Karen’s tactical boot crunched over the charred shards of Zerg carapace, the reading on her infrared goggle spiking to an abnormal peak instantly. As a senior scout of the Federal Star Marine Corps, she had been combing the depths of an abandoned military cave ransacked by Zerg when she spotted the dagger embedded in the calcified rock wall. The spine-like ridges along the blade mirrored the exoskeleton structure of an ancient Zerg variant, and the skull carving on the hilt glowed with an eerie dim sheen under the emergency light. Her comms crackled with the alert of her entire team’s sudden disappearance, and behind her, the cave tunnel echoed with the slimy sound of writhing movement, the scrape of scythe claws growing closer by the second. The moment her gloved hand wrapped around the hilt, the dagger trembled faintly, as if resonating with the battle fervor coursing through her veins. When the first scythe-clawed Zerg lunged at her, the blade sliced through its carapace with unnatural ease, and Karen caught a flash of deep red within the skull carving—only to watch the Zerg’s remains wither to ash at a visible pace. She had no time to ponder the phenomenon, as more Zerg swarmed into the cave, and the dagger in her hand grew heavier, hotter, the temperature alarm on her goggle blaring wildly. She could even swear she heard a low, guttural growl emanating from deep within the blade, a sound that belonged to no known Zerg species, yet sent her combat instincts soaring to their peak in an instant...