The sky was not a sky. It was a mirror turned upside down, swallowing every star.Our teleferik cage groaned, dangling above the black water like a trembling tooth. Below us, the world breathed in silver veins.
Kirella's hand gripped the side rail. "Move now, before the sea changes its mind."
I pressed my palm against the cracked lever. "It already has."
Blood seeped from my skin and slid into the gears. The rust hissed; old metal remembered how to live. The teleferik jolted forward with a scream that belonged to something alive.
Behind us, the Voice Bank—the mad doctor's cathedral of names—collapsed inward. A thousand mirrors shattered into falling constellations. For a breath, it was beautiful. Then it was just noise.
The Descent
Fog rose, thick as milk. The wind carried a smell like copper and rain. Beneath our cage, a field of reflected faces drifted on the surface—people who never left the city, staring back with glass eyes.
The wolves whined. Lupa raised her muzzle. "They're not ghosts. They're mouths."
And she was right. The reflections moved. Their lips opened, whispering the same phrase over and over:"Say your name."
I bit my tongue until I tasted iron. "Don't look down."
Kirella smashed a lantern and threw the pieces overboard. The light burst on impact, scattering the reflections like startled birds. The whispers turned to bubbles.
The cage kept moving—slow, creaking, heavy with fear. Then it stopped.
Not broke. Not paused. Stopped—because something was holding it still.
The Leviathen Echo
From the fog below rose a shimmer, wide and slow. The sea rippled outward as though a mountain beneath it had turned over. Then came the first tendril—clear as glass, wide as a mast, ending in a hand that was no hand at all.
It touched the cage. The metal screamed.
Lupa drew her claws. "It's marking us."
The wolves howled. My heart answered them.
I raised my left arm. Blood poured from my wrist in a slow spiral, curling around my elbow, shaping itself into a blade. A red tırpan. The scythe shimmered like liquid moonlight and pulsed once with my heartbeat.
"Stay back," I said.
Kirella laughed breathlessly. "You say that like I ever listen."
The first strike came fast—too fast for something so large. A tendril speared through the cage roof. I cut. The tırpan sang through it, and the blood hissed when it touched salt air. The severed piece fell, writhing, and split into three smaller snakes.
I slashed again, left-right, each swing heavier, sharper. The scythe drank my pulse. I felt my blood thinning, my body cooling.
"Count!" I gasped.
"One—two—three—four!" Kirella shouted, keeping rhythm like we were in a kitchen again. The beat kept my head clear.
The Leviathen struck back—five, six tendrils this time, each tipped with mirrors. I swung through them, but every kill left ghosts. My own reflection looked up at me from the water, a dozen Red Ladles staring with hunger.
The rope holding the cage snapped.
The Fall
We fell like coins into a well.The world turned white, then black, then red.
Impact came as a roar of water. I hit something solid—reef, maybe bones. The sea burned cold around me.
I opened my eyes and saw the truth.
The reflections were gone. The surface above me wasn't water—it was skin. Translucent, veined, alive.I was standing on the Leviathen itself.
Its body filled the horizon, the color of deep blood under glass. Eyes opened along its spine—white circles that blinked out of sync, each one larger than a house.
It spoke without words. The sound pressed against my skull like a memory I'd never had.
Little red. You cut shadows. Can you cut me?
I raised my tırpan. "If you bleed, I can."
The blade pulsed in my hand, echoing the sea's rhythm. I swung—not to kill, just to carve a path. The cut glowed crimson, boiling the water. Steam rose in rings.
Then the sea answered.
Thousands of veins shot upward, a forest of liquid glass. I couldn't dodge them all. One grazed my shoulder—cold fire ripping through muscle. Another wrapped my ankle, dragging me down.
Kirella's voice broke through the roar. "Mirelle!"
I saw him standing on a floating shard, bleeding from his arm, reaching toward me.
"Jump!" he shouted.
I cut the vein at my ankle and pulled all the blood I'd spilled into a single pulse. The sea around me turned red.
The tırpan dissolved—became liquid fire. I slammed both hands into the water and shouted,"Go!"
The blood exploded outward in a massive pillar, throwing everything—me, Kirella, the wolves, even Lupa—clear of the Leviathen's back.
The world blurred.
Shore
When I woke, sand stuck to my face. The moon hung cracked in the sky like a broken plate.
Kirella sat beside me, his arm bound in rope, his hair matted with salt. One of the wolves licked his boot like an apology.
"You're alive," I murmured.
"Not sure about the definition of that," he said. "But yeah."
Behind us, the sea moved—not waves, not tide. It folded. The Leviathen was watching from below, its eyes blinking under the surface.
Lupa knelt near the edge, one knee in the water. "It's waiting," she said. "It could have finished us."
Kirella stared into the dark. "Maybe it's waiting to see if we deserve to drown."
I stood, my legs trembling. Blood still leaked from my wrists, slow and steady, but I didn't stop it. The tırpan mark glowed faint on my forearm, like a scar that breathed.
I faced the sea. "We didn't cross it," I said. "It let us go."
Kirella's voice was quiet, the kind he used when the truth hurt too much. "Then we'll make it regret that mercy."
The Leviathen's shadow sank. The water stilled. The air finally remembered how to breathe.
The teleferik cage floated in pieces somewhere beyond the fog, glowing faintly from the blood still burning inside its gears.
I touched the tırpan mark again. It pulsed once, answering.
And for the first time since we fled the arena, I realized something new.The sea wasn't our enemy. It was a mirror—and something in it had recognized me.
The night ended quietly, the kind of quiet that isn't peace but preparation.Tomorrow, the real monsters would begin to follow.
And the chapter ends there—with the moon cracked open, the sand red under our feet, and the sea whispering in a language only blood could understand.