The drone, still recovering from its aerial collision, drifts lower.

The canopy has changed.

Everything… is too still.

The wind halts mid-breath.

Bioluminescent leaves flatten like they’re listening.

SABINE (quietly)
“The tree’s shaking.”

The camera auto-corrects, zooming in on the massive trunk.
The bark shudders—not from wind, not from rain, but from something beneath.

A subsonic rumble begins to roll through the roots.

SAI (his tone clipped)
“Seismic event detected—no, wait.
That’s not tectonic. That’s… footsteps.”

The ground pulses like a drum.

Leaves jump in place.

The algae dust starts falling in spirals, like snow made of phosphor.

SABINE
“It’s… 20 meters out.”

From the swamp mist, a grotesquely beautiful behemoth emerges.

A land whale of sorts, but twisted by evolutionary necessity.

● Body: massive, glistening, ridged like bark-meets-blubber
● Legs: dozens of thick, centipedal limbs, each one pounding like a piston
● Eyes: none visible
● Sound: just vibration—it doesn’t roar, it hums with gravity

It doesn’t walk.

It claims space.

It reaches the algae pool—where smaller lizard-creatures still dart and swim.

Suddenly—snap.

A low whip of its under-body unfolds like a ribbon and slurps three of them in one swift motion.

TRAVELER (whispering)
“It’s feeding…”

SAI (coldly, calculating)
“They’re not its competition.
They’re its crop.”

The camera zooms.

The tree trembles again.

A second behemoth hum ripples through the air from deeper in the woods.

SABINE
“There’s more than one.”