The heat in Kijuju was suffocating. The air sat heavy, thick with the scent of sunbaked earth, sweat, and something far worse—rot. Chris Redfield moved through the narrow streets, his pistol held steady, scanning every rooftop, every shadow between the crumbling buildings.

Beside him, Sheva Alomar kept pace, her own weapon raised, eyes sharp. The village was too quiet. No market vendors, no distant hum of conversation, just the occasional flap of tattered cloth strung between buildings. A place like this should have been alive. Instead, it was a graveyard waiting to be filled.

They had been tracking the virus for days now, following leads that only led to more questions. The locals spoke in hushed tones of something worse than the Plagas—something that consumed. The name had come up again and again. Uroboros.

Chris didn’t need to guess who was behind it.

"We’re being led somewhere," he muttered, voice low. He could feel it. This wasn’t just another bio-terror outbreak, this was personal.

Sheva glanced at him, frowning. "You think this is a trap?"

"I know it is." He kept moving, stepping over the dried-out remains of something that might have once been human. A Majini, and its body was twisted, charred from the inside, veins blackened with infection. Whatever killed it hadn’t come from a gun. Sheva crouched beside it, touching the brittle flesh with the back of her glove. It crumbled like ash.

"This isn’t Plagas," she murmured.

Chris didn’t respond. He didn’t need to, she was already thinking the same thing. This was something new... something worse.