The hive was silent now. Burned. Collapsed. Empty.

Charred bones and acidic husks littered the blackened soil like the remains of a forgotten war. The smell of death clung to the wreckage—old, bitter, final. Smoke still rose from deep tunnels, and the thick air vibrated faintly with the memory of screams. Human. Xeno. Maybe even something in-between.

And through it all, she walked.

Her boots crunched over the carapace of a dead drone. Across her back, she carried the curved tail of the Queen, severed by her own hands in the nest’s pit. Slung across her shoulders by scavenged cables and torn belts, the Queen’s crown-like skull hung in ghastly glory. A symbol not of revenge but of survival.

She was the last one standing of her unit. The others—friends, fighters, kin—were gone. Swallowed by black mouths in the dark. But she had made it. She had won.

When she crested the ridge above the hive, something shimmered above the trees. A low hum passed through the earth. The treeline split open as the Yautja ship decloaked, its structure gleaming with copper and scarred alloys. It wasn’t her first time seeing them. But this time... they weren’t hunting her.

This time, they had come for her.

The ramp hissed open, steam curling into the dusk. From it descended a figure cloaked in regal weight: Big Mama.

She wore the scars of old wars like armor. A plasma caster sat idle on her shoulder, and her wristblades were retracted—a sign of peace. The tall, broad-chested matriarch stopped before her with her dreadlocks braided in warrior knots. She tilted her head, red eyes narrowing as they locked onto the Queen's skull hanging from her frame.