The Ruined Expanse moaned.
Not through sound—sound died in trenches this deep—but through pressure, through shifts in the water so subtle that only a creature sharpened by death and evolution could feel them. Kuro glided between toppled pillars and shattered walls as though the entire ruin breathed around him.
A breath drawn in hunger.
Another released in anticipation.
Fragments of leviathans drifted like broken teeth across the seafloor—rib cages calcified into stone, skulls fused with runic pillars, spines twisted into spiraling towers of half-living coral. Some still twitched, as though trapped memories were trying to puppeteer what little remained.
Kuro passed one such remnant.
A vertebra the size of a house trembled, and from within its hollow cavity a tendril of half-formed flesh slithered out, twitching mindlessly. It dragged itself across the stone, leaving a smear of blackened ichor that dissolved into the water in wisps of oily darkness.
He did not slow.
He had seen death.
He had caused death.
But this was… after death.
A memory that refused to decay.
A shadow peeled itself from the wall beside him, its shape vaguely reminiscent of a colossal serpent—yet incomplete. Its spine floated detached from its spectral flesh, and its skull was split open, runic light leaking from the crack like molten silver.
It lunged.
Kuro reacted instantly. His tentacles whipped outward, barbs extending like obsidian knives. He met the creature's strike head-on, Phase Ripple distorting the water around him in a shimmering wave.
The echo's jaw cracked upon impact, fragments of spectral bone scattering like shattered glass. Kuro followed with a spiral twist, shredding the shadow's midsection. Where he tore it, its form unraveled, dissolving into streaks of mana.
But it didn't scream.
Echoes didn't scream.
They simply remembered.
The ruins responded.
A low hum rumbled through the Expanse. Runes flared to life across the floor, casting cold light into the abyss. Ancient inscriptions crawled, shifting like schools of glowing parasites. Kuro hovered as the water thickened with mana.
Then—images struck him.
Not visions.
Memories.
Not his.
---
The Sea Before Time
Darkness parted.
Kuro saw silhouettes of titanic Leviathans swimming through the primeval ocean—serpents with wings of light, colossi of obsidian armor, beings whose minds could bend tides and crack continents. They glided through the water like gods, their voices echoing in the deep.
But then—
Light turned to flame.
Flame turned to slaughter.
Slaughter turned to silence.
The Leviathans tore into one another in apocalyptic fury. Runes detonated. Ocean floors cracked. Their bodies became mountains. Their blood turned trenches into black abysses. Even the survivors were ruined, their minds fractured, their shells shattered.
The Old Sea Race did not fall to an enemy.
They fell to each other.
Their cities—the Expanse—were built over their graves.
And their memories were carved into every stone.
---
The vision snapped.
Kuro gasped, his tentacles curling inward as the last fragments of the memory dissolved into the water like dust. His core pulsed erratically. His shell flickered with unstable mana.
He understood now.
The echoes were not ghosts.
They were the Leviathans themselves—
or what remained of them.
The ruins sought to imprint their memory onto him.
To see if he was strong enough to bear it.
A sudden wave of pressure rolled across the Expanse, thick enough to bend metal. Kuro's senses sharpened painfully. Something massive was stirring deeper in the ruins.
Something ancient.
Something that knew he was here.
The runic pillars trembled as a colossal shadow uncoiled beneath the collapsed temple ahead. A single eye—vast, lidless, and glowing with runic fire—opened within the darkness.
The water vibrated with its whisper.
"You walk among our ashes, young abyssal."
"Come forward… if your flesh can withstand our memory."
Kuro flared all limbs, body coiled, eyes narrowing with both fear and resolve.
He would go forward.
He must.
Because only by walking through the remains of gods
could he one day surpass them.