Chapter 138: A Creature of Legend
The ceiling of the High Sanctuary gave way in a roaring avalanche of basalt and coral.
"Vince, move!" Vetra screamed over the deafening rumble of the collapsing seabed.
Grabbing a hyperventilating Lyrielle by her arm, Vetra kicked her tail with all her strength, propelling them both backward through a jagged tear in the upper aqueduct wall. They surged into the open ocean, putting distance between themselves and the imploding palace core.
Below them, inside the falling chamber, General Nerissa did not move.
She stood motionless on the shattered altar steps, her arms hanging limp, her golden eyes wide and vacant as a multi-ton slab of solid runic stone detached directly above her head. She didn’t raise her trident. She didn’t summon a current. She simply waited for the crushing weight as if wanting it to end her failure.
THUD-CRACK!
The massive boulder didn’t crush her.
A shadow blurred through the falling dust. Vince caught the falling stone on his shoulder, his boots driving deep into the fracturing floor as he absorbed the kinetic shock. His muscles coiled with explosive, un-magical power as he hurled the multi-ton rock aside, sending it crashing into the abyss below.
Before Nerissa could react, Vince wrapped a heavy forearm around her waist, hauling her off her feet like a discarded weapon.
"You’re not dying here, General," Vince grunted into her ear.
He kicked off the collapsing ledge just as the entire High Sanctuary folded inward, plunging into the black rift opening beneath the city. High above the dust cloud, zephros glided upward to a safe coral spire, his bloody leviathan-bone blades held loose at his sides as he looked down at the cataclysm with manic, victorious reverence. He paid no attention to the fleeing human or the broken commander in his arms.
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Five hundred meters away, perched on an elevated basalt ridge overlooking the crumbling inner rings of Nethros, Vetra and Lyrielle waited with drawn weapons.
A sharp current cut through the dark water as Vince arrived, descending onto the ridge and setting Nerissa down against a jagged outcrop. He hovered near Vetra and Lyrielle, his chest rising and falling in steady, even breaths, his dark tunic torn but his skin completely unmarked.
Nerissa slouched against the rock face like a hollow shell. Her sapphire armor was cracked, her trident left behind in the ruins, and her gaze remained fixed on the rising plume of abyssal silt below.
Vince crouched down in front of her, grabbing her jaw with a firm, unyielding grip and forcing her face up so her vacant golden eyes met his.
"Snap out of it," Vince commanded, his voice cold, sharp, and stripped of all comfort. "The nobles are dead. The anchors are gone. But the outer rings are full of your people screaming for help that isn’t coming. Look at me, Nerissa."
Nerissa’s lips trembled, a faint, hollow sound escaping her throat. She didn’t pull away from his grip; she lacked even the spirit to fight his touch.
"The people..." Nerissa whispered, her voice cracking like dry glass. "There are no people, human. There is no vanguard. There is no Nethros. Eight centuries of duty... reduced to dust because I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t strong enough."
"The city is just stone," Vince said, his fingers tightening slightly on her jaw to hold her focus. "Stone breaks. You’re still breathing. Get up and lead what’s left."
"Lead them where?!" Nerissa suddenly shrieked, a flash of desperate, broken agony bursting through her numbness as tears mixed with the salt water on her cheeks. She gestured wildly toward the collapsing seabed with a trembling hand. "Look at it! Look what he unchained! You cannot fight a god with spears and pride! We are already erased!"
BOOM.
The seabed didn’t just crack; it disintegrated.
A sound reverberated through the ocean—not a roar, but a deep, resonant hum that vibrated through every living cell in their bodies, instantly freezing the blood in their veins. The water pressure around the ridge rose so violently that Lyrielle gasped, clutching her chest as her vision swam with dark spots.
Out of the pitch-black rift miles below the city, The Sleeper rose.
It did not resemble any beast carved into the ancient temple walls. It was a primordial horror of unimaginable, suffocating scale—a leviathan larger than the entire city of Nethros itself.
Its main body was an abyssal mass of black, translucent mass that seemed to swallow the light around it, warping the fluid dynamics of the sea into an eerie, distorted lens. Thousands of bioluminescent, slitless eyes, burning with an ancient, cold violet light, unblinkingly opened across its towering form, casting a ghastly glow over the falling spires of the city.
Massive, mountain-sized tendrils, covered in chitinous, saw-toothed plates and ancient abyssal runes that bled black ink into the water, uncoiled from the trench. One single tendril swept lazily through the upper district, effortlessly snapping a three-hundred-foot coral tower in half like a dry twig.
At the very center of its terrifying, translucent chest, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic beat that felt like the heart of the ocean itself, burned a blinding, azure sphere of raw, primordial power.
The Tide Core.
The sheer scale of the entity bent the surrounding ocean into a terrifying, unnatural vortex. Upper currents were dragged downward toward its mass, swallowing whole garrisons of fleeing Vanguard troops into its silent, suffocating aura.
Nerissa stared at the titan, her breath hitching in her throat, her body completely paralyzed by the realization of her realm’s true insignificance. "A creature of legend..." she whispered, her voice dissolving into the deep vibration of the sea. "The ancient dark."
Beside her, Vetra smiled as her hands clawed out, and Lyrielle hid her face against Vetra’s shoulder, unable to process the scale of the horror rising before them.
Only Vince remained standing.
He stepped to the very edge of the ridge, the violent, swirling currents whipping his dark hair across his forehead. He looked down at the mountain-sized leviathan, then at the glowing azure core pulsing within its chest.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t despair. A slow, dangerous grin spread across his face, his dark eyes flashing with cold, unyielding ambition.
"Beautiful," Vince murmured into the churning tide.
He turned his head slightly, looking down at the broken, shivering general sitting in the dirt behind him.
"A God you say...," Vince said, his deep voice carrying clearly over the primordial hum of the beast.