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# Waverider Expedition - Tekrissal

The dead queen

The canyon walls burned red beneath the sun.

For three days the crew had followed the dry riverbed inland, where the map ended and the wind began to sound like voices. When they reached the cliffs of Tekrissal, even Solonex stopped to stare.

Tombs and palaces were carved into the stone like frozen fire - pillars, faces, and stairways descending into shadow. Everything shimmered faintly, coated in a thin layer of glassy resin. The air itself tasted strange, sweet and rotten, like honey left too long in the sun.

Phaedros knelt by a wall, running his fingers over a pattern of fused symbols. "It's melted," he murmured. "The stone flowed. Gods, this wasn't built, it was swallowed."

Selene's hand brushed her pendant. "Then why does it still breathe?"

They felt it too. A faint movement in the air, the slow pulse of something sleeping far below.

Arven spat into the dust. "Let's get this over with. Map it, mark it, burn it if we can."

They descended the stairways into the heart of the city. Statues loomed from the walls, half-human, half insect, their faces worn smooth. The deeper they went, the thicker the resin grew, coating the corridors like veins.

When Solonex touched it with his blade, it trembled.

"Still soft," he said. "Not dead."

They found the queen in what must once have been a throne room.

Her body filled the chamber, immense, half fossil, half corpse. The chitin was pale and cracked, her limbs fused to the floor by amber. Her skull had split open long ago, hollow where thought once lived.

Phaedros stepped closer, his voice hushed. "A queen... no, what's left of one. The hive's mind. It's gone feral."

Selene shook her head. "No... listen!"

From the tunnels beyond came a sound, clicking, uneven, like claws dragging over stone. Not rhythm. Not thought. Just movement.

Shapes emerged from the dark. They were smaller than the queen, but twisted, their bodies warped, half-molted, their eyes dull. They crawled on four limbs, their armor flaking away in strips. When they opened their mouths, it was not to hiss or speak, but to breathe.

They were breathing the same air as the city.

"Back," Solonex ordered.

But Phaedros lingered. "They're... broken," he whispered. "They don't even know we're here."

One of the things turned toward him. Its head tilted, insect jaws gaping open, and a low rasp spilled out, not a cry, but an echo of his own voice.

It lunged.

Arven caught it mid-leap, driving his blade up through the thorax. The creature shrieked, not in pain but in reflex, and its blood dripped on the stone. The sound spread like lightning.

Every tunnel answered.

Dozens of eyes bloomed in the dark.

"Run," Solonex said.

They ran. The creatures followed, claws scraping, resin cracking underfoot. The tunnels twisted and pulsed, as if the walls themselves were breathing faster now. Selene threw burning powder from her satchel; the smoke burst into green light, filling the air with choking fumes.

Something huge moved in the dark behind them - a sound like the cracking of stone, a single, deep inhale. The queen's body, long dead, was sucking air through the holes in her shell.

They burst into an upper passage, climbing toward the sunlight. Resin dripped from the ceiling, thick and hot, spattering the floor in streams. Arven hacked at the walls, carving steps through the narrowing throat of the tunnel. Phaedros slipped, his hand catching on a shard of glassy resin. Beneath it, he saw something move, a shape inside, curled like a fetus.

"It's not dead," he whispered. "She's still..."

The resin cracked. A pale claw tore through.

Solonex grabbed him, hauling him forward. The air filled with shrieks. For a moment the passage glowed red, as though fire were rising from beneath. Then they broke into sunlight.

The wind hit them like water. Behind them, the tunnel exhaled a final, heavy breath, hot, foul, wet. Then silence.

They collapsed at the canyon mouth. Below, the ruins shimmered in the light, calm again, as if nothing had stirred.

Selene's face was streaked with ash. "They were animals," she said. "The hive died, but the bodies remembered how to live."

Phaedros stared down, still trembling. "No mind. No purpose. Just the echo of obedience."

Solonex sheathed his sword. "Then we leave it that way."

Arven looked back once more. The wind shifted, carrying with it a faint, hollow sound, the ragged rasp of thousands of creatures breathing together.

He spat into the dust again. "Even dead things dream."

No one answered. The canyon lay silent, the red stone gleaming, the hive beneath it slowly exhaling its ancient breath.

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