Chapter 22
What waits beneath
LORIEN
The darkness moves.
I know it before I see it, feeling the pull of a vast and ancient blackness that stirs in the deep.
The sentinels have stopped their attack, their bodies flickering between shadow and flesh as they drift backwards, clearing a path as they lurk like venomous serpents coiled in the dark, their eyes gleaming with malice, waiting for the strike of cruelty.
They’re making way for an even darker darkness.
The abyss exhales, a slow, measured pulse, sending a tremor through the water. My body tightens with instinct, every sense screaming a single command: flee. But I do not. I cannot. The temple is close and I will not turn back now, not when I am this near.
Not when the temple might hold the secret to keeping Jude safe.
The trench looms ahead, jagged rock rising on either side like the ribs of some long-dead beast. And beyond it, past the yawning chasm, the ruins of the temple wait. I can see the faint outline of its crumbling pillars in the gloom, its stone darkened by time, by blood.
By magic.
A shadow stirs at the edge of the trench, vast and slow. I don’t see it fully, only the suggestion of movement and the glint of something massive that lurks in the gloom. There’s a shifting of water as if it’s displaced by an unseen force, and then two eyes snap open in the blackness.
They’re not the ember-glow of the sentinels. They are something else entirely, entirely deeper, ancient and old, and as vicious as time itself. Their gaze locks onto me, and the water shudders with the weight of it.
The sentinels flee.
They do not fight. They do not linger. They vanish into the abyss as though they were never there, as if they were merely figments of my imagination and hadn’t threatened me moments ago.
And I am alone.
The eyes blink, slow and deliberate, and the water trembles with something like amusement. Then the abyss moves, and I see it. All of it, and I wish I had not.
A shadow unfurls from the trench, its form coiling through the water like ink spilling into the sea.
It is not one shape but many, its body flickering between recognizable and unknown, limbs extending and twisting, the darkness itself bending to its will.
It is neither beast nor god, neither creature nor specter.
It is fear made flesh.
It is death and despair.
It is Helena’s vengeance.
And I am drowning in it.
The current surges as it lunges, faster than something of its size should be able to move.
I twist, my body responding on instinct, but it is not fast enough.
The water shatters around me as a limb slams into my side—or perhaps it’s a claw, or a tendril, or a blade—sending me hurtling through the deep.
My body hits the trench wall hard enough to crack the stone, pain flaring along my ribs like fire through my veins.
I snarl, shaking off the impact, and push forward, my tail slicing through the water. The temple is ahead, so close, and all I need to do is get there. Its waters are sacred, its boundary a sanctum—and whatever Helena conjured with her curse cannot hunt me inside its territory.
And then the abyss swallows me whole.
Onyx coils around my limbs, dragging me back, pulling me into the depths of whatever lurks beneath.
The cold sears against my skin, burrowing beneath it, sinking deep, wrapping around my ribs like a vise.
The weight of it is overwhelming, constricting my ribs and squeezing the air out of my lungs, pressing into my bones and my blood as it attempts to suffocate me.
It is more than darkness. It is a force, a will, a vast and hungry power, something that does not merely exist in the abyss but is the abyss itself.
The magic seethes, ancient and insidious, wrapping around me like tendrils of living shadow, sinking into my flesh.
I twist, thrash, but the deeper I fight, the further it drags me down, folding the ocean around me like a grave.
I summon my strength, drawing on the ocean itself. The water surges at my call, a force older than the stars and the heavens in which they sit, answering my command. It thrashes against the abyss, tearing at the thing that binds me, forcing it back.
But it does not break it.
I bare my teeth.
Helena truly surpassed herself when she set this trap and if the ocean alone will not free me, then I rip my way out of it.
I let the power surge through me, no longer controlling it, no longer holding it back. It erupts outward in a shockwave, splitting the water, tearing through the dark. The trench walls crack under the force, the temple stones groaning as the ancient seabed trembles.
The abyss recoils.
But it does not flee.
It does not break.
It seeps into my skin, into the marrow of my bones, slithering through my veins like venom.
It does not only restrain; it invades. It’s violating the core of me, twisting and reshaping who and what I am.
A voice that is not a voice whispers against my skull, low and guttural, the scrape of claws against stone.
The abyss does not just want my body: it wants my soul.
It wants to consume me.
Pain explodes through my chest, a burning, gnawing cold sinking into my ribs, my spine.
Something tears. A rupture in the fabric of me, something vital snapping like a thread yanked too tight.
My vision darkens at the edges, my limbs seizing as magic drains from me in a violent rush, ripped from my very essence, swallowed by the abyss.
It is not death. It is worse. It is obliteration, the slow, insidious unmaking of everything that I am.
Taking something.
Stealing something.
My magic.
A sound shudders through the water. A voice without language, a resonance of something old and infinite, pressing into my skull with the weight of a thousand crushed souls. It is not a word, not truly, but a demand.
Give in.
The abyss tightens its hold, sinking deeper, winding around my ribs, my throat, my mind.
Its edge cuts further, burrowing through the sinew that holds me together, reaching for my bones and my soul, for the magic that threads through my veins and binds me to the sea.
It doesn’t seek to kill; it seeks to claim.
And I cannot let Helena take the oceans from me.
A cold sharper than any blade lances through my chest, and I convulse, pain tearing through every nerve. The abyss drinks deeply, siphoning magic from me in an endless, insatiable pull. I gasp, but my lungs take in nothing, only pressure, only shadow, only the relentless, drowning dark.
The temple is close. I can still see it, just beyond the trench, its ruined pillars wreathed in the heavy silence of sacred magic. A sanctuary. A salvation. If I can reach it, if I can break free, the abyss cannot follow.
But I am sinking.
No.
I will not drown in this. I will not lose myself to it.
I wrench my power forward, forcing it outwards in a violent burst, but the abyss does not shatter. It bends. It swallows the force, hungrily drinking the magic I unleash, curling around it like fingers sinking into flesh.
It is learning me.
Give in.
The voice pulses through my skull again, deeper this time, resonant with something like amusement.
As if it knows. As if it understands how little I have left to give.
It must know that there is very little keeping me afloat, and the light that resides within me begins to fade.
It dwindles like a candle running out of oxygen, like a flame flickering its last few flames.
Its golds and ambers are almost extinguished and the only thing keeping them burning is the thought that I cannot abandon Jude.
Not now. Not ever.
The abyss tightens. My ribs groan. My head slams back as a fresh wave of pain crashes over me, sharper than before, a ripping, gnawing agony. I snarl against it, baring my teeth even as my vision blurs.
If I do not break free now, I will not break free at all.
Oblivion shifts around me, tightening its grip in a final, suffocating vice, and I do the only thing I can. It’s the hardest thing to do and it’s the only thing that will save me now. It’s got to be enough, because if it isn’t, then this is the end of all I am, and all I’ll ever be.
I stop fighting it.
For a breath—just one breath—I let it in.
It is enough.
The abyss pulls, and I let it. It draws deeper, deeper, deep enough that I feel the edges of its hunger press against my soul, deep enough that I can feel its thoughts slithering along the surface of my mind. It reaches for my magic, and I let it come closer, let it stretch—
Then I strike.
A burst of raw, unchecked power erupts from my core, but not outward this time. Inward. A self-inflicted, brutal shockwave of magic that tears through me with the force of a riptide, an explosion turned inward, turning myself into a detonation of pain and force and destruction.
The abyss shudders.
And I rip free.
The darkness recoils with a snarl as a vast and furious wrenching back lets me tear myself from its hold.
The agony is blinding—magic still bleeding from me, ribs screaming in protest—but I do not stop.
I do not look back. I can’t, not if I want to survive this.
Not if I want to see Jude again, and I turn, swimming as hard and as fast as I can.
The temple of Helena is still there, its broken silhouette a beacon in the gloom. I surge toward it, my body cutting through the water in a desperate lunge. But before I can reach it, the ocean itself shifts and the abyss refuses to retreat, drawing closer to me again.
It is moving.
The trench quakes. Stone groans, ancient structures shaking as something vast unfurls, the abyss reshaping itself, flooding forward. The temple’s ruins tremble under its weight, the sacred waters churning as the darkness stretches—and a claw lashes out, striking the temple’s threshold.
Now, the abyss stops.
It doesn’t breach the temple’s boundary. It cannot.
But it does not need to.
The temple ruins quake. Pillars buckle. Ancient stone splinters beneath the force of the impact, fractures racing through the seabed.
The abyss cannot enter, but it can destroy.
It can bring the remains of the temple crashing down, and it would rather see the destruction of what remains of this holy place than let me enter its sacred grounds.
A jagged crack splits through the temple’s foundation, the seabed groaning as it begins to collapse. The weight of centuries, of sacred magic barely holding itself together, gives way in a cascade of crumbling ruins.
And the path to it is gone.
I snarl in fury, in desperation, in defiance.
The temple was within reach, the answer to everything within reach, and now the abyss has taken even that from me.
This was my best chance to ensure Jude’s safety, to keep him from the kelpies that haunt his every step.
Without that knowledge, he’s exposed, vulnerable to the very monsters that will drag him under, that will tear him apart piece by piece.
A bitter burn spreads through my chest, its taste leaving nothing but rage in its wake If I fail, if this is it, Jude won’t survive. And I—no, I can’t even allow myself to think it.
Another tremor shakes the trench.
I do not have time.
I turn.
I flee.
The abyss does not chase me. It lingers at the edge of the ruin, its unseen form coiling through the water, its ancient, endless hunger watching as I retreat. Not defeated.
But waiting.
It waits for the next time I venture here, certain that I will give in to its power. Or be defeated by it.
I do not stop swimming. Not until the weight of the void lifts, until the darkness recedes, until the waters grow clear again and the cursed trench is far behind me.
And when I finally emerge from the deep, breaking the ocean’s surface with a shuddering gasp, the first thing I taste is blood.
Mine.
It’s in my mouth, thick and sharp, the lingering burn of magic still seeping from my veins. My body feels like it has been crushed, my limbs sluggish, my mind dull with exhaustion.
The sky above is grey, storm clouds rolling in across the horizon. In the distance, beyond the open sea, the jagged spires of my capital rise from the water, its dark towers waiting at the edge of the storm.
I have failed.
The witch has defeated me again, and she wasn’t even alive this time.
The temple of Helena is gone. I sensed the answers to my questions about Jude were in the sacred grounds that I swore I would not enter, and now I may never know how to help him control that witch’s magic.
The abyss has taken something from me—something I cannot name, something I cannot feel yet, but something vital.
The abyss has won this round, but I must return, and it cannot defeat me again. Not when Jude is still in danger. That danger grows with every passing second, and if the kelpies learn of my defeat, they will attack again.
I might not like it, but I’ve got to return. I’m weakened, and I feel it in the sluggish drag of my limbs, the hollowness beneath my ribs where my magic should be at full force. The abyss has exhausted me, and I have to turn back.
Even if my pride screams against it, even as my body protests every movement. I must return to the palace before the kelpies scent weakness in the water. Before they realize their moment is now.
I tighten my grip on my trident, ignoring how my fingers tremble. This isn’t over. The abyss has forced me to retreat, but I won’t stay beaten. I will return, and next time, I won’t be the one who bleeds.