The sea trembled.
Not from current, not from tectonic rumble — but from intent.
Something vast cut through the darkness toward him, swift enough that the water screamed in its wake.
Kuro braced himself, lowering his body and spreading his tentacles in a defensive arc. The newly awakened sense in his mind — this alien sonar of blood and pressure — pulsed faster with each beat of the creature's approach.
Then, silence.
The ocean stilled.
And from the void ahead, a shape materialized.
Not a serpent.
Not a shark.
Not a leviathan.
A humanoid silhouette.
Kuro froze.
No.
Impossible.
The being drifted closer, tall as a surface-world diver, limbs too long, joints bending subtly wrong. Its body was wrapped in plates of dark chitin, fused like armor grown from bone. Its head was smooth, bulb-shaped, with no eyes — only a single vertical slit that trembled open like a wound.
A column of pale light seeped from it.
Not bioluminescence.
Recognition.
Kuro's mind reeled.
It was alive — but not natural.
A creature of the Abyssal Ruins.
A remnant.
A guardian.
A Sea Warden.
Ancient. Extinct.
Yet breathing before him.
The Warden tilted its head, the slit widening. Sound rippled outward — a whisper too high for human ears, too low for normal sonar. But Kuro felt it in every nerve.
And in response, the mark on his body surged.
Crimson radiance burst from his mantle, sharp as a scream.
The Warden reacted instantly.
It lunged.
The water detonated around it.
Kuro barely dodged as the creature's arm — a lance of hardened bone — speared the place he'd been floating an instant earlier. The impact cracked the seafloor, fissures spreading like lightning.
Kuro propelled himself backward with a burst of hydro jets, vision blurring from the sudden velocity.
Too fast.
Too precise.
The Warden twisted, joints bending backward with insectoid fluidity, and charged again.
Kuro countered on instinct — tentacles snapping outward like whips, aiming for the creature's throat. He expected the usual impact: flesh, bone.
He hit armor.
It didn't yield.
Pain shot through his limb.
The Warden seized the injured tentacle and pulled, dragging him in.
Kuro contracted his mantle and blasted ink — but not ordinary ink. The abyss had changed him.
The cloud that erupted around him shimmered with faint red.
Instinct-driven magic.
The Warden halted mid-strike.
Its chitin hissed, sizzling where the ink touched it, tiny cracks forming like frost.
Kuro didn't wait.
He fired his hydro jets, rushing forward instead of retreating, slamming his body against the weakened plates.
A sharp, muffled crack.
The Warden reeled.
For the first time, it sounded… alive. A rattling cry escaped its slit, vibrating through the dark.
It was hurt.
Kuro felt a surge of something primal, a pull from the mark.
Finish it.
Claim it.
Ascend.
He darted upward, circling the creature, reading every shift in pressure. His new sense painted the Warden's weaknesses: the microfractures, the brittle seams where age had thinned its armor.
He aimed—
The Warden moved first.
Its chest split open.
A second slit.
A larger one.
Inside, rows of filament-like tendrils writhed, glowing with dull, deadlight. They surged outward in a snapping wave.
They pierced the water like spears.
One grazed Kuro's side.
He felt skin tear.
Pressure filled the wound, cold and burning at the same time.
His vision blurred.
The world tilted.
The tendril had injected something — a paralytic echo spell, a technique older than any creature still living. His tentacles twitched involuntarily, responding not to him but to the invading signal.
The Warden advanced, limbs spread, ready to impale him.
Kuro forced his convulsing body to still.
He centered his gaze.
The mark pulsed.
And the sea responded.
Pressure folded around him in a sphere — compact, dense, unnatural. The water itself bent, compressed into a shimmering shell.
The Warden struck.
The moment its spear-arm touched the sphere, the compressed water collapsed inward, detonating in a violent implosion.
The shockwave shredded the surrounding sediment.
The Warden's arm snapped off at the joint, drifting upward like a severed pillar.
It convulsed, confused.
Kuro didn't hesitate.
He lunged.
He struck the cracked chest slit, tentacles driving inside the armor, finding the soft tissues beneath. The Warden thrashed, tendrils flailing, but Kuro's momentum held.
He pierced deeper — and found the core.
A crystalized organ, faintly glowing.
He bit down.
It burst.
A bloom of cold energy flooded his body, seeping into every cell, every synapse, every memory he thought he had.
The Warden's body went limp, drifting downward like a fallen idol.
The mark flared across Kuro's mantle.
> [Abyssal Assimilation Complete.]
[New Organ Formed: Echo Core.]
[Ancestral Memory Fragment Acquired.]
Kuro shook, the foreign memory flickering behind his eyes.
What he saw made his blood run colder than the abyss.
Wardens only awakened for one reason.
To eliminate creatures marked for ascension.
Creatures chosen by the Abyss.
Creatures like him.