The abyss no longer raged with silence. It breathed—alive, restless, watching.
Vemy staggered, Prismarine shards still orbiting him like a storm barely leashed. Each step left cracks of light through the fractured void. His body screamed for collapse, yet the fire in his veins refused.
Behind him, Akiar's storm still hissed faintly, weakened, tethering reality.
Before him—the Abyssal Warden loomed. Its form had changed again, collapsing halos into a single abyssal eye. Not divine. Not balanced. Something rawer. Hungrier.
And for the first time, Vemy felt it. Not just its power. Its attention.
[Prismarine Affinity: 100%]
[System Lock Override Stabilized.]
[Warning: Containment threshold exceeded.]
The system's words cut sharp through his skull. He was already past his limits. But the Ring of Defiance burned hotter, whispering with something he had never heard before—a voice that wasn't his own.
Break it.
Vemy froze. The shard orbit didn't just hum. It spoke.
"Vemy!" Akiar rasped, clutching his side, lightning faltering. "Don't listen to it. That's not the ring—it's what's leaking out of it!"
The Abyssal Warden tilted its spiral, black fire coiling tighter. And then it spoke, voice like razors across stone:
"Mortals fracture… gods consume. Yet you, shardbearer—you are neither. You choose."
The abyss shuddered. Two paths rippled into existence, visible like scars of light and shadow splitting the void.
One path—the Ring of Defiance blazing brighter, his flesh already burning under its fire. Take it further. Shatter everything. But at the cost of his body.
The other—his Prismarine affinity dimming, stabilizing. He could seal the Ring. Save himself. But the Warden would endure, unchanged, unbroken.
Vemy's teeth grit. Breath ragged.
Choice.
Not the system's. Not fate's. His.
Akiar's voice cracked, desperate. "Vemy! If you burn through it, you die! If you seal it, we live to fight again—do you hear me?!"
But the voice of the ring hissed over his thoughts, seductive, violent:
Die? Or burn into something even gods cannot chain? Choose, shardbearer.
The abyss itself seemed to lean closer, waiting. Watching.
Vemy's eyes blazed with cracked light, his grip tightening on the spear. His answer tore from his throat, half-snarled, half-defiant—