Not a gentle simmer, but a roiling, churning vortex that swallowed light. From its depths, an obsidian mountain of flesh began to rise, shedding torrents of black, oily brine. It dwarfed the two interlocked ships, a leviathan ten times the size of the beast Teshiri had cut herself free from, its chitinous hide shimmering with malevolent discharge. Tentacles thicker than the flagship's mast uncoiled, each suckered arm studded with needle-like spikes, reaching for the splintered decks. A guttural roar, a sound like a world tearing itself apart, ripped through the dead calm, shaking the very air. Khados, still on his knees, clutching his mangled jaw, looked up, the whites showing around his contracted pupils. He stumbled backward, away from the emerging horror, tripping over discarded rigging. “No,” he whimpered, a broken sound. “Not like this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Teshiri stared at the colossus, its ancient, dead eyes like twin abysses. Five years ago, those same eyes had been the last thing she saw before the darkness. Before the betrayal. *The small skiff had been tossed like a child’s toy. A younger Teshiri, all bright-eyed devotion and fierce loyalty, had shielded Khados with her own body as the first, smaller Void-Kraken’s tentacle smashed down. The impact had been bone-shattering, a blinding agony that stole her breath. She tasted salt and her own copper blood. A searing pain blossomed in her chest, a burning cold that clawed at her vitals. “Go!” she had choked out, pushing him toward the emergency escape pod, her voice raw, her vision blurring. “The coordinates… take them! I’ll hold it!” He had scrambled into the pod, fumbling with the hatch. For a moment, she thought she saw grief in his eyes. Hope, a fool’s hope, flickered through her pain. Then, as the hatch hissed shut, his gaze had shifted. Not grief. Not fear for her. It was relief. Pure, unburdened relief. A smile, thin and sharp, had touched his lips as he launched the pod, leaving her to the churning maw. The last thing she heard, before the storm’s roar consumed her, was his muttered, “Finally.” The crackle of black rot had begun to seep into her veins then, an insidious cold that mirrored the chill of his abandonment.* The screams of the leviathan, ten times louder now, ripped her from the memory. Her good hand clenched, the memory a fresh scar. Khados, oblivious to her internal torment, scrambled to his feet, eyes wild. He fumbled at his belt, pulling free an ornate, silver talisman that seemed to drink the meager light. Its surface pulsed faintly with a dark, oily sheen, iridescent distortion rippling beneath its polished face. This was it. The very device he’d used to command the beast, to bring this ruin upon High Kethar. “Teshiri!” Khados shrieked, his voice cracking, the pain in his jaw forgotten in the face of annihilation. “The talisman! It’s losing its charge! Help me stabilize it! You’re the Grand Augur, you can channel your power into it! We can still control it!” He extended the relic, his hand trembling, pleading in his gaze. “Don’t you understand? We’ll be dragged to the Abyssal Rim! Everything we… everything *I* built, it’ll be gone! Our families, everything! Give me your power! Save us!” Her response was a slow, contemptuous smile. “*Our* families, Khados? Funny, I seem to recall one of them trying to have me dissected for parts. And the other… well, one doesn’t share a family with a discarded relic, do they?” Her good hand, crackling with raw current, lifted. A bolt of pure, concentrated lightning, not of the natural world but of her own corrupted essence, arced from her fingertips. It struck the silver talisman with surgical precision. The device flared, a brief, blinding pulse of dark energy, then fractured, spraying shards of silver and black residue. The core, a twisted, pulsing orb of solidified Void-pitch, shattered into nothingness, dissipating like smoke. Khados stared at his empty hand, then at the dissipating motes of dark power, his mouth agape. The abyssal beast's roar intensified, a sound of unbridled rage and freedom. “Oops,” Teshiri murmured, a saccharine sweetness in her tone. “Looks like someone forgot to pay the power bill. What a shame. Now, it’s just a very large, very angry monster.” She watched as the creature’s enormous head dipped, its dead eyes swiveling. They locked onto Khados, who stood frozen, utterly helpless. A single tentacle, studded with its vile spikes, shot forward, a blur of black death. Khados let out a strangled gasp, a sound cut short as the monstrous limb wrapped around his torso. His screams were surprisingly brief, punctuated by the sickening crunch of bone and chitin. Teshiri didn’t flinch. She simply turned her back, walking away from the railing, her gaze distant. The sounds of Khados’s body being crushed, the wet tearing, the final, gurgling gasp as he was dragged into the black depths of the Eye, were as sweet to her ears as any victory symphony. She heard Zulran’s sharp intake of breath, felt Pashari’s stunned silence, but she didn’t look back. It was done. Five years of calculating, five years of pain, culminated right there. The monster had finally consumed its creator, and Teshiri, the architect of that delicious demise, felt only a hollow satisfaction. But the titan, now unchained, wasn’t satisfied. Its roars were no longer directed at a single target. The two dying ships, the flagship and the Vathakar dreadnought, were now little more than toys. Its vast body began to coil, the water around it churning with unfathomable power, clearly preparing to engulf the entire fleet. Teshiri felt a familiar, sickening thrum within her own body, a resonance with the creature, a violent echo of her own encroaching decay. The Void-rot pulsed, demanding release, demanding more. A cold certainty settled in her mind, clear as the dead calm of the Eye. To kill this thing, to stabilize the very fabric of the Crossing before it tore the world apart, she would have to unleash every last spark of the Void within her. She would have to overload the rot, let it consume her entirely, instantly, turning her into a living, dying conduit to anchor the chaos. It would guarantee her death.

Echoes of the Abyss