After barely escaping Ursula's sudden attack, Kurai had no choice but to retreat deeper into the abyss with Helios in tow.
Helios had fainted again the healing and Kurai dragged his barely-conscious through the darkened ocean floor, weaving through the wreckage of the battlefield, her arm bruised and still bloodied from the last encounter. Her face remained impassive, but her grip on him was tight, controlled—not gentle, but careful enough to keep him breathing.
The Zy Vodianoy's bones littered the seafloor like the ribs of a drowned god. Black ichor still burned in the currents. Kurai didn't glance back.
They slipped into a coral cavern, one nestled between jagged underwater cliffs at the trench's edge—far from Ursula's lair She set him down gently against a thick coral wall and snapped her fingers. A soft, shimring ward spread across the entrance like veils of starlight. Sound dulled. Currents stilled.
She moved beside him. Watched him.
Helios slept—more accurately, he remained unconscious. His breathing was shallow, twitching slightly with each exhale. He looked human well technically rman again, but the damage lingered. His skin was pale, marked with scarring where darkness had cracked through.
Kurai's silver eyes stayed fixed on him.
"I should've let you die," she whispered, more to herself than him.
The cavern said nothing.
"You've beco a liability. Weak. Cursed. Possessed. What good are you now?"
She turned away, her hand pressing against the ward wall. The glow from the barrier cast her face in soft blues and purples. "And yet… I pulled you out. Why?"
The answer didn't co easily.
Was it pity? Was it the bond they forged in survival? No, she wasn't that sentintal. She wasn't capable of that.
"…Because I need you," she muttered bitterly. "I need you to reach Kingdom Hearts."
A silence.
"But if this thing inside you keeps growing, I'll cut you down myself."
She didn't look at him when she said it.
But her hand never left the barrier, as though keeping the world outside from touching him.
Darkness.
Cold, and without direction.
Helios drifted in an endless black void. Water pressed from all sides, but no surface lay above or below.
He floated—weightless, breathless.
Then, the eye appeared.
Massive. Burning. Watching.
It took no shape beyond the pupil, yet it radiated consciousness. Malevolence. Infinite understanding.
"You've opened the door and let it in," a voice whispered. "And now… you cannot close it."
The ocean twisted. Around him, mory fragnts ford—his childhood in Nightfall, the brief warmth of his mother's embrace, his father's quiet lectures. Then ca the night a Darkside ca and took them both. He saw the their bodies, the debris, and heard their last words—cut off by darkness.
He scread underwater—but no sound escaped.
The voice returned, deeper, clearer.
"You have been chosen."
"No…" Helios whispered. "I'm not anyone's puppet or vessel. I'd rather kill you."
"You were seen. Seen and marked. You are ours now."
The water around him thickened. His body ached. His form began to unravel—pieces of himself peeling away. He could feel himself breaking. Erasing.
Then—
A soft white glow.
From the abyss, a light broke through—pure, untainted. It drifted gently to him, like a feather on the current. It touched his forehead.
The voices stopped.
The eye blinked.
And Helios woke, gasping.
"Ah. Sleeping beauty returns," Kurai said flatly.
Helios blinked several tis, breathing heavy. His body trembled, but it was his mind that burned with confusion.
"…Where…?"
"Cavern. Ward's up. We're safe, for now."
He tried to sit, groaned, and slumped against the wall. "What happened…?"
"You happened," Kurai said, tossing him a small dried kelp ration. "You fainted."
"I… I rember the fighting and then healing. But not much else." He paused. "You stopped right? So now that we're safe tell what I did."
Kurai scoffed. "Barely. You cracked three of my ribs and nearly took my arm off before I knocked so sense into your skull. Be grateful I didn't stab your heart."
Helios bowed his head. "I'm sorry—"
"Don't apologize," Kurai snapped coldly. "Just get control of whatever's inside you. Before it uses you again."
Helios nodded slowly. "It spoke to . In the dream. It called its chosen."
Kurai tensed.
"It showed my past. My parents. It played them back like a recording, then started… unraveling . It was going to erase . But then… sothing stopped it."
"Sothing?"
"A light. I don't know what it was, but it cald everything. Gave a mont of clarity. It saved ."
Kurai leaned back, arms folded.
"Then it's already too late. Whatever stopped it now won't stop it forever. We need to find a way to either remove it or get it fully under control," Kurai muttered.
Helios's spells remained unstable. Even healing was a struggle. Kurai's injuries had worsened again, forcing her to ditate to suppress the internal bleeding. They were stuck, broken and bruised.
Far from the abyss, in Ursula's hidden throne room…
In the heart of the trench, Ursula sat upon her throne—trident crackling in her grasp. Her eyes glowed with the sa dark shimr as the parasite's eye once did.
"They survived longer than expected. They've fled into shadows… how quaint," she murmured, lips curling into a smirk, and her voice like silk dipped in venom.
With a flick of the trident, a viewing portal appeared.
A scrying orb of salt and darkness hovered before her, showing the image of Kurai tending to Helios inside the sealed cavern.
She saw them—huddled together in the coral cavern, still recovering.
Her smile widened.
"Let's see how long your light holds out… Rest while you can. Your strength, your fear, your bond—soon it shall all belong to . You are destined to serve as with carry out the bidding of that which has no na."
The orb flickered. Her laughter followed, echoing like the tide breaking across the bones of the deep.
Reviews
All reviews (0)