"Twenty-four hours, Bara. Not a minute longer."The voice was soft, swaying like expensive silk imported from a dead European port, yet inside this stuffy wooden room, it sounded no different from the screech of a butcher’s knife being sharpened.Madam Vivienne poured tea into her thin porcelain cup. Her movements were slow, precise, reflecting the arrogance of a civilization that considered itself too clean for the muddy soil of Kalimantan. Outside the window of the Global Longhouse, the giant silhouettes of three white United Nations Coalition (UNC) ships cut through the morning mist of the Baram Estuary. The ships were grand, pristine, and lethal. They stood in stark contrast to the thatched-roof huts creaking beneath them, where thousands of hungry stomachs were queuing for rations of watery porridge.Bara did not touch his cup. His rough, blistered fingers gripped the edge of the ironwood table. His eyes were bloodshot not just from days of sleep deprivation, but because the echo

"There’s someone behind us, Liling. I swear I heard radio frequency distortion," Jaka whispered, his voice trembling violently behind his respirator mask as he tried to split his focus between the pack of mutant tigers in front and the darkness behind them."Hold your position, Jaka! Don't take your eyes off the front," Liling replied in a low, strained tone, though her own eyes kept darting toward the bushes on the trail behind them.However, their attention was immediately drawn back to Little Raen. The boy ignored the tension around him. From his small throat came a strange, low murmur. The sound did not resemble human language, nor was it the sound of an animal. It was a series of heavy, low-resonating tones with an ancient rhythm that sounded like the grinding of tectonic plates in the deepest reaches of the ocean.Instantly, the gripping tension in front of them eased in an inexplicable way. The giant Clouded Leopards that had been ready to pounce suddenly stopped their movement

"Fire! Why haven't the ion cannons been released?! Destroy those damn clouds before they reach the carrier's perimeter radius!"Madam Vivienne’s voice shrieked, shattering the silence of the KBB Kalimantan-V carrier's main control room. The middle-aged woman, usually calm and calculating, was now pale, her face twisted in a horror she could no longer conceal. On the giant holographic monitor before her, the night sky over the Schwaner Mountains was no longer black; it had transformed into a churning sea of silver. Billions of light-fireflies moved in a massive spiral formation, cutting through the tropical mist like a living spore storm."Ion cannons one and two are ready, Ma'am! Awaiting binary authorization from central command!" shouted a tactical officer, his fingers trembling over the plasma-powered control board."To hell with authorization! This is a macro-scale biological attack! If that phenomenon breaches our electromagnetic shield, we will all die rotting inside this iron s

"Something hungry is moving toward the surface, Liling! Jump, quickly!"Jaka screamed hysterically. Every muscle in his body went rigid as the binary radar inside his head picked up a massive energy spike from deep within the crust of the Schwaner Mountains."Grab my shoulder! Don't let go!"Liling didn't waste time asking questions. She scooped up Jaka’s blood-soaked body, using the remainder of her emerald gravity manipulation to reduce their combined weight by fifty percent, then made a desperate leap through the gap in the eastern stone wall that Jaka’s radar had pinpointed.BOOOOOM!!!That very second, the floor of the ancient cave behind them exploded into pieces. It wasn't the hydraulic pressure of the Sovereignty’s drilling machines, but a strike from below that spewed black magma mixed with an ancient, foul stench. The shockwave from the blast launched Liling and Jaka out of the cave mouth, sending them gliding freely across the steep hillside amidst the darkness of the night

"I can't, Liling! I'm a soldier, not a shaman! And this storm outside... this is impossible!"Jaka’s voice shrieked, competing with the roar of the electromagnetic storm that seemed to be tearing the atmosphere of Long Baram apart. Mechanical nerves along Jaka’s neck sparked with tiny neon-blue flashes. His face was ghastly, pale as a corpse, wracked with excruciating pain as the KBB (United Borneo Corporation) neural port at the back of his head was forced to act as a conductor for the wild currents leaping from the ancient Ulin roots.The root was not merely wood. It was a giant organic-digital fiber that had been embedded in the heart of Kalimantan for thousands of years, and now, it was pumping raw energy directly into Jaka’s brain. Every inch of wiring inside Jaka’s body felt like it was boiling."We have no choice, Jaka! Do it, for Borneo!" Liling replied, shouting at the top of her lungs while continuing to fire bursts into the cave corridor.RATATATATAT!The muzzle of Liling’s