Aeliana watched.
She couldn’t stop watching.
The battlefield was chaos—an endless, violent blur of motion, but her eyes never left him.
Lucavion, moving like a living star, a streak of black-starlight carving through the air. His blade danced in elegant arcs, each strike perfect, each movement precise.
And yet—
It wasn’t enough.
The Kraken was different now. Stronger. Faster. Its wounds no longer just healing—they were becoming impenetrable. With every passing second, it adapted, shifting its monstrous form in unnatural ways, its grotesque limbs pulsing with a dark energy that felt wrong.
And then—
He got hit.
BOOM.
A tentacle slammed into him from behind, crushing force breaking the sound barrier as it sent him flying.
Aeliana’s breath hitched.
She had never seen him take a hit like that.
Lucavion crashed hard, his body skipping across the ruined battlefield like a broken doll. The impact was enough to shatter stone, his coat torn, his body slamming into a jagged pillar with a sickening crack.
Blood sprayed into the air.
And yet—
He stood.
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Of course he stood.
Of course he did.
Aeliana clenched her fists, her own body trembling as the pulsing light around her flared erratically.
Lucavion pressed a hand to his ribs, exhaling sharply. Blood dripped from the corners of his mouth, the wound deep, his breathing uneven.
But still—he grinned.
That damn grin.
That reckless, wild grin.
His fingers curled around his estoc, his posture unshaken despite the pain. He was still standing. Still fighting.
But something was different now.
Something she saw before anyone else.
He was slowing down.
Just a fraction. Just a moment. But it was there.
The Kraken saw it, too.
It knew.
It was waiting for this.
Aeliana’s pulse pounded, the voices in her head growing louder, more alien, twisting through her thoughts like an infection.
“⍀☌⋔⏃⟒⍀☌⏃⟒⍀⍜⌰⌿☌⏃⟒⍀⍜☌⏃⟒⍀☌⏃⟒…”
She clutched her skull, her breath uneven.
‘Shut up.’
She didn’t want to hear it.
Didn’t want to understand it.
But her body—her soul—was already changing.
Her cursed veins pulsed harder, and this time, she didn’t resist.
This time, she accepted it.
A revelation bloomed in the back of her mind. A truth she had never allowed herself to grasp.
“I am not weak.”
Her nails scraped against the broken stone as she forced herself to move.
“I was never weak.”
Pain seared through her limbs, her body screaming for her to stop, but she refused.
She took a step forward.
Then another.
The glow around her flared brighter, her body trembling with something new, something undeniable.
“I won’t let this define me.”
Aeliana clenched her teeth, her breath ragged, and as she did—
A sharp, grinding sound echoed through the battlefield.
It was her teeth.
She was gritting them so hard the sheer force of it reverberated through the air.
And she kept walking.
Because Lucavion—
That bastard.
That liar.
That monster.
He was hers to kill.
Not the Kraken.
Not this cursed land.
Not anyone else.
She had meant every single word she had screamed at him.
And she needed answers.
Which meant—
Lucavion wasn’t allowed to die here.
Aeliana refused.
She refused.
Her body screamed, every nerve shredding from the inside out, her cursed veins pulsing with a violent, unbearable heat. It hurt. It hurt—a pain deeper than anything she had ever felt before, like her very soul was being ripped apart.
But she would not fall.
Her blurred gaze locked onto him.
Lucavion.
The bastard. The liar. The monster.
She burned his image into her mind—every detail, every drop of blood smeared across his skin, every inch of his battle-worn coat, every flicker of madness in his starlit eyes.
She would not let the Kraken take him from her.
“I will not let you take him from me.”
Her voice was hoarse, barely more than a whisper, but the weight behind it cracked through the air.
Her body begged for her to stop.
To let go.
To end it.
Her very cells screamed for release, the agony drowning her, crushing her bones from the inside out.
But still—
“I refuse.”
She refused.
She reached inside herself, beyond the pain, beyond the overwhelming madness clawing at the edges of her mind.
Her vision flickered. Reality twisted.
And then—
She saw it.
Inside her.
A writhing, slimy, disgusting mass of pitch-black darkness. It pulsed unnaturally, sickening, vile, wrong.
It didn’t belong there.
It had never belonged there.
But beside it—
A color.
A deep, rambling blue.
It was not calm. It was not gentle.
It was a storm.
A raging ocean, swirling violently, fighting against the invading force.
It called to her.
Aeliana’s breath shuddered, her fingers twitching as she clung to it.
This—
This was hers.
This storm—this raw, violent force surging through her veins—
It was hers.
And she would not let go.
The moment Aeliana clung to the storm—she felt it.
A pulse.
A deep, resonant force, something primal, something old. It surged through her veins, crashing like waves against the black mass inside her, colliding with it—fighting it.
And then—
The sky rumbled.
A violent tremor echoed through this strange space, this dimension that wasn’t quite real, wasn’t quite a dream. The heavens above—if they could even be called that—shook, like something vast and unseen was awakening.
And her body—
Her body jolted awake.
“AAAAAH! IT HURTS!”
The scream tore from her throat as pure, unfiltered agony flooded her.
It was not pain from her body.
It was not something as simple as flesh and bone breaking.
This was deeper.
This was her soul being shattered.
The storm inside her clashed violently against the sickening black mass, crashing into it, tearing into it like a hurricane against a parasite that had burrowed too deep.
It hurt.
It hurt more than anything she had ever felt in her entire life.
And at the exact same moment—
SHRIIIIEEEEEK!
The Kraken writhed.
Its massive form lurched, its abyssal eyes widening, its monstrous limbs twisting unnaturally. It felt it too.
It knew.
Its grotesque, writhing tentacles shot forward—
Straight toward her.
Aeliana barely had time to register the incoming attack. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could barely even see through the unbearable, soul-crushing pain.
But just before the massive limb could strike her—
CLANK!
A flash of black-starlight.
A sharp, metallic clash.
And then—
A voice.
“Not on my watch.”