The world exhaled.
Not gently.
Not naturally.
The breath of the realm came as a violent collapse—air crushing inward around Kai, compressing until it felt like the sky itself was trying to inhale him. Then—
BOOM—
The pressure detonated outward.
Wind exploded from his body in a devastating ripple, a circular blast that warped the water below. The corrupted fish-beast was hurled away like a ragdoll, flung deep into the churning ocean where it vanished with barely a splash.
And then…
Everything went wrong.
Not subtly.
Not gradually.
Wrong in a way reality wasn't meant to twist.
Below Kai, the ocean changed, shifting visibly as if someone were bleeding ink into the veins of the world. The water darkened—not red, but black. Vicious, viscous, crawling-black. And that shade… that thick, living darkness…
It was the same color that had bled from his chains moments ago.
Not similar.
Identical.
Kai hovered above the sea, suspended on threads of wind so thin they nearly broke. His breath misted. His chest trembled. He forced his crimson bloodline eyes open, letting their vision pierce through the corrupted waves.
What he saw made his face drain.
The fish-beast was dissolving.
Its flesh was being eaten by the very water it sank into, breaking apart and liquifying until muscle turned to fluid, bones turned to sludge, and that sludge merged with the sea. And as it dissolved, the corruption spread—tendrils of dark ink spiraling outward, staining the water with every pulse of the beast's dying body.
A grotesque metamorphosis.
A birthing pool of something that should not be born.
The beast sank deeper.
And the deeper it sank, the stronger the corruption became.
Kai's eyes tightened, glowing more intensely. The crimson hue sharpened, cutting through the murky depths as he followed the beast's descent. Through the layers of water, through the layers of filth, through the layers of evolving rot…
He saw it.
At the very center of the collapsing creature—
its core.
And the core was refining itself.
The corruption wasn't growing weaker—it was being condensed. Concentrated. Purified in a twisted, abominable way only corrupted beasts were capable of.
A cold whisper escaped Kai's lips.
"…No."
Because this could only mean one thing.
The beast wasn't dying.
It was ascending.
Every living being had a core.
Humans strengthened their cores.
Beasts evolved theirs.
Strengthening was growth—slow, tameable, predictable.
Refining was metamorphosis—violent, wild, uncontrollable.
Refining was what beasts did before evolving into something worse.
Before, this creature had been a Tainted Ravager—a corrupted monstrosity, but still within known limits.
But now…
As the ink-black water churned around the mutating core, the truth struck him like a blade.
It was becoming a Blighted Ravager.
A step above.
A nightmare above.
A threat that shouldn't exist in a trial like this.
Kai's stomach twisted.
This was bad.
Very, very bad.
A Blighted Ravager was not something he could fight. Not here. Not now. Not with his drained world energy. Not with this corrupted ocean ready to swallow him whole the moment he touched it.
He tore his eyes away from the water, forcing himself to breathe.
The chains on his left hand were still faintly warm, faintly pulsing. He flexed his wrist, and with a soft metallic hiss the darkness withdrew, melting back into the silver links. His hand returned to normal.
Kai's expression darkened.
"What… kind of trial is this…?"
He had entered this realm for a Shard of Blasphemy.
A fragment.
A relic.
Something valuable, yes—but not enough to warrant a catastrophe like this.
He had expected challenges.
Maybe illusions.
Maybe beasts within his rank.
But this?
A realm tearing itself apart?
A beast evolving beyond its classification?
An ocean turning to living ink?
This was not normal.
This was not standard.
This was not sane.
He sighed—a quiet, defeated sound—and looked down at the world-shards drifting from the sky. Mirror fragments fell like broken stars, descending into the water only to dissolve into shimmering droplets. The realm was dying or shifting or rejecting something—he couldn't tell.
Kai lowered his gaze.
He was not strong enough to stop the evolution.
He was not strong enough to fight a Blighted Ravager.
And if he touched the water, even for a second, the corruption would claim him too.
He looked up.
The mirror sky was cracking—thin fractures splintering its surface like stress lines on glass. And beyond those cracks…
A real sky.
Blue. Endless.
Unreachable, yet calling to him.
He could feel his world energy dwindling like sand slipping through open fingers.
Only a little left.
Just enough for one choice.
So he gathered his remaining energy, letting the wind coil beneath him, shaping itself into a desperate, trembling lift. The air quaked around his ankles, spiraling upward, carrying him toward the fractured mirror sky.
He pierced through the cracks.
And what he saw on the other side stunned him into stillness.
A palace.
Floating.
Colossal.
It hovered above the broken sky like a god's forgotten artifact—blue as the deepest ocean, shimmering with a translucent beauty that almost looked unreal. Its walls were made of water, yet solid, carved into towers and arches that shifted like flowing rivers.
But what caught his breath was the glow.
The radiant, blinding glow.
The palace wasn't lit by the sun.
The palace was the sun.
It shone with a soft blue luminescence, reflecting the world below in an endless mirrored surface. Every ray of light bounced off it, spreading warmth through the dying realm.
The reflection was so precise, so vast, that the cracked mirror sky below was nothing more than the palace's own image—stretched, distorted, inverted.
Only then did Kai realize—
The light he saw earlier wasn't from a star.
It was from this palace.
A living sun.
A reflection of heaven.
A structure too beautiful to belong in a corrupted world, yet too solemn to be divine.
Before he could process the sight, the ocean below trembled.
A roar erupted.
Not the roar of a beast.
Not the rumble of waves.
Not anything that should come from something with gills and fins.
But then again…
Was it even a fish anymore?
The creature had long abandoned the right to be called such. A fish wearing human flesh, covered in malformed eyes and faces, screaming with a throat it didn't have…
A horror wearing the mask of a creature.
Kai did not need to understand the anatomy behind the roar.
He did not want to.
He only knew one thing:
He could not be here when the evolution finished.
So he flew.
Faster.
Upward.
Away from the corruption before it swallowed the world.
He angled himself toward the floating palace, his wind carrying him like a strained whisper. Every second the light grew brighter. Every moment, the roar behind him grew deeper, more twisted, more wrong.
And then—
The scene snapped—
***
—Back to the Past—
The memory surfaced gently, like a flower rising through murky water.
Kai turned.
And froze.
A girl stood in front of him.
Not just anyone.
Her beauty was quiet, unassuming, the kind that stole breath without announcing itself. She had deep blue eyes—ocean-blue, calm yet bottomless. Her hair was pitch black, falling like a waterfall down her shoulders. Her cheeks were soft, slightly chubby in a way that made her features even more delicate. Her frame slim, graceful without trying.
Kai blinked once.
Then twice.
He could not speak.
Behind her stood three guards, each clad in ornate armor, watching the surroundings with stiff caution. And as the other heirs in the hall noticed her appearance, they all fell silent.
Because she was her.
Kate Vantis.
Princess of one of the kingdoms.
Heir of the Vantis Clan—
one of the most powerful clans in the continent.
Her presence was a ripple through still water.
A soft disturbance.
A quiet shift.
But it changed everything in the room.
Kai exhaled without meaning to.
The past faded.
The present awaited.
And the evolution beneath the ocean continued.