Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 68: Organic Noise

"Move. Now."

That is the only order that matters.

Rhayne falls into step right behind me, her storm-cloud eyes wide with unease. "Is it something we need to worry about?"

"I don’t know exactly what it is," I say, my voice tight as I push through the glowing brush. "But I do know that sound isn’t something we can fight."

With our OXI tanks completely topped off from the makeshift drop, we tear through the corrupted jungle.

But the footsteps don’t fade.

They follow. And with every heavy, rhythmic THUD, the earth shifts beneath our boots. It isn’t just a vibration anymore; it’s a rapid, violent tremor that threatens to rattle the teeth right out of my skull.

The air itself feels wrong. I can feel the ambient OXI in the forest reacting, distorting wildly around whatever is prowling out there in the dark.

The seismic shaking spikes.

I drop to one knee, pressing my ear flat against the damp, magenta-stained dirt.

I need to triangulate the shockwaves...

I pull up my HUD, watching the digital compass flicker and point North, but I don’t trust a single piece of electronics in this glitched biome. I trust the mud.

THOOM.

Another step. A wave of sheer atmospheric pressure washes over me—a heavy, suffocating aura I have only ever felt once in my entire life. The memory of a coastline being swallowed whole in my first timeline violently flashes behind my eyes.

I snap my head up.

"RUN!"

We sprint blindly through the dense foliage, moving in the exact opposite direction of the seismic steps.

"Forget stealth! Everything in this forest is running from the same thing we are!"

I glance over my shoulder, fighting the burn in my lungs.

Massive, ancient trees are snapping like dry toothpicks in the dark, tossed aside by something I can’t even see. I try to look up, desperate to catch a glimpse of the silhouette, but the dense, bioluminescent canopy completely swallows the sky.

Up ahead, the tree line breaks. A wide clearing opens up, bisected by a rushing stream.

It’s a massive tactical risk—open ground means zero cover. But I need to see what is hunting us, even if it means brief exposure.

I burst out of the brush and hit the water hard. The stream is mid-shin deep, creating an immediate, heavy drag that kills my momentum. It’s difficult to maneuver, but if we cross it, we can put a solid buffer between us and the tree line.

"Jump in! It’s safe!" I roar back at the squad.

As I wade deeper, I feel the stark difference in my biology.

The Rank-E body is holding. Muscles screaming, but firing. A day ago, the Shell would have collapsed a mile back. I might actually outrun this thing.

Stupid thought. Dangerous thought. But it’s enough to make me draw the hilt of Eventide. I spin the metal in my grip, ready to ignite the shadow-blade as I turn back to face the collapsing tree line.

The hilt slips from my fingers.

Splash.

It hits the shallow water and sinks in the middle of the rocks.

I don’t try to pick it up. I don’t try a backup weapon. I don’t even move, because it’s hard to breathe.

Every ounce of adrenaline in my veins completely evaporates. The crushing, energetic pressure dropping over the clearing is absolute. My finely tuned survival instincts, the cynical tactical calculations that kept me alive for a decade—they all instantly shut down.

My hammering heart slows to a calm, steady rhythm. Not out of relief.

Out of absolute, biological surrender.

In front of me, the splashing stops. The rest of the squad, seeing the look on my face, freezes in the water. They turn to look at the tree line. The reaction is instantaneous and universal.

Total paralysis.

Oliver’s warhammer slips from his fingers and disappears beneath the current.

He doesn’t notice.

Rhayne’s bare hand hovers in the air, frozen mid-reach, her void skill instinctively trying to activate against something so far beyond her capacity that the air around her palm simply fizzles and dies.

Lola doesn’t freeze. She sits down in the water, cross-legged, and covers her bear ears with both hands. She starts counting in a near-silent whisper. Even Lola feels that any louder sounds can kill her now.

My lips part, whispering a single word that tastes like bitter medicine as my body turns to ice.

"Leviathan..."

The colossal silhouette breaches the forest fog like a walking mountain of glass and gears.

A hundred and fifty—maybe a hundred and sixty feet tall. It is a titan. A skeletal structure of ancient bronze completely encased in jagged, impenetrable plates of translucent crystal, all of it overgrown with the forest’s bioluminescent moss.

Deep within its chest cavity, a destructive amber core pulses with catastrophic power. Its eyes—narrow, glowing blue slits—lock onto the clearing with the cold, merciless precision of an ancient war machine.

I have seen Leviathan-class entities exactly once before. In my past life. From three miles away. Through a military telescope. The coastal city I was standing in ceased to exist forty seconds later.

That one was smaller than this titan.

As it steps fully into the open, the ground no longer shakes; it roars. Every single footfall feels like the planet’s crust splitting in two.

With every violent pulse of its amber core, the carved runes along its crystal plating flare to life, channeling raw OXI and mana directly into colossal joints that hiss with scalding steam.

The mechanical god stops.

The deafening hiss of steam dies down. The piercing blue ocular sensor slowly sweeps the riverbank.

It locks dead onto a single, pathetic human figure standing in the shallow water.

Me...

Time stops.

A suffocating, icy dread settles deep into my marrow. I realize in that frozen second that to this colossal Leviathan, I am not a hero. I am not a rival. I am not even prey.

I am just a speck of organic noise in its bioluminescent garden.

And noise needs to be silenced.

The amber core in its chest flares. The runes along its arm ignite in sequence, climbing toward the shoulder like a fuse burning toward the charge.

It’s raising its hand.