Little warning I have decided to skip a few scenes that were in the original as I don't want to copy whole characters without actually having something changed in them.
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As the members of the cohort cut down one giant locust after another, their grotesque, armored bodies crashed onto the stone colossus with wet finality, splattering black blood across its massive shoulders and staining the crimson coral far below. The air reeked of acid and rot, every kill painting the ancient bones of the Labyrinth in fresh death.
Their Ascended equipment carved through the creatures with ruthless efficiency. Between the raw brutality of Harus, the cold precision of Nephis, Effie's relentless fury, and Sunny's own calculated strikes, nothing that got close lived long enough to regret it. Each abomination was swatted from the sky like a buzzing pest—until they weren't.
Because the corpses didn't stay untouched for long.
The moment their broken bodies struck the stone, the ground *moved*.
Dark shapes erupted from beneath the coral-crusted mud. First a few. Then dozens. Then hundreds. They surged toward the fallen locusts, fighting one another in a frenzy to devour every scrap of flesh. It was a whirlwind of teeth, limbs, and screeching chaos.
Sunny narrowed his eyes as blood sprayed across the coral reefs below, the feeding frenzy devolving into a small war of its own. As soon as the strongest among them had finished tearing the weakest apart, the remaining creatures lifted their heads—blood still dripping from their fangs—and sniffed the air.
Their attention turned.
Right back toward the colossus. Right back toward *them*.
'Oh, for the love of—'
Looking down with a curse caught in his throat, Sunny saw dozens of creatures leaping onto the legs of the walking stone giant, clawing and scrambling their way upward from the coral mounds. More followed. A tide of nightmare-fueled hunger now climbing with terrifying speed toward the besieged cohort.
He couldn't make out the details, but he didn't need to. Whatever they were, they were bad news. Bad enough to make the locust swarm seem like a warm-up.
**[You have slain an Awakened beast, Flesh Reaver.]**
**[Your shadow grows stronger.]**
Not the time.
He turned, summoning the [Prowling Thorn] in one sharp gesture. His hands moved fast, tying the invisible string into a taut line—then he was flying, swinging up through the air in a graceful arc. The wind tugged at his cloak as he soared, catching the lip of the circular platform and pulling himself back into the fray.
No time to breathe. No time to think.
A winged shadow dove at him—Sunny's hand flicked. The curved blade of the kunai flashed like moonlight, severing one wing clean from its socket. The locust spiraled, shrieking, and plummeted into the abyss below… where the ravenous swarm awaited.
'Bon appétit.'
The fight wasn't going well. Cassie's summoned winds still howled, buffeting the air and buying them precious seconds. Her staff pulsed with each gust, keeping the worst of the aerial swarm at bay. But there were simply too many of them. The sky itself felt infested.
Kai stood firm at the edge, his jade bow glowing faintly. One after another, he loosed mundane arrows, the enchantment making them explode in liquid jade as they struck. The locusts burned alive in midair, impaling themselves at breakneck speeds on what became their own funeral pyres.
Efficient. Clean. But not fast enough.
Sunny was about to shout when Nephis barked, "Don't try to kill them! Break their wings!"
Kai's eyes widened with sudden clarity. A heartbeat later, his aim shifted. Wings shredded. Bodies tumbled. The locusts were grounded—dangerous still, but no longer able to reach the platform.
It was enough.
Effie, for her part, needed no such coaching. Every time her spear met chitin, something exploded into a grotesque splash of black gore. She was pure kinetic mayhem—force and fury in a compact, freckled package.
But she was running out of options.
Her beautiful spear wasn't meant to be thrown over and over, and her soul essence, while not yet at its limit, was a resource that could not be wasted carelessly. Memories returned their essence when dismissed close to the caster—but if they were dismissed too far away, that essence scattered. It would eventually replenish inside the soul core… but not quickly.
That was a long-term game. This fight? It was now. And right now, Effie didn't have a good ranged Memory she could use.
So she improvised—hurling makeshift darts forged from spider iron, thin and wicked. But they were few. And the last of them was already leaving her fingers.
Soon, she'd be forced to rely on melee.
Sunny's gaze shifted—and there was the Stone Saint, standing firm near Nephis, her body unshaken. A locust slammed into her shield at full force.
The result was decisive.
A sickening crunch echoed as the creature shattered like brittle porcelain. Its black blood sprayed through the air, then vanished into the wind.
**[You have slain…]**
Sunny grimaced. Stone didn't bleed. Stone didn't tire. The Saint could hold her own. But Effie? For all her strength, she was still flesh and bone. When the last dart was thrown, she'd have to meet the swarm with nothing but a spear in one hand and hope in the other.
'Curses. Curses, curse it all!'
He kicked aside a twitching piece of ruined locust, the chunk rolling off the platform and vanishing into the dark. Then, sprinting across the chaos toward Changing Star, he called out:
"We have a problem!"
Nephis turned to him, eyes sharp as blades.
"What?"
He hesitated only a second, then jerked a thumb toward the abyss.
"There's a couple hundred Labyrinth beasts crawling all over the colossus. They'll be on us *very* soon."
For a moment, her expression didn't change. Then her jaw tightened, and her eyes flicked across the team.
Cassie stood firm, her staff blazing with power. She looked fragile—but her will was like iron, controlling the maelstrom with unshakable focus. Her two echos streaked through the air in perfect arcs, cutting down any locust they could intercept. The [Broken Bastion] orbited her like a storm of blades, shredding any that slipped too close.
Harus was calm, almost serene—his chains whipping through the air in precise loops, snatching wings from the sky. There was something disturbingly cheerful about the way he fought. As if he was *enjoying* this.
Everyone was still holding. For now.
But Sunny could see the cracks forming. The sheer number of enemies was overwhelming. If even a handful of the grounded locusts got a grip on the platform—if the horde from below reached them—it would all collapse.
With a dark gleam in her eyes, Nephis turned back to Sunny.
"…Come with me, then."
'*'
A moment later, they split—two shadows peeling away in opposite directions across the stone expanse of the colossus's shoulders. Nephis surged ahead with her usual, cold resolve, the air rippling behind her as she sprinted toward the front and left flanks of the ancient giant. Her cloak billowed like a burning banner behind her as she raced down the curving ridge of its collar, hair flashing silver as a blade. She was going to meet the enemy head-on, where the climbing abominations were beginning to crest the edges.
Sunny turned and made for the right and back. The stone path beneath his feet trembled with each lumbering step of the colossus, but he kept his balance effortlessly, a shadow among shadows. He didn't know if just the two of them would be enough to cover the full spread of the gargantuan statue's vulnerable neck and shoulders, but there was no one else. The rest of the cohort was fighting for their lives against the locust swarm in the skies—they couldn't spare even one blade.
They would have to hold the line alone.
As he reached the edge, Sunny risked a glance downward. A chill prickled along his spine.
The creatures that scaled the massive stone body were only vaguely familiar in shape—hulking primates, knuckles dragging, their limbs grotesquely overgrown with cords of muscle. Their thick hides were caked in mud and matted with grey, fetid fur, but it was their faces that struck a deeper horror into him.
Maws full of needle-like teeth grinned up at him, and between them—between gaping nostrils and hollow eye sockets—grew clusters of parasitic blooms. Crimson flowers burst from their open wounds like obscene ornaments, their petals slick with blood. From some, vine-like stems slithered across the beasts' skulls, threading through the vacant hollows of their eyes.
The apes weren't alive.
They were husks. Puppets. Slaves.
The real predators were the flowers growing inside them.
"…Oh gods."
Grimacing, Sunny summoned the *Ordinary Rock*. He wreathed his limbs in shadow and drew back his arm before hurling the stone with all his strength. The small projectile shot down like a bullet, striking one of the grotesque creatures square in the head—and with a wet crunch, half of its skull gave way.
The creature didn't stop climbing.
Sunny watched with quiet dread as the primate, now missing a chunk of its brain, continued pulling itself upward with mechanical momentum.
He dismissed the Memory.
"Just as I thought. Nothing's ever simple here."
They couldn't just fight monstrous locusts—of course there had to be plant-infested zombie gorillas.
His hands clenched as he gritted his teeth. But there *was* a silver lining.
"…At least they rot easy."
He summoned the *Prowling Thorn*, the invisible string snapping taut in his hand, and launched it into the fray. The black kunai whistled through the air before slicing cleanly across the wrist of one of the climbing primates. Its hand severed, the beast lost its grip—and plummeted.
With a distant *crack*, it struck the coral below and erupted in a spray of gore.
Sunny didn't blink.
[You have slain an Awakened creature: Blood Flower.]
[Your shadow grows stronger.]
"One down," he muttered, already guiding the dagger back with a flick of his wrist.
It was like juggling death. The kunai returned, wet and gleaming, only to leave his hand again a heartbeat later. It danced through the air in spinning arcs, cutting tendons and throats, unmaking whatever dared to crest the stone.
One after another, the bloated meat-puppets fell. More than a dozen were slain in minutes. Yet Sunny could feel it—he wasn't keeping up.
Each kill bought only a second, maybe two. But the horde below was inexhaustible, and their rotting forms were closing in fast.
He dodged left as something massive crashed down beside him—an eviscerated corpse of a locust, its body smashed to paste. It had been thrown from above, likely by Saint or Effie.
Black blood sprayed over him in a steaming shower.
Sunny wiped it from his eyes with a snarl.
"I'm a damned *lighthouse* now. A bloody beacon for monsters."
And monsters answered.
Another swarm of primates crested the statue's back. Their heavy limbs pounded against stone as they scrambled to overtake the moving giant.
Sunny cursed and leapt back, racing across the curved surface of the colossus's shoulder to intercept them. His body burned with exertion, his arms aching from the relentless rhythm of throw, pull, catch, repeat.
Another one of the flower-beasts leapt—and Sunny reacted by twisting into a slide, his hand flashing as the *Midnight Shard* appeared.
He would still need a free hand for the [Prowling Thorn]l
Steel met flesh.
The blow split the creature diagonally, sending two halves tumbling in opposite directions. But as they fell, they burst into a shimmering mist of crimson pollen.
Sunny gasped—and breathed in.
He staggered, eyes widening, his throat constricting as the perfumed rot of the pollen filled his lungs.
"…Oh no."
His balance faltered.
But a second attacker was already in the air.
With a grunt, Sunny ducked under its swing and drove the kunai up into the creature's jaw, through its skull, and yanked it down with brute force. It hit the stone with a sickening crunch—but Sunny was already off-balance, coughing violently.
His vision blurred.
The world twisted, just a little.
There were too many. Behind him, claws scraped the stone. Ahead, crimson flowers opened like eyes in the dark.
Sunny spat blood, wiped his mouth, and growled low.
"…Let them come."
With a flicker of movement, three of the flower-apes lunged at him together, but he was already moving. Shadow blurred his limbs as he darted between them, slashing with brutal precision. The *Prowling Thorn* spun on its invisible tether, severing limbs. The *Midnight Shard* arced in his other hand, stabbing into skulls before he pivoted and reversed his grip.
One fell.
Then two.
Then a third… but it sprayed him with more of that wretched pollen.
His body trembled. He could feel the hallucinations clawing at the edge of his thoughts.
Sunny staggered back and leaned against the giant's shoulder, panting, eyes wild.
Far below, hundreds more climbed.
To the side, through the haze, he could see Nephis—her sword a searing silver line as she cut down beast after beast. Her cloak was shredded, her face impassive as always, and her blade never missed a stroke.
He grinned bitterly.
"Better pick up the pace, Sunless."
Because the flood hadn't even reached its peak yet.
'*'
While Sunny raced toward the rear, Nephis ran headlong into the heart of the storm.
The wind howled across the towering form of the colossus, dragging strands of silver hair across her pale face as she sprinted along the wide curve of its collar. Every step reverberated against stone that trembled beneath her feet—ancient, massive, and very much alive beneath the siege.
Ahead, the primates were already breaching the edge of the colossus's chest, climbing like twisted, overgrown insects—dozens of them, scaling the surface with animalistic ease. Their eyes were hollow. Their mouths hung open in mindless hunger. But the flowers… the flowers watched her. Crimson petals bloomed like diseased hearts from their flesh, and wherever those petals turned, they *sensed* her.
Nephis did not slow down.
A pair of beasts clambered up onto the collar ahead of her. One roared and lunged, swinging its massive arm to swat her like an insect.
She ducked under it at a full sprint, slid low across the stone, and came up behind it in one smooth motion—already slashing.
A flash of argent light. Her sword ut through the primate's spine like silk through shadow. Its torso separated mid-air, spinning as it toppled from the edge.
Without looking, she pivoted and blocked the second ape's strike, sparks leaping from the clash of claw against steel. The beast bellowed in rage—and then fell silent as her sword cleaved straight through its throat.
She was already moving again before its corpse hit the ground.
A jagged shadow fell across her—above, one of the flying locusts dove from the air, wings shrieking like rusted knives. Nephis jumped, twisting her body mid-air. Flame and Pain ignited across her form, and for an instant, she looked like a streak of silver fire.
Her blade slashed upward, catching the locust beneath the jaw.
It shrieked, half its head cleaved off, and spiraled away in a spray of black ichor.
She landed hard, one knee to the stone, breathing once.
Then the ground in front of her erupted.
Three more primates lunged from below, scrabbling for purchase as they surged over the edge. Their tusks glinted like scythes. One let out a screeching roar as it bounded straight for her, its slavering mouth wide.
Nephis met it.
Silver flame surged down her arm, wreathing her blade in searing radiance. With one precise step forward, she thrust the sword directly into the creature's chest—and let the fire explode.
The detonation hurled the creature backward in pieces, flames chewing through its corrupted insides. The other two hesitated—but only for a breath. Then they charged.
Too late.
Nephis flicked her sword and spun in place, trailing a crescent arc of fire that split both of them apart in a single elegant motion. Their bodies burst like sacks of rotten meat, blood and pollen misting the air.
But it wasn't over.
From the slope of the shoulder, more were coming—crawling, leaping, dozens upon dozens. Their numbers were endless, their limbs grotesquely strong, their flower-infested bodies immune to pain.
She didn't flinch. Didn't retreat.
The long sword hummed with power in her grip, glowing brighter as the heat around her rose. The air rippled. The steel beneath her boots sizzled.
Another leap. She vaulted over one beast's head as it swiped for her legs, landed on its back, and rammed her sword straight through the nape of its neck. Then, pulling the blade free, she kicked off and launched herself at the next.
She moved like a falling star—impossibly fast, lethally focused, her path a blur of silver flame and shattered flesh.
Behind her, the corpses piled.
She was of fire and pain.
A group of them tried to surround her—three in front, one behind, the last clambering to flank her side.
They were coordinated. Intelligent.
*The flowers,* she realized. *They're guiding them.*
The thought barely had time to form.
She dropped low and let the front three charge. At the last second, she rolled beneath the first's swing, came up behind it, and drove her sword into its back before using its collapsing body as a shield.
The second beast struck its comrade instead. Nephis moved between them, twisted, and severed its head.
The third lunged—too slow.
A geyser of fire exploded around her as she released a pulse of [Feast of Embers], and the creature was incinerated mid-leap, reduced to scorched bone and ash.
The one behind her closed in with terrifying speed.
Nephis whirled, and their bodies collided.
They tumbled across the stone together, grappling—claws and blade, tusks and flame. The beast screeched, its maw inches from her face, flowers pulsing and trembling with hunger.
She clenched her teeth, forced her knee up into its chest, and *pushed*.
With a scream of effort, she forced the blade up under its jaw and into its skull.
The primate twitched—and went still.
Nephis exhaled sharply, pulled her blade free, and shoved the corpse off.
She rose.
More were coming.
She was covered in blood and ash. Her breath came hot and sharp, her muscles screaming with strain. But her eyes…
Her eyes were calm.
She stepped forward again.
And the flame roared to life.
'*'
A single raindrop struck Sunny's cheek—icy, sharp, like a warning whispered from above.
The howling wind deepened, rising to a shriek that curled through the air like the cry of some ancient beast. And then, without prelude, the sky went black. As if the sun had been swallowed whole.
A furious gale slammed into him. It came all at once—a living wall of wind and water. Rain lashed his face in jagged sheets, stinging like needles. The curse he'd meant to shout was torn from his lips and drowned in the roar.
"D—damn!"
The storm fell upon them with cataclysmic force.
The platform beneath them quaked, not from motion, but from the sheer violence in the air. Around him, the bloated corpses of the locusts—those grotesque remnants of their last battle—trembled where they lay. Then the wind seized them. One by one, their slick bodies were flung off the colossus's neck, vanishing into the storm-churned abyss. Black blood spattered the stone, only to be washed away in the endless deluge.
A sudden flash of lightning tore open the veil of clouds—a blinding, jagged spear of white. A heartbeat later, thunder cracked the heavens in two.
The surface beneath Sunny grew slick and treacherous, rain pooling in every groove. He felt his boots skidding, his balance buckling. The wind howled harder, shoving against him like an invisible juggernaut. It lifted his cloak, clawed at his limbs, tried to tear him from his perch.
Clenching his swords tighter, Sunny gasped. His ribs flared with pain. Every breath scraped his throat like broken glass.
'Worst… worst amusement ride ever…'
And still, somehow, the swords held. Heavy as anchors, they pinned him to the earth—or what passed for it atop this ancient, trudging god of stone.
Beside him, Nephis, Harus, and Effie fought the wind with grim resolve. They were no less battered—soaked through, faces twisted against the storm—but like him, they endured. With every muscle screaming, they held.
But it wasn't enough.
Beneath them, hidden by wind and darkness, the sea was rising. Not in waves, but in wrath. Sunny could hear it—deep, ancient, *furious.* A black tide surging through the labyrinthine veins of the earth, sweeping across coral mounds and forgotten ruins. A sound too vast to be called a roar. It was a *summons.*
The colossus walked into it, each titanic step dragging a whirlpool in its wake.
Another bolt split the sky, stark and merciless. For a moment, the world was made of light and madness—wind that shredded, water that devoured, stone that endured.
A powerful gust struck from the side, and Sunny's heart seized. Saint, unmoving for so long, slid back across the slick stone by a few dreadful centimeters. Her heels scraped against the surface—and then steadied.
He grit his teeth.
The sea rose higher. Black water crashed against the colossus's knees, then its waist. Then its chest. Still it walked, unstoppable. But the platform they clung to—the shoulder of a titan—was slowly disappearing beneath the waves.
Minutes passed. Or hours. He couldn't tell. The storm made time meaningless. It blurred into a single moment of pure survival—hands locked to hilts, lungs burning, heart racing. Rain poured in sheets, the wind shrieked like a wounded god, and lightning cleaved the dark world again and again.
At last, Sunny looked up—and his expression darkened.
The sea had reached them.
A monstrous wave surged out of the blackness and slammed into the colossus's neck, cascading over the platform in a roaring tide. It struck like a hammer.
The cohort was submerged in an instant—choking, gasping, drenched in bitter, freezing seawater. Salty brine stung his eyes, forced its way into his nose and throat. They clung tighter, soaked and shivering, and somehow—*somehow*—none were swept away.
Not yet.
But the world was unraveling.
Wind shrieked. Rain hammered. Lightning clawed the sky. Thunder shattered the air. And now, the sea itself clawed at them, again and again, as if trying to swallow the very bones of the colossus. Every crashing wave battered the stone with ruinous force.
They were at the edge of the world—and the world wanted them gone.
Still, they held.
Six humans. Nothing but flesh and iron and stubborn will, clinging to a god-shaped ruin as the storm sought to erase them.
Time vanished into the scream of the wind. Sunny didn't know how long they endured—only that the storm didn't wane. It *grew.*
Wilder. Stronger. *Worse.*
But none of this was what truly terrified him.
No.
His fear lived not in the skies, but beneath them. In the dark. In the *depths.*
And it was rising.
Without knowing why, Sunny lowered his head. Pressed his forehead to the stone. As if listening for something below.
And heard it.
Or perhaps *felt* it.
A shape. Vast, cold, hateful. Crawling up from the blackest abyss.
His pulse skipped.
One of the terrors of the deep had awakened.
"…Curse it all…"
Looking up again, Sunny spotted Kai clinging to Saint. The archer, usually radiant, was pale as the clouds, his face stripped of glamour. Drenched, trembling, his knuckles white on Saint's stone shoulder.
Behind him, Nephis knelt. Her sword was planted in the stone like a gravestone. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt in a death grip, white with strain.
Sunny inhaled, lungs aching.
"Be! Ready! The dwe—"
He didn't finish.
Nephis's eyes went wide. A soundless warning.
Sunny turned.
And froze.
From the seething sea, a titanic shape rose—taller than towers, black as oil. Lit by a flash of lightning, the tentacle loomed like a god's finger, slick and glistening, textured with ridges that caught the light in obscene ways. It rose, and rose… and *hung.*
Lurking above them.
He knew it.
The memory struck like a blade. That night on the Forgotten Shore—the monstrous black limb that had torn a Corrupted shark in half without effort. The thing *other monsters feared.*
The abomination.
*It was back.*
The tentacle fell.
It crashed down on the statue's neck and coiled like a constrictor. A sick, wet groan followed as its grotesque body tightened, squeezing.
Trying to drag the colossus under.
"…Oh no."
Sunny barely had time to react. The tentacle constricted, muscles flexing beneath its glistening flesh. Stone groaned in protest. The ancient titan lurched, slowed—but did not stop.
The storm howled. The sea boiled.
Then, in a deafening cascade of water, the colossus raised its hand.
Massive. Implacable. Ancient.
Fingers of stone gripped the tentacle—and *tore.*
Effortless.
The abomination's flesh ripped apart, spilling black ichor. One half fell into the sea with a dying shudder. The other writhed, trying to wrap around the giant's arm… but was swept aside. Rejected.
And gone.
The sea stilled.
For a moment, there was silence.
"…Oh, gods."
'*'
The cursed sea frothed and seethed, then burst upward in a towering explosion of black water. In the wake of the vanished tentacle, six more broke the surface—vast, grotesque limbs rising like twisted mountains. For a moment, they seemed to blot out even the storm.
Sunny stared, teeth clenched, barely able to comprehend the scale of what was unfolding.
*How are we supposed to survive this?*
The tentacles fell toward the colossus, slow only in appearance. Four dove back into the sea to coil around its legs and torso, while two reached for its hand. The ancient statue continued southward, unmoved by the horror assailing it. One tentacle was swatted away—another latched onto the giant's wrist.
"Hold fast!"
Sunny didn't know who shouted, but he obeyed, gripping his blades tighter.
With a groan of stone, the colossus staggered—the limb bound by the tentacle trembled, cracks forming under the strain. But instead of shattering, the giant turned its palm… and *crushed* the limb in its grasp. Oily black blood spilled into the sea as the writhing appendage tore apart and fled.
But the rest were still attacking.
Beneath the water, Sunny could imagine the other limbs binding the colossus, dragging it down. Its pace slowed, then halted. The platform began to tilt. Stormwinds screamed overhead, rain and seawater battering the cohort as thunder crashed and lightning webbed the sky.
Then, the colossus leaned forward.
Sunny's eyes widened.
*He's diving…*
Nephis shouted: "We're going under! Hold your breaths!"
A heartbeat later, the sea swallowed them whole.
Icy blackness surged in. Sunny held on, barely breathing as they were pulled into the depths. Pressure crushed from all sides, the cold gnawing at bone. Then, deep below, the platform stilled—and a terrible sound echoed through the water.
*Gods…*
The colossus shifted again. They began to rise.
Moments later, the platform broke the surface. Sunny gasped, counted heads—everyone was still there.
And then he saw it.
The colossus hadn't been pulled down.
It had *reached* into the sea… and *dragged* the monster from its depths.
Now it held the squirming leviathan aloft, raising it into the storm as if to show the world the face of its terror.
Sunny stared—despite himself.
And what he saw made him shiver.
'*'
Clutched in the colossal hand of the ancient statue was a monstrous skull—humanoid in outline, yet profoundly, grotesquely wrong. Its shape was off in a way that defied language, warped by something malign and ancient. Even from a distance, it radiated such a vile aura that Sunny felt his stomach twist. His limbs weakened. It was like gazing into an abyss that stared back—only far worse.
It reminded him of the runes of the Unknown... only this time, the sensation was magnified a thousandfold.
The most obvious aberration was the third eye socket—set high on the brow like a blasphemous crown. Below, two others leered from the misshapen face, and great fang-like canines jutted from the maw. Or where a maw had once been—the lower jaw was gone, torn away. From that gaping void, seven monstrous tentacles extended like serpents, writhing and slick with black, oily flesh.
Unlike the skull, the tentacles themselves didn't nauseate him. Not exactly. And then Sunny understood why.
*It's hiding inside it… like a shell. Like a parasite in an ancient carcass.*
The horror of the deep wasn't just wearing this vile skull—it had made it a home. And now its glistening flesh bulged obscenely from the three eye sockets, coiling tighter around the stone giant's arm.
Three of the tentacles were mangled, but the others still gripped with terrifying strength. The colossus's arm cracked under the pressure—yet the statue remained unmoved, uncaring.
*What is he doing…?*
As if in answer, the dark sea exploded upward—revealing the giant's other hand, raised high into the air. Water poured from his fingers like rivers. In his grasp, the stone hammer began to spark.
No… not sparks. Arcs. Electric veins ran across its surface.
Then—lightning struck.
And again.
And again.
Dozens of bolts crashed down from the sky, drawn to the hammer like moths to flame. Each one deafening, blinding, earth-shaking. The hammer glowed orange-white, incandescent, heat shimmering around it.
Time stopped.
And then, without urgency or hesitation, the colossus brought it down.
The hammer crashed into the grotesque skull with cataclysmic force. Ancient bone shattered like brittle glass, and the flesh beneath split open, black blood—no, not blood—something *worse*—erupted into the sea.
Sunny stood frozen, until the creature screamed.
It wasn't a sound—it was a violation. A shriek no living thing should ever make. It rose over the storm, over thunder, over reason. Sunny stumbled back, clutching his ears.
Then he saw it.
A wave of pure darkness surged from the wound. Not shadow. Not smoke. Not blood.
*True darkness.*
It flowed toward them like a living tide. And Sunny—who could see through shadows—realized something terrifying.
He couldn't see through *this*.
This wasn't darkness. It was obliteration.
If it touched them, it wouldn't kill them. It would erase them.
"Neph! LIGHT!"
No time for explanations. No time for hesitation.
But Nephis didn't need them. She heard the panic in his voice—and acted.
White fire erupted from her sword. Blinding, pure, incandescent.
The moment the wave of true darkness touched that light—it vanished.
Like a dream fleeing dawn.
Sunny collapsed, lungs burning, limbs shaking.
Ahead, the colossus pulled his hammer free and dropped the shattered skull into the sea. The broken tentacles twitched once… then sank into the depths.
Without pause, the ancient statue lowered its arm and continued its march.
As if nothing had happened.
Sunny gritted his teeth and rose to his feet, blades in hand.
The storm still raged.
But somehow… it didn't feel quite as fearsome anymore.
Time passed.
Eventually, the winds calmed. Rain softened to a drizzle. The clouds parted—just enough to let golden rays of sunlight pierce through.
The storm was over.