The chamber beneath the ruins felt older than the ocean itself.
Not ancient in the way fossils were ancient.
Ancient in the way gravity was ancient—fundamental, inevitable, woven into existence long before any creature swam in water.
Kuro lowered himself into the obsidian vault, each movement careful, reverent, unwilling to disturb the silence that pressed in from all sides. The walls were made not of stone, but of fused Leviathan bone polished into black mirror-like plates. They reflected his distorted image: dark tentacles, gleaming shell, eyes burning with predatory resolve.
But the reflections shifted.
In the mirrors, he saw versions of himself he had never been.
One larger.
One monstrous.
One crowned with spines that pulsed with abyssal light.
The walls were not showing possibilities.
They were showing inheritance.
At the center of the chamber floated the Leviathan Core.
A sphere of condensed mana the size of a heart—though no heart could ever beat with such destructive potential. Layers of swirling silver and black coiled through it like galaxies caught in a dying whirlpool. Each pulse distorted the water, bending currents as if reality itself took a breath.
Kuro approached.
Every instinct screamed danger.
Every cell in his body whispered hunger.
His tentacles trembled, both in fear and anticipation.
The Core turned toward him.
Not physically.
But its mana rotated, aligning like an eye fixing on prey.
A deep, resonant thrum filled the chamber—so low it bypassed sound and rammed directly into his nervous system.
"Blood of the lesser abyssal…"
The voice was not one being.
It was thousands—overlapping, ancient, broken, yet unbearably vast.
"…why do you seek what ruined us?"
The question was not spoken to receive an answer.
It was spoken to measure his soul.
Kuro steadied himself, drawing his limbs close.
His shell flared with dim gold light.
He let the Core examine him.
It probed through his mind, ripping across memories like a storm:
—His hatching in a pit of predators
—His first kill
—His evolution under pressure
—His assimilation of the Strider
—His survival of the Abyssal God's trial
—His determination to rise
The Core pulsed sharply.
The obsidian walls groaned.
"Ambition. Instinct. Hunger."
"We knew these well. They broke us."
The chamber shook as bone plates warped from the psychic pressure.
Jagged ribs protruded from the floor, forming a cage around Kuro.
Shadows poured from them—echoes, remnants, broken minds of once-great Leviathans fused into shapes that curled and writhed.
One hissed, its jaw hanging from a single hinge of bone.
Another dragged itself forward with fins made of cracked blade-like cartilage.
They did not attack.
Not yet.
The Core's voice deepened:
"To claim our heart is to inherit our curse."
"To wield our essence is to carry our madness."
"Will you drown in what drowned us?"
Kuro didn't retreat.
He drifted closer to the Core, pushing through psychic pressure that threatened to crush his shell. His tentacles extended. His eyes narrowed with something sharper than instinct.
Will.
A force the ancient Leviathans lacked in their final days.
He reached out.
The echoes screamed.
The chamber detonated with psychic backlash.
Jagged ribs slammed toward him, spectral tendrils lashed out, and the pressure spike cracked his shell along the seam. Blood seeped into the water, black and shimmering, drifting like smoke.
But Kuro did not falter.
Evolution demanded pain.
He struck with all tentacles, ripping through the closest echoes. Their bodies burst into clouds of mana that the Core immediately devoured. Kuro drove himself forward, even as another rib pierced the flesh near his mantle.
The Core flared.
A vortex of abyssal mana exploded outward.
Kuro's mind buckled—
For a moment, he saw a vision:
An ocean burning.
Leviathans screaming.
A sky that cracked like glass.
A God—a real one—descending to erase an entire race.
The Core was the last surviving heart of that apocalypse.
The vision shattered.
Kuro found himself inches from the Core, its surface vibrating violently. His tentacles wrapped around it—and his body convulsed.
Mana flooded into him.
Too vast.
Too ancient.
Too powerful.
His shell cracked further, glowing fissures spreading like molten scars.
His limbs spasmed, barbs lengthening involuntarily.
His vision blurred into spirals of silver and black.
> [Warning: Neural Overload—Critical.]
[Shell Integrity—32%.]
[Core Assimilation—Irreversible.]
The chamber began collapsing around him.
Bone pillars shattered.
The obsidian walls splintered.
Echoes howled in terror, not at him—but at what he was becoming.
Kuro clutched the Core tighter.
His mind burned.
His blood boiled.
His instincts stretched into something vast and terrible.
And the Core whispered:
"Then let the abyss remake you."
Light devoured everything.