And the sounds.
The jungle was not quiet. It screamed and chirped and buzzed and called, a thousand voices layered over each other in a cacophony that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Insects she couldn't see. Birds she couldn't name. Things moving in the undergrowth, rustling and clicking and going silent as she passed, only to resume their chorus behind her. The noise was so dense it felt physical, pressing against her eardrums, making it hard to hear her own thoughts.
Below the landing pad, the forest stretched in every direction—a sea of black visible only as a darker darkness against the sky, shapes that might have been trees or might have been something else entirely. The canopy swallowed what little starlight filtered through the clouds, and the shadows beneath seemed to move with their own intent.
Serafina's hands trembled.
She noticed it as she gripped the strap of her bag—a fine tremor running through her fingers, barely visible but impossible to ignore. Fear and trepidation... and beneath that, there was something else. Something that felt almost like excitement, though she didn't want to name it that.
She was standing on a mountain in Costa Rica, having arrived on an alien ship, about to train to hunt a warrior from another world. The sheer absurdity of it should have made her laugh. Instead, it made her pulse hammer against the side of her throat.
The smell hit her next: rich and green and rotting all at once. Vegetation and decay, the cycle of growth and death that powered a jungle ecosystem. Flowers she couldn't see, their perfume cutting through the heavier scents of wet earth and decomposing leaves. Something musky underneath it all, animal and wild, a reminder that this place belonged to things that hunted and things that were hunted.
She was not at the top of the food chain here. The knowledge settled into her bones with uncomfortable certainty.
Morgan began walking toward a path that led down from the landing pad, and Serafina followed. Her body moved on autopilot, feet finding purchase on stone steps slick with moisture, while her mind struggled to process the reality of where she was and what she was doing.
The compound emerged from the darkness slowly, low buildings set into the mountainside, barely visible until they were almost upon them. The structures seemed to grow out of the jungle itself, walls covered in vines and moss, rooflines blending into the canopy so completely that she could have walked past without seeing them.
Serafina's shoulders were tight. Her jaw ached from clenching. Every shadow seemed to move at the edge of her vision, and she had to fight the urge to spin toward eachphantom motion, to put her back against something solid and scan for threats. Her training screamed at her that this was wrong, all of it—the darkness, the unfamiliar terrain, the vulnerability of walking into an unknown location with no backup and no extraction plan.
And yet she kept walking.
She had agreed to this. She was here now. She had come this far on this insane trip, had stepped through a door that shouldn't exist and flown through the night on a ship that defied everything she thought she knew about the world.
The aliens were real. She had seen it for herself—the ship, the crew, the technology that hummed with frequencies her human senses could barely register. And she had thought she'd seen some unbelievable things in her career. Bodies that didn't make sense. Crime scenes that seemed staged by a madman. The casual cruelty that humans inflicted on each other for reasons that defied comprehension.
None of it compared to this.
She felt detached, somehow. Watching herself from a distance as her body moved through the motions of following Morgan down the path, into the compound, toward whatever came next. It was all happening too fast, the reality of it sliding off her consciousness like water off glass. Later, she knew, it would hit her. Later, she would have to sit with what she had seen and what she had agreed to do.
But not now. Now, there was only the next step. The next breath. The humid air filling her lungs and the jungle screaming around her and the darkness pressing in from every side.
There was no turning back now.
"Welcome to the facility," Morgan said, stopping before a door that looked like wood but probably wasn't. "Your training begins at dawn."
Serafina looked at the door. Then she looked at the jungle behind her, an eerie wall of sound and shadow and things she couldn't see. She looked at the sky above, where clouds had rolled in to obscure the stars, leaving nothing but blackness.
She had come here to hunt something that had never been hunted before, to earn money that would save her family.
Desperation had pushed her toward insanity.
She didn't know if she was brave or desperate or simply too tired to turn back.
Tired of everything.
Maybe that's what it really was. Maybe she wanted something… different.
Maybe it didn't matter.
She reached for the door.
CHAPTER 14
TheVethrakcut through the void like a blade through still water, fold points collapsing behind it as it pushed toward the outer rim.
It was a Hyrakki cruiser—mid-class, built for long-range transit rather than combat, though it carried enough weaponry to discourage anything foolish enough to intercept it. Zhoren had arranged the transport personally, pulling strings Makrath hadn't asked about. The High Arbiter wanted this Hunt to succeed. Whether that was for Makrath's benefit or for the stability of the Kha'Ruun as a whole, Makrath didn't know.
