Rex left the cave in a silent dive, letting the water fold around him like a second skin. The farther he swam from the stone cavern, the more he felt it—raw, coiled power humming inside his limbs. His arms sliced through the water with terrifying speed, each stroke sending him forward like a shot arrow. His legs kicked, and the water parted instantly, disturbed in clean, spiraling trails behind him. His webbed claws didn't slow him—
they cut through the ocean like sharpened fins.
For the first time since the serpent tattoo, Rex understood what he had become.
When he rose to the surface, he popped through the water like a breached torpedo. The air hit his lungs like burning needles. Even breathing felt wrong. Rex coughed, hacking against the thin, unstable atmosphere until he forced himself through the waves and up onto the barren shoreline.
The world above was dead.
Trees were hollow sticks of gray. Grass crumbled underfoot like desiccated paper. The sunlight had turned harsh and metallic, as though filtered through broken glass. Rex shielded his eyes—his enhanced vision made the ugliness even clearer. The air, if you could still call it that, was dry and chemically sharp. It clawed at his throat in rasps.
He didn't linger long. Even with his new biology, staying up here hurt.
Not far from the shore, Rex found an old outpost—metal plating warped from pressure shifts, doors unhinged, consoles cracked. Inside, the signs of a rapid evacuation were everywhere. Ripped straps. Empty air canisters. A mask thrown aside with its filters burnt into a blackened crust. He touched the floor where a trail of dusty footprints simply ended, like the person dissolved into the air.
It confirmed what he'd suspected.
Anything above a few hundred meters past sea-level was a graveyard.
He left the structure and returned to the shore—
where the sea was moving wrong.
At first it looked like normal ripples. But they were too uniform. Too controlled. Like synchronized breaths from something hiding beneath. The serpent-tattoo on his chest warmed—then pulsed in a way that made Rex's spine tense.
He backed up one step.
The water erupted.
A group of fish-creatures surged from the waves, each the size of a small man, blue-black bodies shifting like wet stone. Rex's chest tightened. He knew these beasts. He'd scavenged hundreds of plates from them before—always taken from their corpses. They had always been slow, instinct-driven, barely more than animals.
But the ones before him now…
They moved with purpose.
Their jaws clicked in unison. Their postures were coordinated. They spread out, encircling him, eyes tracking him with unmistakable awareness. Rex couldn't see their plates through the murk—but he didn't need to. Something in his tattoos—serpent and frog-fish both—responded to the creatures' presence. A subtle electric pressure thrummed in his bones.
They weren't dull anymore. They weren't wild.
They were organized.
The first creature lunged. Rex reacted without thought, diving back into the surf and letting instinct take over. His scaled limbs cut the water with lethal speed. His claws slashed across the beast's side, splitting flesh in a clean, spiraling wound. The creature thrashed, but Rex was already moving—flipping, kicking, darting faster than their eyes could follow.
Two attacked from below. A third from behind.
Rex twisted, grabbed one by the throat, and crushed it.
Another he tore open with a raking sweep of his claws.
The third clamped onto his leg before he kicked upward, launching it into two others.
The water clouded with blood, swirling into violet ribbons.
He didn't know how long the fight lasted. Minutes? Seconds? His body moved with a rhythm that felt ancient, primal, and vicious. When the last creature's body drifted lifeless into the sand, the ocean fell eerily quiet again.
Rex dragged the corpses back to his cave.
Inside, with trembling hands, he dissected them with the tools he'd kept hidden. He pried apart flesh, cracked bone, and reached into their chests. The familiar plates were there—rough, coral-coated, dulled as always.
He frowned.
But one creature—the largest, its body heavy enough that Rex had struggled to haul it inside—felt different even before he cut into it. His tattoos reacted to it. Pulled toward it.
When he split its chest and reached inside, his breath caught.
The plate inside was smooth.
Not covered.
Not dulled.
Not suppressed.
A clean, black plate pulsed faintly beneath his fingers—six gemstones arranged in lines like a commanding crown. The moment he touched it, a pressure rolled through the cave, like a heartbeat echoing in the stone.
This creature…
wasn't just larger.
It had been leading the others.
Some force had stripped the coral-growth away
and restored its mind.
Rex felt cold.
With shaking fingers, he lifted the plate.
It warmed instantly.
Almost like it recognized him.