The chamber pulsed with the weight of recently spent magic. Cracks in the coral walls glimmered with the fading residue of Curaga spells, their green-gold light dimming as Helios collapsed back against the wall. Sweat clung to his skin, and his breaths came shallow and strained.
Kurai stood above him, her figure now restored—wounds gone, skin smooth, black armor gleaming faintly in the dim light. The darkness in her veins pulsed with authority, not chaos. She rotated her shoulder, testing her strength. Nothing ached. No hesitation lingered.
"I've had enough of this," she said coldly. "Heal me, Helios. I'm going to end this."
Helios groaned, barely able to lift his head. "You're going to rush her alone?"
"She grows stronger by the day. Waiting only ensures we lose."
"That's what you always do," Helios muttered. "Run straight into fire and call it strategy."
"And you always stall until someone else burns for you."
Their eyes met. The air between them thickened with history. Neither blinked.
After a long pause, Helios sighed. He raised his trembling hand, magic swirling around it in green spirals. The first Curaga shimmered into her chest, mending every muscle. The second passed over her limbs, restoring the fatigue she hadn't even noticed.
As the last spell left his fingertips, Helios collapsed backward, chest heaving.
"There," he gasped. "All healed. Now what's your plan, oh queen of recklessness?"
Helios slid down the coral wall until he lay flat on the seabed. "So how do you plan on finding Ursula? She's probably inside some dimension-eating parasite womb or something like that."
"When she destroyed my protective barrier earlier, I embedded a sliver of darkness into her," Kurai said. "She didn't notice. Subtle enough not to be noticed. That darkness now leads me like a thread. I can feel her."
Helios gave a tired laugh. "Of course you did. So you can just walk up to her front door."
"I don't walk," Kurai said coolly. "I arrive."
Helios rolled onto his side, eyes fluttering shut. "Neat. Good luck and when your little suicide mission fails, feel free to run back here... if there's anything left of you be sure to crawl back here. I'll try to be less dead."
Kurai lingered, staring down at him in silence. Her lips pressed into a thin line, eyes narrowing. Then, without another word, she opened a corridor of darkness, turned, and vanished in a crackle of shadow.
The corridor of darkness sealed behind Kurai like a silent breath. She emerged into a submerged trench—a vast, cathedral-like hollow deep in the ocean, walled with obsidian coral and streaked with glowing veins of sickly green.
The water was colder here.
Deeper. Still.
Ahead of her, seated on a twisted throne of black coral.
Ursula sat atop it now, trident in hand, her form bloated and regal, cloaked in black magic. Her tentacles coiled around the coral like serpents, her silhouette shimmering with power too dense to be natural.
"So," Ursula said, smiling with venom, "the little shadow comes alone. Are you foolish, or just suicidal? Are you here to grovel or die?"
Kurai stepped forward, the pressure around her spiking as her power responded to the proximity of the parasite's vessel. The water recoiled from her steps.
"I'm here to end you," Kurai replied. "No theatrics. No speeches. Just your death."
With a flick of Ursula's trident, two monstrous figures emerged from the shadows behind her—Charybdis and Abaia, ancient sea beasts spoken of in whispers. Their forms were gargantuan, mouths lined with spirals of jagged teeth and tails that blotted out the waterlight. Their mere presence made the ocean groan.
Kurai didn't blink.
Kurai laughed—a sound sharp and regal, like a queen pronouncing a death sentence. "You think numbers will make a difference?" Her body began to glow—not with light, but with absolute, unrelenting darkness. "I don't need anyone else."
Her aura erupted.
Where most were swallowed by the madness of darkness, Kurai danced in it. The combined essence of the Thirteen True Darknesses surged from her being like obsidian fire, each tendril a chorus of screaming voids. Her long white hair billowed behind her like silken shadow, her eyes twin galaxies of infinite hunger. Even the water seemed to recoil, the trench quivering around her as if aware of the unnatural goddess that had awakened in its depths.
"Today, Ursula," Kurai hissed, voice layered in echoing harmonics, "you face the abyss itself."
Ursula didn't respond—she only raised her trident and gestured.
The monsters struck.
Charybdis roared as it launched forward, an impossible whirlpool formed in its gullet. The sheer pull of it distorted reality—currents bent inward, debris was crushed into atoms, and the ocean floor cracked. Kurai blinked—literally, vanishing into a blink of black light. She reappeared just above the beast, a whip of void forming in her hand. With a sharp crack, she brought it down, cleaving through Charybdis' dorsal ridge. A spray of steaming blood and bone erupted, but the beast twisted, snapping upward with rows of spiraling fangs.
She kicked off its snout and spun midwater, firing spears of darkness in all directions.
Abaia descended like a serpent god from the shadows above, body undulating with terrible grace. Its armored scales opened like shutters, revealing dozens of glowing nodes. In an instant, it launched a barrage of razor-sharp scale-blades, each moving with the precision of missiles.
Kurai summoned a barrier—a dome of rotating black sigils—but the blades tore into it like hail through glass. One clipped her leg, another her shoulder, and the third grazed her cheek, drawing blood that bloomed into crimson clouds around her. Her breath hitched, not from pain—but from thrill.
"Finally," she whispered, grinning as she gripped the blood on her arm and condensed it into a spike of corrupted energy. "You're worthy of being destroyed."
She hurled the spike into Abaia's side. It detonated in a storm of spiraling shadow-lanterns that latched onto the serpent, burrowing through its scales like drills. The beast screamed, writhing in agony—but it wasn't dead.
Charybdis, still bleeding from its back, opened its massive maw again. But Kurai didn't move this time.
Instead, she raised both hands. Darkness surged beneath her like wings—jagged, featherless, howling. She opened her mouth and exhaled a breath of void, a cone of utter black that devoured the current Charybdis was summoning. The vortex collapsed inward on itself, and Charybdis' body began to bend unnaturally, pulled toward her.
And then lightning struck.
From Ursula's throne, the trident blazed with crackling green and purple arcs. Bolts of unholy magic shot forward, tearing through the trench like heaven's wrath. One struck Kurai square in the back, searing her skin and ripping a cry from her throat. Another bolt followed, slamming into her stomach. Her body jerked, ribs cracking.
But she didn't stop.
"No more games," Kurai growled, her voice dark and ragged. "You're prey."
Chains of pure void erupted from her arms, dozens of them spiraling like tendrils of a black sun. They struck both monsters at once—wrapping around their limbs, throats, tails, and wings. The chains pulsed, not with brute force, but with entropy—corrupting muscle, sapping strength, unraveling spirit.
Charybdis shrieked as one of its eyes dissolved in its socket.
Abaia thrashed violently, but it was too late. Kurai pulled.
The chains constricted—and darkness bloomed from within. Black spikes tore out of Charybdis' spine, ripping it in half. Abaia convulsed as the void exploded inside its gut, shredding its innards into ribbons. Their screams echoed through the abyss before their forms disintegrated into mist, reduced to nothing more than shadow and memory.
Silence followed.
The trench stilled.
Kurai hovered midwater, arms limp, chest heaving, blood trailing from her wounds in thick streams. Her vision blurred, but her will was unwavering. She turned her gaze to Ursula, who stood from her throne slowly—her expression no longer smug.
"You... you actually killed them," Ursula said, stunned.
Kurai's lips curled into a blood-slick smile. "That was your army?"
Ursula raised the trident with both hands. "You think that makes you invincible?"
"No," Kurai said, lifting her hand as a spear of darkness formed above her head like a crown. "I don't think that. I just know it will allow me to kill you."