The months passed like tides, slow and relentless. Each full moon brought with it a pulse—an echo from the deep—and with it, a seal to undo.
Zanya had grown careful, disciplined. The Dragon's presence was no longer fragmented whispers in dreams; it was a living current flowing through her veins, threading through her Song-magic and Saltborn resonance. She could feel the chain of each seal—tight, cold, resonant.
The girls remained unaware of the Dragon at first, but their bond with her deepened through subtle guidance.
They practiced in tandem, unwittingly attuning to the new rhythms of the ocean.
When Zanya was ready, she brought them to the Moon Pool under the next full moon, letting them wade just enough to sense the undercurrent and told them of the things to come.
Then the surge came.
It was a wave unlike any before—an awakening of the ocean guardians, ancient protectors long dormant beneath Mako. Stones shifted. Water roared. Currents coiled like serpents, pushing, testing, striking.
The girls leapt into action.
Emma guided the currents, damping rogue eddies with smooth arcs of water. Cleo anchored the spiraling energy, pushing against the guardians' tests with precise counterflows. Rikki, ever fierce, cut bursts of controlled heat and wind into the fray, carving paths for Zanya to maneuver.
Zanya herself moved like a conductor, her hybrid soul pulling together the Tidemaker Surge, her new mermaid magic, and the Voltron astral resonance. The ocean bent to her will—not entirely, never fully—but enough to hold the guardians at bay while the final seals were unmade.
With each seal broken, a ripple of light passed through the water, faint traces of Atlantis' lost power hinting at what waited below. And through it all, Malik—the Dragon—was there. His voice, now intimate and steady, pulsed directly into her mind:
"I feel you. I trust you."
And Zanya answered, not just in words, but in the song that flowed through her. The hybrid power within her did something unexpected. It wasn't just her own magic that expanded.
Currents she sang to or bent through her Song-magic created new forms for all mermaids near her: water weaves, tidal shields, minor gravitational currents—abilities none of the girls had learned before, but which now blossomed within them.
Their awe was mirrored in her own. The ocean had been a teacher. Malik had been a guide. And together, they were something new—an emergent force beyond the confines of expectation.
Finally, the last seal snapped.
The guardians roared in unified protest—a wave of water, wind, and force that shoved Zanya beneath the surface. She surfaced gasping, her tail thrumming with power, and Malik was there, his mind coiling around her in a protective spiral.
"You are… my other half," he said again, softer this time, the depth of centuries in every syllable.
Zanya let her voice carry back, steady, unwavering. "And I will anchor you safely, always."
The ocean calmed. The full moon mirrored on the surface, silver and gold threads blending like the Song-magic she had woven.
Yet beneath it all, deeper than even Malik stirred, a presence waited. A pressure unlike any other. Atlantis' heart, hidden below, pulsed faintly through her hybrid resonance. She could feel the scale and depth of it, the weight and watchfulness, like the Dragon himself was tethered to something older and larger.
Zanya's chest tightened with recognition and awe. She had unlocked the seals. She had strengthened herself, the girls, and Malik.
But the final threshold—the threshold beneath Atlantis—was still ahead.
And she knew, without needing words, that the true awakening was yet to come.
She stayed at the surface, tail flicking gently, hands brushing the water, listening. Malik hummed low beneath her, coiled and patient.
The ocean waited. Atlantis waited.
And Zanya, Saltborn and mermaid, stood at the edge of what was no longer just a mission—it was destiny.