The swamp reeked of old blood and salt. Mist clung to the broken ruins like a disease refusing to die, and somewhere beneath that stagnant sea-haze, the sound of chitin scraped against stone.
"Movement," Diago whispered, pressing his back to the cracked wall of what used to be a temple. His voice was brittle, eaten by the wind. "North side."
Genji's eyes swept the horizon — nothing but dark ripples and the silhouettes of barnacled statues, kneeling as if mid-prayer. But the air… the air throbbed. Like the pulse of something sleeping beneath.
Then came the sound.
Wet. Rhythmic.
As though the ocean itself was dragging its spine across the earth.
The zealots fell to their knees.
> "He tests us again," one murmured.
"Through the hand of the Leviathan, the Prophet will be proven pure."
"Get up," Juro snapped, voice razor-sharp. "You think kneeling helps when monsters crawl toward you?"
They didn't move. Their eyes gleamed with a feverish devotion, directed toward Shitsubo — who stood silent at the ruin's edge, wind flattening his ragged cloak.
The mist thickened. Then the first of them emerged.
Dagon's minions — warped remnants of men and fish, their torsos stretched and skeletal, eyes sunk deep into slime-covered sockets. Fins tore through ribs. Their mouths hung open, leaking brine and whispers in a language that clawed at the ears.
Juro flinched, his knuckles whitening around the rusted blade. "Gods—what the hell are those?"
"Echoes," Shitsubo murmured. His voice was calm, too calm. "Remnants of something that was once called faith."
And then they came, crawling and hissing, dozens of them, dragging their tails through the mud.
The zealots screamed prayers.
The survivors screamed curses.
And Shitsubo — he simply walked forward.
Dark energy rippled from his spine like smoke caught in reverse motion. The curse pulsed through him — veins blackening, eyes dimming — and the air turned thick with metallic scent. The nearest minion shuddered, then imploded, bones crushing inward before dissolving into a puddle of bile.
For a heartbeat, silence. Then chaos.
The zealots screamed his name now.
> "He delivers us!"
"Our Prophet purges the unclean!"
Each time Shitsubo moved, the ground cracked open. The curse obeyed no pattern — it fed, it throbbed, it consumed. Minions screamed in high, clicking tones, and one by one, they fell. Yet each kill hollowed Shitsubo further, like every victory burned part of his humanity.
Genji saw it — the way his skin flickered beneath the curse, as if his body couldn't decide whether it belonged to man or something older.
"Shitsubo!" she yelled. "You'll kill yourself—"
He didn't stop. His voice broke through the din, almost detached.
> "If death's the only currency left, I'll spend it till the sky empties."
Juro lunged forward to help, slicing through one of the smaller creatures. Its blood steamed as it hit the air. "He's not saving us," Juro shouted at the zealots, panting. "He's just buying time!"
But his words were drowned by the cult's chanting. They moved in rhythm, their bloodied hands forming sigils in the mud, whispering Shitsubo's name like a ward and a weapon both.
Dagon's roar split the horizon. A tremor rolled through the ground, hurling half the survivors to their knees. In the far mist, something colossal shifted — a mound of flesh and scales, too vast to fit inside a mortal's comprehension.
Shitsubo stopped. His curse pulsed violently, tearing cracks across his chest. His breathing turned ragged.
> "So this is what they pray to," he whispered. "A sea that eats its own dead."
The monster stirred again, and the water rose like a wall. Its presence was suffocating — faith and fear and flesh merging into one monstrous hymn. Shitsubo raised his hand, and for the first time, the curse spoke through him — not words, but an ancient vibration that twisted reality for an instant.
A spear of corrupted light shot from his palm, slicing through the wave and burning the creature's silhouette in ghostly flame. The backlash threw him backward into the mud.
Juro caught him by instinct — and immediately shoved him away, trembling.
> "You're not human anymore."
Shitsubo's lips curved, somewhere between mockery and pain.
> "Neither are you. Not after all this."
The wave collapsed. The minions shrieked and scattered, dragging their wounded back into the mist. The zealots cried out, half-mad with joy, claiming victory, claiming divinity.
And above the broken ruin, where the old temple roof had caved in, moonlight fell upon them all — survivors, zealots, monsters, one indistinguishable from the next.
Juro stared at the dying fires, jaw tight. "You see it now," he murmured. "They'll follow you till the end. Not because they believe… but because they're scared."
Shitsubo didn't answer. His hand trembled, the curse whispering under his skin like an impatient god.
The sea went still again. But every survivor there knew — silence no longer meant safety.