickly blue, and the light that pulsed beneath it was slow, steady.

Alive.

"Damn it," Raya muttered, hands steady even as her voice tightened. "It's spreading."

Quinn peered over her shoulder, jaw tightening. "That's bad. That's really bad."

"Can you stop it?" Joran asked, voice clipped.

"I don't know yet," Raya said, already pulling supplies from her medkit. "But we're running out of time."

Akiko stared down at her leg, breath shallow. She could feel it now. The subtle, insidious shift beneath her skin. Something was changing.

And Karn's laughter still echoed through the metal walls.

Akiko's jaw tightened as she stared at her leg.

The tingling had become constant, no longer a background buzz, but a rhythmic pulse of something hungry.

"It's fine," she muttered, a little too fast.

"No, it's not," Raya said, voice like a scalpel. "This isn't just a wound. It's an infection. And it's feeding off you."

Akiko looked away, ears flattening. "I know." The words barely left her lips. "But we can't stop. Karn's watching. If we stall now, he'll hit us with worse."

Her voice carried edge, but the truth gnawed beneath it. The infection was growing, taking hold. Drawing mana from her with every breath.

A cold drumbeat in her veins. She turned inward.

"Can you stop the spread?" she asked Takuto silently. "If it feeds on mana... can we cut it off?"

"Affirmative. Isolate mana flow to affected limb? Elevated permissions required."

A prompt appeared in her HUD. Stark. Unforgiving.

Her breath hitched.

She remembered the last time. The precision. The numbness. The way the AI's logic had almost erased her in its hunger to help.

But she didn't have time to hesitate.

"Do it," she thought.

"Acknowledged. Isolating mana flow to designated region."

The sensation was immediate. Like something folding closed inside her. A piece of herself, one she'd never known she relied on, went dark. Her leg moved fine, muscles still responsive, but the presence was gone.

The mana was gone. And so was the warmth. The tether. The sense of presence she hadn't known was hers until it wasn't.

But, the infection's glow began to fade.

"Akiko?" Raya's voice pulled her back. Her hand hovered just above Akiko's shoulder. "What did you do?"

Akiko blinked, focusing. "It's handled," she said, voice low.

Quinn crouched nearby, eyes sharp. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"My AI cut off mana to my leg," she said. "No mana, no food for the crystals."

Raya knelt again, inspecting the wound. The crystal veins were still there, but inert. Dim. For now.

"It's not gone," she said. "But it stopped growing. That's hopefully good enough."

Akiko nodded, but the emptiness in her leg churned in her gut. She felt... unbalanced. Hollow in a way that wasn't physical.

"It'll hold," she said.

"Then we move," Joran ordered. "Karn won't wait."

Akiko pushed to her feet. Her leg responded, but without mana, every motion felt wrong, like walking with one eye closed.

Still, she grinned. "Let's finish this."

They turned toward the next corridor. Shadows waited.

Akiko followed, her grip tight on focus, breath slow.

The crystals were dormant. But not dead. And Karn still knew more than he should.

One step at a time. She'd deal with the rest later.

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