The water split with a low, world-deep rumble.
From the far edge of the magma pool, something colossal rose.
Blackened tentacles surfaced first—thick as ancient tree trunks, covered in charred, cracked scales. Beneath the cracks, molten light pulsed like veins of living magma.
The creature's body followed, emerging like a nightmare dragged out of the vent of a dying world.
Not an octopus.
Not a beast.
A Leviathan of fire and abyss—a creature older than the valley, older than any clan history.
Its tentacles drifted through the water like drifting shadows of smoke, except each one boiled the sea around it.
The newly marked hunter froze, horror overtaking him as the thing loomed behind him.
Before he could scream, a tentacle lashed out, wrapping around his torso and lifting him like a rag doll.
His glowing dotted lines flickered violently.
The beast inhaled—a terrible suction that rippled through the water—and spewed a stream of lava-like fluid straight into his face.
The molten substance forced its way through the hunter's mouth, nose, even his pores.
He convulsed, spine arching, eyes rolling back.
Rex covered his mouth, trembling, unable to look away.
The hunter's body warped.
Bones cracked.
Skin split.
The glowing lines along his arms bulged, warped, and twisted into grotesque shapes.
The hunter let out a gurgling, bubbling scream before his chest ballooned outward—
—and ruptured.
The water filled with a burst of red and black.
Rex gagged, nails digging into the stone he hid behind.
The mutated remains drifted weightless for only a moment before the Leviathan opened a circular maw lined with rings of glowing, ember-hot teeth. It inhaled again and sucked the body inward, consuming it whole.
Silence followed.
But the nightmare was not done.
The master approached the beast.
He did not run.
He did not scream.
He bowed.
Deep.
Reverent.
The Leviathan lowered one massive tentacle—each scale leaking faint magma from the glowing cracks. A bead of molten substance gathered at the tip, cooled slightly in the surrounding water, then dropped like a perfect orb.
It sank gently onto the master's open palm.
Rex's stomach twisted.
The molten bead melted instantly into the master's skin, spreading through his veins like lightning. His dotted lines ignited down his arms, lengthening—stretching—glowing brighter than ever before.
The master's silhouette shuddered with silent ecstasy as the power claimed him.
Rex felt something inside his chest fracture.
The monstrous creature.
The sacrifice.
The ritual.
The master's bow.
None of this was hunting.
None of this was survival.
This was something far older.
Far darker.
The hunters weren't receiving power from the deep.
They were serving it.
Rex backed away silently, breath shaking, tattoos burning with warning.
He had seen something he was never meant to see.
And the master…
The master was no longer the same man who trained him.