Corvus floated in the dark water long enough for the city's glow to fade behind his eyelids. He did not like leaving a trail, even one only a godlike being's daughters could follow. The cloak stayed on until he was sure the pressure of attention had thinned.
Flame Travel took him in a tight curl of orange and gold, then spat him out inside his chambers with the faint smell of smoke and salt. The Frigate has become a home for him, and he enjoys the mobility and secrecy.
He dropped Flight and Phase at the same time. The cloak slid off his shoulders and pooled on the floor like a living shadow that had decided to behave. The room felt heavier when the world stopped letting him cheat.
Extreme Speed and Extreme Agility remained. They never truly left anymore. He could feel them humming under skin and bone like his body had forgotten the idea of being normal.
He crossed the room in two silent steps and reached the bed.
The sheets still carried Elizaveta's scent. Clean soap. Cold air. A trace of her perfume that always smelled like the crisp air of the tundra. He lay down and let his back sink into the mattress.
His eyes closed.
He started to process the memories of the Nereid.
He expected a childhood in water. He expected coral and currents and ritual.
He found a village girl.
An island in the Aegean, long before anyone wrote its name in ink, when the sea sat lower, and the coastlines were not yet fixed. Naxos looked different in those memories. Wider beaches. More raw stone. Less civilisation, but not less life.
The girl moved through a fishing settlement built from wood, stone, and rope. She carried nets with other women, fingers rough from salt and fibre. She mended holes with a bone needle. She hauled baskets of small fish and seaweed from the shore while older men shouted directions that they were not bothering to follow themselves.
The village did not have riches. It had a routine.
Then the sky changed.
The water near the coast went still, too still for a tide. Birds stopped calling. Men looked up, then looked at each other; the fear was immediate.
Nereus arrived without ceremony.
One moment, there was only sunlight on the waves. Next, a shape stood at the edge of the surf as if it had always belonged there. A broad upper body, skin carrying a faint sheen like wet stone. Hair that moved like sea grass even without wind. Eyes the colour of deep water, calm and unreadable. The trident in his hand looked less like a tool and more like an extension of authority.
He did not announce himself. He simply pointed his trident.
The girl and several others froze mid-step. Their bodies obeyed a command their minds did not understand. They were pulled forward, feet dragging through sand, nails cutting into palms when they tried to resist.
The rest of the islanders rushed in, screaming, throwing stones and spears.
Nereus lifted his hand.
The world turned to dust.
Not fire or blood. The population simply collapsed into fine grey powder, as if life had been a layer of paint scraped off stone. Parents, siblings and neighbours. The shouting stopped mid-breath. In its place was a small red gem.
What Corvus found strange was that the memory did not carry fear, hate or disgust.
It was devoid of any emotion.
Corvus felt it and hated it more than panic. He watched the girl stare at her mother's face as it broke apart, and she did not cry. Her eyes did not even widen properly.
Then Nereus took them.
He moved them through water without drowning them, through stone without breaking them, into a place that did not yet have a dome but already had wards that felt like teeth.
The work began.
First came the siphoning.
The girl's terror rose for one heartbeat, and a warm hand inside her head caught it, squeezed it, and drained it away. Hatred and grief followed. The instincts that would have made her fight or flee were stripped out with clinical patience.
What replaced them was devotion and love. Adoration that did not belong to her.
Corvus watched her smile at the elder who had turned her family into dust.
Then came the biological manipulation.
It was not like the Flamels. Not like the refined, careful, human limits he had copied and improved.
This was flesh crafting.
Soul magic ran through it like a spine. Alchemy threaded around it. Transmutation and transmogrification moved together until the boundary between them blurred. Nereus changed them at a molecular level, not by cutting and stitching but by rewriting what flesh was allowed to be.
Tails formed. Scales replaced skin below the waist. Organs shifted to handle pressure and cold. Their blood took on new properties that made poison feel like bad water.
Then the final insult.
Shape shifting.
He gave them the ability to change so they could serve him better. To become whatever he demanded. To fit into whatever space he wanted.
Bedwarmers and servants. They were simply tools.
Corvus watched centuries pass in the Nereid's memory like pages being turned by a bored hand. Harvests repeated. Islands repopulated. Villages grew. People forgot the old terror and began again.
Nereus returned.
He took the fairest of the young girls.
The rest became gems of blood red.
A century or two of silence, then another harvest.
The planet reacted.
With each massacre, the world grew more defensive. Magic in the earth pushed back in ways humans would later call storms or earthquakes. New magical races started to appear. Creatures adapted, twisted, and survived. Creatures with the mixed blood of Elders and the locals.
Witches and wizards emerged among them. A new species gifted with power and no instinct for how to use it. Corvus watched them in the memories like sparks in dry grass, uncontrolled and unaware.
Other elders visited Nereus to observe his work. One stood out.
Hekate.
She arrived like a shadow with a smile, a goddess of crossroads with eyes that judged and measured. Her magic felt different. Not a brute rewrite like Nereus. She could bestow powers.
Corvus understood the shape of the lie that would become the Three Sisters. He saw how a story could be built to serve as a chain, even when it looked like a gift.
The memories moved to Atlantis.
Northwest of what would one day be Portugal, an island that held the elders and their toys. A place of wealth and violence wrapped in beauty. The elder council ruled it in turns. Among the elders, there were two siblings, twins. Known for their endless fights and incapacity to breathe the same air.
Their last fight was a rupture.
The sea swallowed the island. The world erased it with satisfaction. The elders did not stay long after. They left a planet awake and angry. A planet detested their ilk and fought them with everything it had. This was the reason they left.
But before they do, they leave creations behind.
Cities like the dome city, ruled by ten of the Nereids, ten thrones, ten regions, and a population trained to worship even absence.
Corvus opened his eyes.
His breath came steady, but his hands tightened on the sheet.
"Sick bastards through and through." He murmured.
He lay there for a moment to settle. Then he turned inward.
Immortality sat inside him like a new organ he had not yet learned to use. He had replicated it in the temple without hesitation. Now he absorbed it.
The trait folded into him with a clean snap that made his spine ache.
His ageing stopped being a natural stopwatch and became a finish line. Not at this second, but as a law written into his flesh. The moment he reached full maturity, time would lose its grip on him.
He understood the limits as well.
He was not unkillable. A blade through the neck would still end him. Fire could still burn. The force could still break.
But disease could not take him. Poison could not affect him.
His body felt sealed against slow decay.
The change did not end there.
His physical power climbed. The strength in his arms felt denser, heavier, more concentrated. His muscles held tension like coiled steel.
Physical reached SS-.
Magical potency pressed against SS+ like a hand against glass.
He frowned.
That had been the limit, as far as he knew. Yet, he was not sure anymore.
Regeneration spiked so hard it became ridiculous. Rapid Regeneration fused with Immortality like two ingredients merging in a cauldron and refusing to separate.
He sat up, slowly, and looked at his hands.
Power always came with side effects. His mouth curved into a small smirk.
Months of searching metre by metre. Cold water. Dark trenches. Boredom sharpened into obsession.
Worth it.
He stood and moved toward the bath chamber. The idea of hot water and silence sounded like mercy.
He stripped without ceremony. The mirror caught the change before his mind finished accepting it.
He was taller.
Not by a dramatic amount, but enough to make the proportions shift. The shoulders looked wider. The waist looked tighter. His back carried new mass like the trait had decided to reward him for persistence.
The door of his chambers opened at that moment.
Elizaveta stepped inside with the kind of controlled irritation that belonged to a woman who had been told no once too often and had decided to punish the universe for it. Her hair was tied back. Her eyes were ice.
She stopped.
Her gaze travelled up his body in a slow sweep, from bare feet to thighs to stomach to chest, then up again, as if she was checking a measurement and finding the numbers offensive.
Appreciation flashed first. It was honest. It belonged to instinct. Then annoyance replaced it, sharp and personal.
Corvus watched her face and enjoyed the conflict.
Elizaveta's lips parted. Her voice came out with a soft irritation that tried to sound dignified and failed. "Corvus Black. You will not grow any taller or broader."
She stepped closer, chin lifting as if height could be negotiated by attitude. "I already look like a doll next to you."
Her eyes dipped again, betraying her, then snapped back up to see his satisfied smirk. "Do not smirk at me. This is not funny."
Corvus's hands lifted in an innocent gesture that did not match his body at all. "Did you like what you saw, Lizaveta? You took your time after entering."
Elizaveta's gaze narrowed. "I was assessing the damage."
Corvus took a step forward; her eyes were on his abdomen.
Elizaveta's jaw tightened. "You are doing it on purpose."
Corvus stepped forward until she had to tilt her head further. "Doing what, my little wolf?"
She jabbed a finger at his midsection, then realised she was touching warm skin, yet did not withdraw. "This. You were already absurd. Now you are a walking wall. I cannot even kiss you properly. I have to look up, and while I am angry. How can I glare at you now?"
Corvus leaned down just enough to brush his mouth near her ear. "You look up when you are pleased as well."
Elizaveta made a sound that was half a scoff and half a breath. Her hands grabbed his waist anyway, as if holding him would stop the growth by force of will.
"This is not about being pleased."
Corvus's fingers slid into her hair tie and tugged it loose with one gentle pull. Her hair spilt down.
Elizaveta glared at him... At least she tried. From Corvus's point she was looking adorable. As if reading his mind, her gaze turned sharper, like she wanted to hex him. The glare did not last.
Corvus kissed the top of her head. She smelled lovely.
Elizaveta tried to stay angry. She failed.
She pressed her forehead to his abdomen and muttered into his skin. "You are going to make me look like a hamster."
Corvus's throat moved with quiet laughter. His hands settled around her waist and lifted her off the floor, enough to prove a point.
Elizaveta's arms tightened around his neck immediately. Her voice stayed furious. "Put me down."
Corvus held her there and let his mouth brush her cheek. "No."
Elizaveta's eyes flared with mock anger. "Corvus."
Corvus lowered her slowly, like he was placing something precious, and kept his hands at her hips. "You are not small."
Elizaveta's mouth tightened. "Compared to you, I am."
Elizaveta stared at him for a heartbeat, then slid her hands up his chest, pulled him down and kissed him. Pulling back, she searched his gaze and kissed him again. Harder this time, as if she could punish him for the inconvenience of attraction.
When she broke the kiss, she looked up with a pleased frown. "If you grow again, I will start wearing heels."
Corvus's eyes brightened. "Will you be wearing stockings as well?"
Elizaveta's cheeks burned with renewed vigour at the memories of her private show and his birthday gift. Her fingers traced a line down his stomach with deliberate slowness. "Do not encourage me..."
Corvus caught her wrist and kissed her knuckles, proper and mocking at the same time. "My lady, I would never."
Elizaveta's eyes rolled, then softened. "I missed you."
Corvus's hands tightened at her waist. The humour did not leave his face, but the truth did. "I know."
The bath chamber waited.
Elizaveta's gaze flicked toward it, then back to him with sudden suspicion. "Were you about to take a relaxing bath without me?"
Corvus did not lie. "Yes."
Elizaveta's lips curved into a dangerous smile. "And how were you going to wash your back?" Her tone was getting more seductive with every word.
She took his hand and pulled him toward the door like the she-wolf, dragging her prey to her den.
Corvus let her; his smirk returned as the door closed behind them.