Chapter 39 Last Breath
Chapter thirty-nine
Last Breath
Rose
Formed under pressures no living creature can withstand, the Abyssal Conch functions like an organic archive. Each chamber holds a secret, each resonance a command. Fragmentary accounts suggest that when activated, the Conch may alter the behavior of megafauna—including the Leviathan itself.
— The Mysterious Deep: A Comprehensive Understanding
The shell in my hands hummed and vibrated with a power that should never have been. Dilly hypothesized that it was created to preserve the knowledge that Atlantis once held, but standing beneath a black dome with it in my hands, I was beginning to think it might be the reason Atlantis fell.
Though I was below the dome still, I could feel the leviathan’s rage and intent. When I’d touched the shell, I was sure it was coming for me, but I should have known better. It found a much easier target, and with every second that passed, I knew my family was in danger.
So I did the only thing I could do.
I listened to the secrets the shell whispered, risking the wrath of the tiny crustacean who lived inside.
Words whispered back to me as if it knew what I wanted to know more than anything, and just like that, the leviathan’s rage turned to something else. Intent.
It brushed against the black dome with its massive size, assessing. I watched with horror as it disappeared, only to appear once more in a blur of speed. Its body careened into the dome, and small cracks of white appeared where water dripped through.
“Shit,” I whispered.
Sebastian Jr. crawled from the shell and stared above before ducking back into the shell.
“Not a good sign, is it?” I said. “You don’t know perhaps how to get out of here, do you?”
Small eyes stared back at me, and for reasons I could not put into words, I felt like he was calling me stupid.
“Right,” I muttered. “Insightful as always.”
Another impact shook the dome—this one so violent the ground beneath me lurched like shifting bone. Columns trembled. A distant groan echoed through the air like the seabed itself was warning me to run.
But where?
The dome was sealed. A perfect obsidian sphere carved from magic that predated any human tongue. There was no exit—just the hollowed city beneath it, long abandoned by the living and yet still echoing with their mistakes.
The shell vibrated violently, heating in my palms until I hissed.
“What? What do you want me to do?” I snapped.
It did not answer with words but with sensation—images that flickered across my mind like reflections scattered by ripples.
Towers of white stone… ancient runes spiraling like tide-marked scars… a circle of light suspended in the ocean… a song sung not in voice but in will.
My breath hitched.
“You want me to use it.”
Of course it did. It was a key. A lure. A curse.
Atlanteans had built this dome as a shield, but the shell… it was never meant to stay inside it. The two were opposing forces—containment and release. And now that I held both in my hands, the sea itself was waking to see what I would choose.
The Leviathan struck the dome again.
This time, the cracks spidered outward like lightning frozen mid-strike. Water gushed through. Cold, black, hungry.
“Oh no. No, no, no—”
The floor trembled beneath me as another strike hit. I braced my feet, stumbling backward as debris rained from above.
Sebastian Jr. clung to the shell, hissing unaffectionately.
“I know!” I shouted. “Not helpful!”
A crack split directly above me. A thin line at first—then widening with a sharp, sickening snap.
The first column collapsed.
I threw myself to the side as it crashed against the stone, sending tremors through the hollow city. Dust exploded upward, mixing with cold seawater. The dome was failing.
The Leviathan roared—a deep, thunderous sound that trembled through the water and air alike. I felt it in my teeth, in my bones, in the marrow of my soul.
It wasn’t trying to kill me.
It was trying to reach me.
The knowledge sank into me like a stone: the Leviathan wanted the shell. It wanted the thing I carried—the thing that whispered with a song older than gods.
And it would drown the world to claim it.
A column behind me snapped, the sound sharp enough to slice through the roar. My heart hammered. More water poured through, flooding my ankles, my calves.
“Think, Rose. Think,” I breathed.
But thinking wasn’t going to save me. Not here. Not now.
The dome shuddered again.
I staggered. The shell pulsed violently—then went still, like it had made its decision and accepted its fate.
“Don’t you dare give up,” I growled. “Not when my family is out there.”
Seas, I was losing my damn mind talking to mystical shells and grumpy crustaceans.
The next impact was the death blow.
Cracks spidered so fast they sang. The dome split with a sound like a heartbeat tearing open. Light fractured. Air rushed upward. Then—
The ocean fell.
Water slammed into me with the force of a collapsing world. It stole my breath, crushed my ribs, but I wouldn’t let it tear the shell from my hands. I gasped instinctively—salt burned my throat. I tried to swim, but the current spun me like driftwood.
Then the dome shattered fully, and everything collapsed.
The city filled in seconds. Darkness swallowed me whole as the weight of the sea pressed down, cold and merciless. I kicked—once, twice—but the water had no mercy, and my lungs already screamed for air.
I can’t die. Not here. Bash. Oscar. Val. Dilly…
I couldn’t die when there was finally a chance that Bash would choose to live.
The current slammed me into stone. Pain exploded down my side. My fingers scraped desperately for something—anything—to hold on to. But the city was disintegrating. Everything was falling apart like it had been waiting for the opportunity. Exhausted and ready to rest.
I tried to swim upward, but the water was too thick, too violent.
My chest burned. My vision dimmed.
And I knew it like I knew my own name.
I was going to die here.
The last thing I saw before the world darkened was a massive shadow sweeping overhead, the Leviathan racing downward toward the shattered dome—toward me.
As if the moment the dome died, the world it had protected was suddenly his to claim.
And I was the only thing in it still alive.
On the edge of consciousness, I let regret wash over me. Regret for the wrongs I’d done, the rights I hadn’t made yet, and everything that never would be.
Something slammed into me, and because I was exhausted and ready for the rest, I held onto it.
The water tore away from my face as we shot upward, faster than anything human. I gagged on seawater, coughing, barely conscious as the thing dragging me carved through the ocean.
Impossible.
Filled with colors that glowed in the dark of pink and blue, he was more beautiful than I ever could have believed.
“Koinu…” I choked, too weak to speak louder.
The shape didn’t answer, but I felt the smooth, slick surface of his body, holding me above the water as I caught my breath.
He’d come for me.
He’d known.
We sat at the surface of black waters as I coughed and sputtered, trying to remember what it felt like to breathe without burning.
I coughed black water into my lungs so violently that it felt like knives. Waves tossed us as Koinu dragged me toward the Wraith, his song low and urgent in a language I didn’t know but somehow understood:
Lights flashed aboard the ship. Voices shouted. A rope was thrown. Strong arms hauled me upward—Oscar? Bash? Val? I couldn’t see through the blur of sea and tears.
Koinu pushed me upward with a final force, slipping beneath the water.
Hands gripped under my arms and chest, pulling me onto the deck. I collapsed, coughing seawater, trembling uncontrollably. Someone wrapped a blanket around me. Someone else checked my pulse.
“Rose! Rose, breathe—bloody hell, breathe—”
Bash.
I reached for him weakly. He pulled me to his chest like he might break if he let go. The warmth of him was a shock after the endless cold.
But then the sea behind us shuddered.
Every voice on the Wraith stopped.
A low, bone-deep bass rumble vibrated through the hull—so powerful every lantern swayed.
I lifted my head, dazed, just in time to see the ocean rising unnaturally, like something beneath was pushing it upward.
The Leviathan breached halfway.
Its massive eye—gold, ancient, furious—fixed on the ship. Fixed on me.
It had followed the broken dome. It had followed the shell.
But most of all—It had followed me.
“Get us out of here!” someone screamed—Val, I think.
But even as the Wraith lurched forward, sails snapping, the Leviathan’s shadow stretched with it.
I clutched Bash’s arm as the sea swelled higher, an impossible tower of dark water rising behind us.
The Leviathan wasn’t done.
It was awake.
And it was enraged.
More enraged than before—because now it knew I had escaped its cage.
It knew I carried what it wanted.
And it would not stop until either I returned to it—
—or the sea claimed me for good.