As Cade floated above the black waters of the Dark Sea, his form bathed in the searing glow of the Radiant Eye and the cold brilliance of the Flameheart Forge, he sensed something shifting beneath the surface.
It was a disturbance. A presence.
As soon as Cade registered the sensation, the storm-wracked sky suddenly stilled, as if the world itself held its breath, sensing the approach of the entity below.
Cade swallowed hard, his throat turning dry.
A cold wind blew over the surface of the now stilled Dark Sea. It sent a chill down Cade's spine and into his very bones.
Far below, the darkness did not merely exist— it moved. It churned, restless and alive, in a way that defied all logic and sense.
Cade knew that the Dark Sea had not earned its name solely for its appearance. It wasn't just water cloaked in shadow. No, it was pure, abyssal Darkness— a void given form.
And ever since he had acquired the [Stygian] Attribute, that void had become more familiar to him. More welcoming. His connection to the abyss had deepened, threading through him like veins full of Darkness.
So, unlike others, who would be utterly blind in these depths, Cade perceived more than just absence. After all, there were more ways to see than just with one's eyes.
Therefore, Cade knew exactly how dreadful the thing lurking beneath him was. Even without seeing it directly, he could feel its vastness, its hunger. Its ancient, unknowable malice. And as it began to rise from the abyssal depths, parting the black waters like a wound splitting open, Cade finally felt the fear he had fought so hard to suppress.
In that moment, resisting it was simply impossible. No mortal being could face such a presence and remain untouched.
Thankfully though, the fear did not stay within. It bled out of him, surging outward in an invisible wave, and it gripped the monstrous depth-dweller instead. The vast, unknowable entity hesitated— its titanic form shuddered as it experienced something foreign, something it had never known before.
Fear.
Freed from that crushing weight, Cade did not linger. He dismissed the Flameheart Forge in a wisp of Darkness— the Memory had never been meant for illumination anyway. But he kept the Radiant Eye clutched tight in his grasp.
The Memory's bright glow would ensure the depth-dweller followed him, while the effect of his Innate Ability would slow the abominable thing down. It would create a balance, allowing Cade to lure the harrowing thing to another of its kind.
Or so he thought.
Cade was no longer afraid, yes, but the mere presence of the monstrosity below threatened to overwhelm him. What it caused to well up in his chest was not simply fear or terror.
No, it was something deeper— a hollow realization of how small he was, how utterly invisible in the face of the horrors that plagued this abyssal realm.
For a moment, Cade faltered. Doubt began rising in his mind like a wave.
What was he doing? Why was he resisting?
His fingers slipped on the Radiant Eye. It felt like a betrayal— not of the Memory, but of himself. The grip that tethered him to purpose loosened, and he began to sink.
The Dark Sea yawned open beneath him like a grave.
Cold. Silent. And eternal.
There was no violence in it. In fact, it felt rather... serene. The pressure of the deep wrapped around him like a blanket. It was numbing and cold. And in that cold, the weight of stillness creeped in.
It wasn't terror that found Cade— no, it was peace.
Peace.
The thought echoed through his mind, distant and seductively sweet. If he let go, it would be all be over. No more blood. No more screaming muscles or torn skin. No more constant crawling toward survival.
Just silence. Stillness. Rest.
He thought of death— not with fear, but almost with reverence. How welcoming it was. How peaceful. Was the God of Death not also the God of Peace? Was this not the true ending, the final and quiet mercy?
The Radiant Eye dimmed. Cade's head tilted back and water kissed his throat. The promises of stillness curled around him like a serpent coiling around its prey.
Why climb ever upward, when in the end, all roads ended beneath?
Cade felt surreal. He didn't quite remember the last time he'd felt so at peace. This feeling— it was rather... liberating.
But—
Underneath that satisfaction, underneath that dreamlike serenity, something else suddenly stirred.
His grip on the black orb tightened, his knuckles turning white.
What... the hell...? his thoughts swirled, as he fought against an insidious pull weighing on his mind.
Something in him refused. But it was not enough. He needed something more. Something stronger.
So, reaching into the depths of his Abyssal Void, he exhaled deeply and breathed out a torrent of True Darkness. The Radiant Eye's glow was smothered instantly, its crimson brilliance swallowed whole.
Then— the harrowing black fog shifted.
The Darkness moved, not passively but with intention. It rippled out and to the sides. Then, swirling in jagged arcs like wings made of smoke and shadow, it formed a massive vortex with Cade at the heart. Within that vortex, the Radiant Eye's red glow pulsed again.
And then, the rage hit.
Not like a wave. Like a planet itself had settled in his chest. It was heavy, crushing, and cataclysmic. Cade's chest tightened. It was as if his ribs had turned to steel and the storm inside him was trying to tear through them.
The Flawed rage came barreling through his entire being, unrelenting and raw. It consumed everything— the temptation to surrender, the whisper of death, the false comfort of stillness. Every thought that had made Cade pause just seconds ago was devoured.
In their place was fury— the kind that didn't scream, but seethed. That lived in his bones and boiled through every vein. It was almost like it had been waiting, watching. And now, it was free.
Cade kicked violently and rose again, his legs thrashing inside the cold water.
Son... of a bitch... he thought, fighting hard against the insidious pull of rage.
His teeth clenched until his jaw creaked under the pressure. He'd almost forgotten. Forgotten what his Flaw felt like.
He gritted his teeth and taking a slow, focused breath, Cade began to move.
He twisted sharply and started swimming back toward Maya and her Echo. The vortex of Darkness curled around and followed him.
The rage was still there, whispering in his ear. Its presence was so constant that it became a pulse of its own. But Cade didn't yield to it. He guided and channeled it. Not because he had mastered it, but because right now— he needed it more than anything.
He understood now why he had faltered moments ago. It was not because he was weak.
No, it was the monstrosity below. The harrowing thing had planted something inside him— self-doubt, a quiet longing for death, for the illusion of peace.
How very insidious the thing below was. Devoid of fear, Cade had nearly succumbed to its vile influence. Nearly. The thing had almost devoured his will to live. Extinguished his will to fight.
But...
But, thankfully, the abomination itself was afraid. Cade's fear was weighing it down. It was unable to exert its full power. At the moment, Cade was every bit as overwhelming for the abomination as it was for him.
So, he hadn't been completely devoured by its vile ability.
Still, he could not count on that alone to keep himself from unraveling under the thing's presence.
He needed something more to clear his mind. Far from Maya now, Cade's Flaw was no longer constrained. So, he'd used the seething rage of his Flaw to achieve that.
He had unleashed his Darkness on purpose. Poured it out so that his Flaw could fully rise. Because that was the only way to fight back.
He needed the wrath. The madness. The cruel focus that came with it. Anything less, and he would be nothing more than another echo swallowed by the deep.
But even that plan had its flaws.
Because, the moment his rage had roared to life, his fear— the dread inspired by the horror below— had died. And when his fear died— so did the abomination's. Its strength surged again. The undertow of its despair started clawing at Cade's mind with renewed hunger.
But Cade's own bloodlust was nothing to scoff at. He had not breathed out a wisp of Darkness. No, he had let out a torrent. Adding to that was the fact that he was constantly manipulating it in a vortex around him.
Right now, the fury of his Flaw was the fiercest it had been in weeks.
So, for now, there was a balance. That balance, that delicate psychological battle, had twisted into a brutal tug-of-war.
Cade was caught between two equally ravenous instincts. Kill the thing below, or be peacefully consumed by it.
His rage wanted him to descend— to tear into the abomination and rip it apart, to feel it die, to feed on its pain, to revel in it. But the creature's pull sang of surrender, of ending. Of release.
And yet—
He didn't stop swimming.
Because beyond the pull, beyond the fury, beyond the whispers of death and the gnawing temptation to end— there was a third, more pressing force.
Maya.
Was she still alive? Had she endured the seconds he'd been gone? Had he made the worst mistake of his life by leaving her in the clutches of that thing? What if she was already gone? What if all that remained was a frozen body, shattered and discarded in the jaws of the deep?
These thoughts, this overwhelming urge to protect his companion, his family was the one thing pushing Cade through the black waters.
The fear of that— of reaching there and finding Maya's lifeless corpse— burned even brighter than his rage.
And that fear— raw and jagged— protected him in return. It choked the depth dweller's influence. It made his own will unbreakable. Because even in this dark place, even in the heart of the Dark Sea's nightmare, he'd be damned before he let her die.
So, within Arcadius, an impossible balance was born. A trinity of emotion— rage, fear, and devotion.
The abomination's pull was staved off by the fire of his Flaw.
The Flaw itself was tempered by the very pull it sought to destroy. The pull of the abomination's vile influence.
And in the center of that maelstrom, Cade's urge to protect Maya burned like a beacon, holding him together.
This wasn't a strategy. It wasn't control.
It was chaos.
And somehow— it worked. It worked perfectly. For now.
He cut through the water with one arm while keeping the Radiant Eye raised above the surface with the other.
He wasn't fast enough— well, he shouldn't have been fast enough— but the unknown enchantment of the Ebonveil Plate was working in his favor. His movements felt unnaturally smooth, his speed just enough to keep ahead of what followed.
And it was following.
Cade could feel the ancient leviathan stirring behind him, lurking just beneath the surface. It moved cautiously, its monstrous instincts unsettled by the unnatural fear radiating from him. But as Cade's rage consumed his fear, the leviathan's wariness began to wane. Slowly, it pushed forward, drawn by the bright blood-red glow of the Radiant Eye.
Hesitant, yes, but relentless all the same.
That hesitation did not make it any less harrowing though. Far from it.
Even though Cade had temporarily found a way to keep himself from succumbing to the thing's insidious influence, that ability was not the only thing the horror possessed. The water itself seemed to tremble under the weight of its presence. This was no mere beast that swam. It was a force— an avalanche of abyssal muscle and hunger, a thing of unrelenting, ancient purpose.
And it did not thrash. It did not struggle. It simply moved. It glided through the depths with the kind of seamless, inexorable motion that spoke of something that had always been here. Waiting. Watching.
If not for his unnatural mental resilience and emotional control, Cade would have already drowned in the black waters. The sheer presence of the thing behind him, coupled with its insidious pulls, was enough to crush the mind, and to hollow out the soul— which he thankfully did not possess.
It was not the kind of fear that clawed at the edges of reason— it was the kind that devoured it.
Still, he moved.
The water around him stirred, and then he felt it— a smaller tentacle coiling around his armored ankle, its slick surface tightening as it slithered upward. It wasn't as massive as the one that had ensnared him on his first night in the Dream Realm, but that did not make it any less of a threat. Even the smallest limb of this horror could drag him into the abyss.
Without hesitation, Cade summoned the Voidfang. Black mist curled from his lips as he exhaled the Darkness to augment the blade. His rage flared once more. Thankfully, right now, he had something to feed his bloodlust. Smiling darkly, he struck with all the strength he could muster.
To his surprise, the Darkness-clad blade bit. It did not cleave through the limb entirely, but it tore into the armored flesh, splitting the slick hide which should have been impenetrable. Cade didn't hesitate. He ground his teeth, shifting his grip as he sawed at the writhing appendage, forcing the blade deeper with each vicious stroke.
It felt rather pleasant, amputating a Corrupted horror's harrowing limb.
Finally, the section gripping his armored leg tore free, severed from the greater limb. The dismembered piece convulsed before sinking into the depths, vanishing into the endless black.
Cade didn't linger to celebrate his narrow victory over a mere baby tentacle of a Corrupted abomination. There was no time. With a single thought, he dismissed both the Voidfang and the Radiant Eye. The world was swallowed by absolute darkness once again.
He was close now. His rage was slowly evaporating. His fear was slowly mounting. His mind was slowly falling prey to the pulls of the one below. The balance of emotions that had protected him up until this point was coming undone.
Still, he continued to press forward. He was getting closer to where he'd left Maya. The glow of her Echo shimmered ahead, a beacon cutting through the lightless void. It was enough. Enough to guide him. And the one below.
The Radiant Eye had served its purpose. Cade had done his part. Now, the glow of the Echo was enough to draw the second leviathan toward the one Maya was already struggling against.
But Cade had to reach her before it did.
So, when he was only a few paces away, he abandoned the careful, calculated movements that had kept him from being ensnared. There was no weaving through the writhing mass of the first leviathan's tentacles anymore— not without inviting death. He would never make it through unscathed.
Cade gathered his thoughts and the vortex of Darkness that had surrounded him throughout his journey back, stilled. He commanded it to move inward and shroud him completely.
Then, he let himself dissolve into it.
His form unraveled, and he became one with the black mist as it curled and writhed. Then, with the sheer force of his will, he commanded the fog forward.
What followed was especially agonizing. Moving through the Darkness was one thing, but driving the Darkness forward while being a part of it— while his very existence was entwined within it— was something else entirely. It tore at him, drained him to the core. But there was no other option. Not now.
The black fog slithered through the chaos. It weaved between the thrashing mass of tentacles, slipped through gaps that no physical body could navigate. It pressed forward, deeper, until it breached the dim blue light at the heart of the storm.
And Cade felt it.
The glow of the Echo.
His Darkness recoiled against it. It frayed at the edges, struggling to persist. And because Cade was the Darkness right now, the resistance ripped through him as well.
Still, he forced himself forward, straining against the unseen weight pressing down on him. He moved towards the source of the glow, until at last, he materialized. His body reformed atop the broad, armored back of Maya's Echo.
His limbs nearly gave out the moment he became whole again, but he somehow managed to latch onto one of the jagged spikes jutting from its back.
He was utterly spent. Every fiber of his being felt hollowed out, raw from the toll of forcing his Darkness to move. In his exhaustion, he noticed something he hadn't before.
A blizzard raged at the heart of the battle. Maya had unleashed her Aspect Ability as well.
His eyes locked onto her instantly.
Maya was barely holding on. Her skin was as pale as death, her grip was weak, her breath was ragged. Even the frost clinging to her body— her last line of defense, her icy augmentation— was thin and fragile, as if the power fueling it was flickering and on the verge of collapse.
Beneath them, her Echo writhed in agony, thrashing against the relentless assault. The monstrous serpent that had seemed untouchable just hours ago, a fortress of armored scales, was now battered and broken.
Deep gashes marred the icy serpent's once-impenetrable hide. Tentacles lashed at it from every direction, an unrelenting storm of grasping limbs that sought to drag it down into the abyss.
Through sheer force of will, Maya turned to Cade. Her eyes were unfocused, glassy with exhaustion, but still, she managed to force out a whisper.
"D—Did it... work?"
Cade's chest tightened at the sight of her. He had never felt the weight of his limitations as much as he did now. His Darkness could terrify, conceal, destroy— but it could not heal. Not someone other than Cade himself. And right now, more than anything, he wished that it could. But frustration would do nothing for her.
Now was not the time to dwell on helplessness.
Helplessness, huh? he thought, fighting off the urge to scoff, despite the desperate situation. We'll see who's helpless...
"Yeah, it worked," he said aloud, his voice cutting through the howling wind and roaring sea. "It's coming!"
Maya's lips twitched, a faint smirk ghosting across her face despite everything.
"Good work... teammate."
Cade managed a tired smile, but it didn't last. Urgency overtook it in an instant.
"It's only seconds behind us," he said, voice tense. "We can't stay here when those two behemoths collide. We won't survive the force of it. We need to get out. Now!"
Maya scoffed, though even that small act seemed to cost her. "Well, what do you think I've been trying to do, huh? This thing just doesn't stop." Her voice was ragged, each breath labored.
Cade stretched out his free hand. She hesitated for only a moment before grasping it, her grip weak but steady.
"On the count of three—" Cade said, meeting her gaze. "Go all out with your blizzard. I'll pour out everything I have left. Maybe… just maybe, we'll break free."
Maya's grip tightened. She stared at him, exhaustion flickering behind her eyes, then gave a firm nod.
"Ready?" Cade asked.
Another nod.
"Three… two… one. NOW!"
The storm erupted.
Maya unleashed everything she had left, and the blizzard howled into a frenzy. Ice and wind tore through the chaos. The air crackled with bitter cold. At the same time, Cade exhaled every last ounce of Darkness within him, his breath thick with black mist that swallowed the world whole.
The glow of the Echo vanished beneath the suffocating black fog. The battlefield was consumed in absolute Darkness.
Cade clenched his fingers, making sure he still had Maya's hand in his own.
"Get us out of here, Veil of Ashes!" he roared over the storm.
The Echo moved.
Clad in Darkness, wreathed in the howling frost of Maya's blizzard, it cut through the chaos like a phantom. It slipped through gaps that barely existed, twisting and diving to evade the grasping, writhing tentacles.
The relentless storm of Maya's ice had slowed the limbs of the abyssal horror, numbing their strength, but it was a fleeting advantage at best. The creature wouldn't stop. It wouldn't tire.
The world was a maelstrom of agony.
Cade felt like his arms were being ripped from their sockets, his body jerked in ways it was never meant to move. His legs screamed in protest. His bones strained under the violent whiplash of the Echo's desperate maneuvers. It felt as if he had been cast into the heart of a storm that sought to break the very fabric of existence.
On top of that, his connection to the black mist, and the chaos contained within it, overwhelmed his every instinct. His mind felt like it was being ripped apart from the inside and out. It was worse than any mind-attack. It was worse than anything he'd ever felt.
It was pure agony. Pure suffering. Pure torture.
And yet— through it all— his hand never loosened.
Maya's grip was the only thing anchoring him. The only proof that they were still here, still fighting.
If he let go, what would happen to her?
If he surrendered to the pain, if he gave up now, would she have to do the same?
She had faced this horror alone before he returned. She had held her ground in the face of an Awakened Terror alone, protecting his defenseless body. She had fought, endured, and survived when the odds were nothing but despair. She had refused to fall, had refused to yield to the overwhelming horror.
And he would do the same.
She was his companion. And he was hers.
He would not let some abyssal horror take that away.
Cade clenched his jaw and tightened his grip on the jagged spike beneath him. His every muscle screamed in defiance. His mind frayed at the edges. His body threatened to break, his very being felt like it was unraveling, torn between the Darkness, the frost, the endless water, and the monstrous flesh that sought to swallow them whole.
But he endured.
He endured for Maya. He endured for the both of them.
Finally— after what felt like an eternity— the fury of the Darkness-infused storm began to wane. The howling winds dulled, the frost-thickened air settled, and Cade, breathing heavily, began drawing the lingering Darkness back into his Abyssal Void.
His vision swam with exhaustion, but he forced himself to scan the chaos around him. The abyssal horror was still thrashing violently a few hundred meters away. Its tentacles carved through the water in a blind, frenzied rampage. But the other one— the leviathan that Cade had lured into the fight— was nowhere to be seen.
We... we got away? Cade thought, his mind still reeling from the struggle it'd had to endure.
There was no movement in the waters around them. Nothing creeped closer, nothing lurked beneath. If there had been, Cade would have felt it.
His gaze shifted, scanning the ice-clad serpent beneath him. And that was when he realized— his hand was empty.
His heart clenched. His fingers had slipped from Maya's somewhere in the chaos. His breath caught as his mind immediately conjured the worst possibility— that she had fallen, swallowed whole by the Dark Sea.
No. He refused to accept that.
Frantically, he scoured the Echo's spiny back, his pulse hammering in his ears— until, finally, he found her. Caught awkwardly between two especially large spikes, her limp body was slumped against the frozen ridges, unmoving.
Relief hit him so hard that he almost collapsed.
He wanted to call her name, to shake her awake, but he didn't. Who knew what horrors still lingered in the dark, waiting for a sound to follow?
Instead, he moved carefully, navigating the jagged terrain of the Echo's back. Every step sent fire through his trembling legs. His muscles frayed from the torment they had just endured. But Maya's safety was the only thing that mattered right now.
When he reached her, he crouched down and carefully freed her from where she had been wedged between the spikes. Her body was ice-cold beneath his hands. He held his fingers above her lips, barely breathing himself— until he felt it.
The faint warmth of her breath.
Thank the Gods...
She was alive. Unconscious, but alive.
A soft chuckle escaped his lips. Of course she's alive. The Echo's still here.
He exhaled shakily, brushing damp strands of hair away from her pale face.
"Rest easy, Maya," he murmured. "We made it. Barely… but we made it."
However, the moment the words left his lips, a sound like the sky itself splitting open crashed through the world.
A deafening, thunderous impact.
Cade's head snapped up.
The abomination— the nightmare he and Maya had barely escaped— was still thrashing wildly in the distance. But now, through the pitch-black waters, another shape moved.
Then, something collided.
A massive, unfathomable force slammed into the abyssal horror with such power that the shockwave rippled through the Dark Sea. It was a tidal force so immense that it felt like it could have toppled entire fleets of ships.
The leviathan he had lured was here.
And the battle of the horrors was only beginning.
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Sorry for the late, people! Studies are consuming me like the Dark Sea consumes unsuspecting Sleepers! (Not Cade and Maya, though, lol. I know the plot armor's going crazy but I gotta make it work somehow...)
I know I yapped a little too much in this chapter about how much Cade cared about Maya, but I'm trying to write something emotionally compelling.
I know this is just a fanfic and most of you aren't that invested in the story and the characters. It's only natural; I wouldn't expect you to care too much about them. But still, I gotta ask— did this feel too forced? Cade's monologue, I mean? Or did it feel natural? If it's the latter, then I'm good. If it's the former, please do let me know why that was. I appreciate the feedback! I truly do.
In any case, hope you enjoyed the chapter. I'll try to update tomorrow as well. Hopefully, I'll be able to make some time. So, until then, goodbye, people! :]