The mirror continued to crack.
Not shatter cleanly like glass, but split in slow, agonizing fractures, each creak sounding like bones bending the wrong way. Silver fissures spider-webbed outward, glistening like veins beneath a dead man's skin. For a heartbeat the world held still the air, the sea, even the beat inside Kai's chest everything paused as if the realm itself inhaled.
Then the mirror screamed.
A soundless scream, but loud in the bones, in the nerves, in the marrow.
And then it broke.
Not downwards, but outward exploding into the ocean below, or the sea. Kai blinked. Ocean? Sea? His brain flickered with the useless thought:
never mind, aren't they basically the same thing? Call it whatever you want, it's about to kill you either way
The shards rained downward in a silver shower. When the first shard touched the surface, the water didn't ripple it repulsed, as if rejecting the mirror's existence entirely. It pushed away, recoiling from the corruption clinging to each piece.
Then the entire surface convulsed.
And something bit the shaft Kai stood on.
There wasn't even time to think. The world snapped into motion.
Kai launched himself upward, the air bending beneath his will, swirling around his limbs like a coiled serpent of invisible force. Conjurer stage or not, the reflex came from something deeper a bone-deep instinct that whispered survival in the old tongue of fear.
The moment he left the platform, it sunk beneath the waves with a wet crunch, dragged down by something unseen.
Kai didn't wait to find out what.
His hands carved through the air, drawing threads of elemental essence, shaping them into a bow that burned with red flame. It wasn't fire that warmed it was fire that ate, fire that whispered, give me something to kill.
He obliged.
Arrows formed from nothing conjured, birthed, ripped into existence and he fired into the fractured sky. Each arrow cracked the broken mirror above, widening its wounds, peeling open the false heavens like a decaying fruit.
The shards did not fall quietly. They chased him.
Mirror fragments razor-edged, humming with corrupted intent curved in unnatural arcs, pursuing him like predators starved for centuries. Their reflections twisted, showing distorted versions of Kai hollow-eyed, flesh dangling, smiles too wide.
Kai didn't have time for identity crises.
Because now he could see the thing inside the mirror.
Or rather it could see him.
The corrupted beast revealed itself slowly, emerging from the widening rift like a nightmare dragged into birth. The creature was shaped like a fish in the same way a corpse might still vaguely resemble the person it once belonged to.
It had flesh, yes.
But that flesh was wrong.
The body was patchworked with faces or eyes or possibly both. Hundreds of eyes belonging to beings that had no business sharing the same skin. They blinked in mismatched rhythm, some weeping blood, some twitching, some rolling wildly, seeing everything and nothing.
A Ravager.
A stage above him.
Wonderful. Perfect. I love when the universe gives me a challenge absolutely nobody asked for.
The creature lunged toward the shattered sky and broke through the remaining mirror surface with a sound like meat tearing.
And then the tentacles came.
They erupted from the fish's body long, sinewy things made of wet flesh, each lined with tiny blinking eyes that followed Kai's flight. They whipped upward with nauseating eagerness, each movement squelching like a heartbeat leaking.
Kai twisted in the air, sliding between the grasps with wind-wrought precision. He swung the air around his body, cutting sharp arcs that sliced through several tentacles. They fell twitching, pulsing, still trying to crawl despite being severed.
He heard an explosion below.
Instinct forced him to look down.
From the sea, new tentacles burst upward, thicker and faster than the first water tentacles this time, formed from the ocean itself. They spiraled and coiled, reaching for both Kai and the Ravager in the sky.
Because today clearly wasn't bad enough.
Kai's sarcastic thought barely finished before the corrupted fish reacted. It surged upward, eyes rolling with manic hunger. The mirror sky kept cracking, as though unable to withstand the weight of such a creature forcing its way into this realm.
The closer the beast came, the worse the world sounded. Reality buzzed, the air warping with corruption. The realm groaned like something alive and dying.
Kai shot another wave of arrows.
Burning streaks of red fire cut through the air, exploding against the creature's hide. The beast roared, mouths forming between folds of flesh, teeth protruding in chaotic patterns. That roar was wrong too it vibrated, echoing not through air but through thought.
Tentacles converged.
Too many.
Too fast.
Kai felt his breath rip away as one tentacle wrapped around his arm, then another around his waist. The suction-like pull of the fleshy appendages felt warm, alive and hungry.
He was yanked downward.
His ribs compressed.
Something popped.
Pain knifed through his torso.
The corrupted tentacles squeezed harder, dragging him closer to the gaping maw of the creature. Kai's vision blurred for a split heartbeat, shades of red blooming at the edges.
Then something in him snapped.
Not physically something deeper. Something he kept sealed. Is blood lineage awakening driving is eyes to the limits and then.
The wind answered.
A whirl of air tore outward from Kai in spiraling crescents. They sliced cleanly through the tentacles, severing them completely. Flesh dropped in chunks, the pieces evaporating into blackish mist the moment they touched the sea.
The water below churned.
The sea once clear had begun to turn red.
Mirror shards sank into the depths, dissolving like ink and bleeding corruption into the water. The crimson spread quickly, turning the ocean into a vast, heaving pool of diluted blood.
Kai dodged another tentacle. He spun, bending the air beneath his feet to propel himself higher. A sweeping slash of compressed wind cut across a tentacle made of black fire, severing it even as it tried to reform.
The beast shrieked, its many eyes narrowing in hatred.
Good. Be angry. It's not like I'm having fun either.
But anger brought escalation.
The world shuddered.
The corrupted Ravager convulsed, and new tentacles sprouted these were made of black fire, yes, but also flesh, the two merging into a blasphemous combination that defied every rule of the natural world. Flames that writhed like muscle. Flesh that burned without burning.
They lashed toward him.
Faster than before.
Too fast.
Kai dove aside, pulling the air with him, forming a barrier of swirling turbulence. The tentacles slammed into the barrier, distorting it, warping it, bending space around it. Ripples shot through the sky.
The battle became a storm of flesh, fire, and wind.
Kai's arms trembled with strain, sweat mixing with blood running down his side from the earlier squeeze. His breath came ragged, each inhale burning slightly a reminder that he was fighting something a stage above him.
A Ravager.
Stage III corruption.
And he… Conjurer Stage II powerful, yes, but not enough to overwhelm something that had abandoned its sanity for pure evolution through consumption.
The difference showed.
The world below warped again.
The sea surged upward, forming massive tentacles of water, each towering like a pillar of liquid rage. They shot toward the sky, toward him, toward the corrupted fish. The water's color deepened more crimson blooming, rising, swirling.
For a moment, everything froze.
Wind.
Water.
Flesh.
Fire.
Even the red sea seemed to hesitate.
Then
A voice rolled across the world.
Not loud.
Not shouted.
But absolute.
It vibrated through the ocean. Through the sky. Through Kai's bones. Through the corrupted beast's warped flesh. It felt ancient ceremonial, divine and terrible.
A voice that did not belong to mortals.
A voice that did not belong to beasts.
A voice that felt like it came from the beginning, or perhaps the end.
It spoke.
And the world listened.