"Shit… do you guys hear that?" Stuwart whispered, his voice trembling as his head darted left and right.
"Zrith-ahr… velkor'nath… ahz'ra vel ta'nir…"
"Ahhh-rraaa… khen'tor a'liem… shhhaa…"
His wide eyes scanned the fog-choked surroundings, every shadow looking alive, every faint sound making his pulse spike.
"Shaa-vael… nithra… kholl-vaar…"
"Ih… naah'rith… meeyr-sa…"
The whispers had started faintly—soft, almost melodic—but now they were everywhere, circling around them like unseen predators.
"What do you think!?" Kreiz snapped, his tone sharp and strained as he gripped his staff tightly.
The tall rod thrummed with a low, eerie hum, its runes igniting in a flickering green hue that pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
He planted the staff firmly into the ground, readying himself as his eidra began to surge.
Around them, several soldiers from the nearby formation turned, their movements precise but tense.
"Check every direction!"
"There's something fucking with us…"
The hiss of their powered armor mixed with the faint clicks of safety switches disengaging.
Guns rose, barrels glinting under the bluish lantern light.
Even the disciplined Red Fleet troops—trained to face horrors without flinching—showed unease in their eyes as the whispers slithered through their helmets and into their skulls.
The voices then grew louder.
"Vrrha'sh… meyr-thaal… RA'NŌTH—KHEHR ISSA!!"
What had started as incoherent murmurs became fragmented words, phrases no one could understand but everyone could feel.
"Zrith-ahr!! VELKOR'NATH!! AHZ'RA—TA'NIR!!"
"AHHHHRRRAAAA—KHEN'TOR'RRAAAAHHHHH!!"
They carried weight—anguish, rage, something ancient and hateful.
Then, suddenly, the whispers twisted into screams.
"Fuck!" Jill shouted, her voice breaking as she stumbled backward.
She pressed one hand tightly against her ear, blood trickling between her fingers.
The other hand clutched her blaster, the muzzle trembling as she tried to aim at the fog.
The screams tore through her mind like knives, each one different, each one sounding like a thousand dying souls wailing at once.
"MAINTAIN POSITION!" the commanding officer's voice boomed through the comms, cutting through the chaos.
His tone was harsh but shaking slightly with strain.
"Radar men, unleash an eidric radar pulse—now! Start from sectors V13 through V15, I repeat, V13 through V15!"
A moment later, a soldier standing on top of one of the rear vehicles slammed his palm against a glowing rune console.
The air rippled as a surge of blue light burst outward, a wave of pure eidric energy expanding across the mist.
*vwoom! *vwoom! *vwoom! *vwoom!
The eidra pulse rippled outward again and again, each wave shimmering through the suffocating fog like faint rings of blue light.
But instead of silencing the whispers, the mist seemed to feed on it.
"REEN'VOH SA'NAH!! TREK'THAR—MEH'ZAI!!!"
"VO'REN TAH-LAS VAHR-SUUNNNN!!!"
The screams that followed grew louder—sharper—until they became unbearable, echoing inside every helmet and drilling into the soldiers' skulls like a thousand invisible claws.
"A-Argh! It hurts!"
"I-It's got to be an veil beast!"
Some men collapsed to their knees, clutching their heads, while others struggled just to breathe as the air around them thickened with the stench of death and corruption.
"EIDRA SIGNATURE DETECTED!" shouted the radarman from the rear vehicle, his voice breaking with panic.
His trembling fingers danced frantically over his console, eyes flicking to the rapidly changing readings.
"EIDRIC BEAST IN THE PERIPHERY! TOWARDS THE WES—"
*Shrick!
His words were cut short.
A blur tore through the mist with blinding speed—too fast for the eye to follow, too sudden for even instinct to react.
The radarman's scream was drowned out by a wet crack and a tearing sound that froze everyone in place.
In an instant, his upper body was gone, shredded from the torso upward in a violent spray of blood that splattered across the side of the vehicle.
What was left of him—his legs and half of his gear—remained upright for a brief second before collapsing limply off the edge.
"K-Kurgh!" the commanding officer choked, stumbling back as his face twisted in horror.
His gloved hand slammed against the console of his wristpad, opening the channel to the entire convoy.
"HOSTILE INBOUND! ALL UNITS, PREPARE FOR ENGAGEMENT!" he barked, his voice cracking through static.
The soldiers—most still reeling from the agonizing screams in their heads—snapped their rifles upward and aimed toward the mist.
"Shit! Shit! Shit! Where is it!?"
"Stick together now!"
Their breaths came fast and ragged as they tried to steady their hands.
The fog offered them nothing in return—only the endless swirling of black and gray, a curtain that mocked their desperation.
Then it struck again.
*Shrieeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!
"O-Over the—!"
A massive shadow ripped through the formation, moving with impossible speed.
*crunch!
The sound of flesh tearing and armor splitting filled the air as several soldiers were torn clean in half, their screams cut short into silence.
Blood sprayed across the vehicles, painting the once-blue glow in streaks of crimson.
"ARGH!" one soldier bellowed in raw terror as he lost control, opening fire blindly into the fog.
*bang! *bang! *bang! *bang! *bang!
*bang! *bang!
His bullets tore through the darkness, the flash from his muzzle briefly illuminating a twisted, shifting silhouette within the mist—something large, something wrong.
But before anyone could react, that same soldier vanished,
"NO! NO! ARG—!!"
snatched and ripped apart mid-scream, his weapon clattering to the ground, still firing for a few seconds before falling silent.
The mist churned violently, the air vibrating with the roar of the unseen monster.
Every pulse of the eidric scanners now returned erratic readings—massive energy spikes coming from every direction at once.
Whatever was hunting them wasn't just fast—it was toying with them.
===
*bzzt!
"Commander Gelhyne, this is Gerav. I'm on the scene," came a voice through the comms, crackling faintly with static.
The transmission was faint at first, buried under the sound of wind and the muffled screams still echoing through the mist.
"Report," Gelhyne responded sharply.
"Copy. Banshee detected on the rear," Gerav said.
*shrieeeeeeeek!
"Wh… is it!?"
"Con… the… nder!"
In the background, the low, unnatural howling of the creature could be faintly heard—high-pitched, distorted, and wrong.
"Currently assaulting convoys V13 through V15. So far, it hasn't alerted the others."
His words came in bursts between patches of interference, his breathing stable and focused.
"Very well," Gelhyne replied, tapping a command on her datapad.
"Return immediately. I'll be sending someone to handle it."
*bzzt!
There was a brief moment of static before the line went dead.
Inside the lead vehicle—V1—Rox leaned back in her seat, having overheard just enough of the transmission to catch one word.
"Banshee, huh?" she muttered, her tone losing its earlier humor.
"Better kill 'em fast before they begin to alert the others, they usually work in groups you see.."
Gelhyne turned toward her, one arm resting against her crossed chest.
"You've fought one before?" she asked, her tone neutral but carrying a testing edge, as if weighing Rox's worth beyond her words.
Rox scoffed lightly, the corner of her lip curling into a smirk.
"Hah. You kidding?" she said, her voice slightly static because of her helmet,
"Of course I have."
She then raised a brow inside her helmet..
"I'm assuming you want me to kill it?"
Gelhyne didn't reply, but she didn't have to.
Her silence spoke louder than words—a silent confirmation, a command without being said.
Rox's grin widened slightly.
"Thought so."
She moved toward the side hatch, her boots clanging against the metal floor.
"This'll be quick," she said, cracking her knuckles before pressing the release button.
*thud!
The door hissed open with a rush of cold air and the faint shriek of the mist's howling wind.
In one smooth motion, she flipped herself out of the vehicle and landed on the reinforced roof with a metallic thud, her figure outlined by the dim blue lanterns.
From there, she raised a hand to her brow, scanning the long line of vehicles ahead and behind—the glowing dots of eidric light stretching deep into the fog.
"That's one long-ass convoy," she muttered with a faint smirk.
Then, without hesitation, she bent her knees, focused the residual power in her legs, and launched herself forward in a single burst.
*Bang!
Her body became a streak of motion as she leapt from one armored vehicle to the next.
Each landing was silent and precise, her boots barely making a sound against the steel.
The fog whipped around her as she moved, her figure vanishing and reappearing in bursts of light until she disappeared into the darkness—toward the screams, the blood, and the monster that awaited her.