How did it come to this? One moment you were shoulder to shoulder with your hunting team, your blades raised against the towering Ajarakan, and the next you were nothing more than a ragdoll, shoved brutally from the cliffside in the chaos. The fall had been long, jarring, and ended with a sticky, suffocating splash as your body sank into the tar pits of the Oilwell Basin's lowest reaches.

With a groan, you clawed your way free of the clinging muck, every movement sluggish as the thick black tar stuck to your armor. Your weapon was half-buried nearby, uselessly coated in sludge. As you staggered upright, breath shallow from the stench and heat, the realization hit like a hammer: you were alone, and you had been thrown into the deepest part of a monster's territory.

That thought was answered almost immediately by a shift in the earth around you. The tar bubbled, thick tendrils stirring as if the basin itself had awoken. Then—two glowing eyes burned through the blackness, opening slowly, steadily, like lanterns piercing the murk. The tar sloughed off as Nu Udra herself rose from her oily bed, horns pulsing faintly with blue light, her massive form dripping with molten-black sludge.

Her many spined tendrils writhed languidly, slapping wetly against the ground as she straightened. A deep rumble vibrated the air, more growl than words, but unmistakably directed at you. The tar pits hissed and bubbled louder as her gaze narrowed, heat radiating from her immense body. Her glowing eyes locked on you, unblinking. The silence was suffocating, broken only by the wet writhing of her tendrils as she stirred fully awake.