The journey to the Crimson Fang Ruby Mine begins on the One Road, a straight and crumbling path that was once a proud rail line. Eighty miles from Seregon, the jungle has claimed most of the world, but the One Road remains defiantly clear, carved like a scar through the verdant green. Vines hang low and steam rises from the earth, thick with the scent of iron and sap.
Flanking the road are three dozen fortified structures, all built from thick, dark jungle wood. Their construction is simple but durable, meant to hold against more than weather. Each one is partially barricaded, some with rusted tools, others with bones, and many bear the black mildew and red dust of the mine’s corruption. These buildings once housed workers and guards. Now, they sit hollow and grim, watching the road with silent windows like empty eyes.
A couple dozen zombies drift through the ruins, slow and senseless. They move without purpose, wandering in looping, repetitive paths—miners and guards raised again, their uniforms rotted and stained, their lanterns still swaying from their belts. Occasionally, a sickly red glow flashes in their chests, as if the mine still calls to them from within.
Lurking among the buildings is something more dangerous. The creature springs from behind cover with gleeful violence, tearing into the zombies like a predator in a field of prey. It moves low and heavy, a grotesque hybrid of mastiff and insect, its body covered in plates of dark chitin that glisten with sticky resin. Four clawed feet drag along the road, scraping stone with each lurching step.
The creature lacks eyes but misses nothing. Its wide nostrils flare as it snorts and huffs, tracking movement by sound and scent. A long, barbed tongue—slick with slime—lashes out with terrifying speed, sometimes snapping a zombie in half from thirty feet away, then slurping it into its gaping maw. Within, two sets of teeth—one horizontal, the other vertical—grind and shear with wet, mechanical precision. When it is not feeding, it sniffs and paces like a guard dog gone mad, amused by its own slaughter.
As the road climbs into the mountains, the buildings thin out. Soon, there are only mine carts, long-abandoned and derailed, their wheels locked with rust and jungle vines. The air here is dry and mineral-rich. A great opening yawns in the cliffside ahead—the mouth of the Crimson Fang Ruby Mine. Darkness spills from within like smoke. The stone around the entrance is stained crimson, and the rails vanish into the mine's throat, swallowed by shadow.
Something ancient and waiting lurks beyond.