It was late October. Kallen sat in his soul sea, inspecting the creature that had appeared there a week ago when he had unlocked his Aspect Legacy.
The attribute he gained, [Inheritance] hadn't shown itself quite yet, but he figured it wouldn't until after the bout with his first 'leviathan.' Assuming that he lived past that point, of course.
Kallen waved a hand through the illusory image of the first Leviathan. It was assumedly just an abstract of the creature he was supposed to battle, conjured by the spell considering how it shifted between forms. Sometimes, it was the silhouette of a hulking shark, then it was a serpent, and then an octopus creature with serrated cups on its tentacles.
Odd, he thought, leaving his soul sea for the last time before his battle. The salty brine wafted into his nose, refreshing him.
He stretched a few times, lamenting the fact that he wouldn't be able to fight the Leviathan with his Tideform, Knight, like he thought he was going to be able to.
Though it took a lot out of him, he had been able to summon the form in his soul sea without much difficulty, but when he'd tested it just the other day in the real world for the first time… he'd nearly passed out. It'd knocked his damn breath out of his chest and left him unable to summon even his dormant ability for a while.
It was regrettable, but unavoidable all the same. He had a few theories as to why this happened, but none of them carried much merit.
Divine aspects are weird like that, he assumed.
In any case, they had finally arrived to their destination. The ship would keep going to shore, but he and his guardian were exactly where he wanted to be.
"It's here," Kallen said, a breath of relief escaping him. "It has to be."
The ship carrying him and a few sailors was only a few miles out, but still, Bloodwave insisted on accompanying him on his descent to the seafloor.
The Saint had gifted Kallen a few memories to aid him in the dive, which, if they were unlucky, could take them all the way down to the underwater continental slope. One such memory was a unique garment that had two attributes, one allowing for protection against compression, and another allowing for protection against decompression. Kallen also had a warming charm that would hopefully protect him from the freezing antarctic waters.
But a garment and charm wasn't all.
He ran a hand across a brand new armor memory, then summoned an unfamiliar weapon as well.
The weapon was called: Hydra, and it was a tier one awakened memory that was supposed to create three slices with any swing that connected with its target. It was a beautiful blue khopesh, handle black as the night sky.
He summoned his runes and read the description of both it and his armor.
[Hydra]
Memory Rank: Awakened.
Memory Type: Weapon.
Memory Description: [This blade was carved from the tooth of a mighty hydra. Its edge never rests until the moment it meets flesh. Whatever its true origin, one thing remains certain: no wound it carves is ever just one.]
Memory Enchantments: [Threefold].
Next, he moved on to runes of the armor.
[Hadronite Carapace].
Memory Rank: Awakened.
Memory Tier: II.
Memory Type: Armor.
Memory Description: [No smith laid hammer to it, no chisel shaped its form. The Hadronite Carapace was not made, but pressed into being, sculpted by the weight of an abyss that should have ground it to dust.]
Memory Enchantments: [Lithification].
Kallen had found that [Lithification] increased the memory's durability the longer he wore it, and so he had put it on the day the Saint gifted it to him—right after he had figured out that Kallen planned to charge into battle without any armor.
He stood on the edge of the ship, waiting for the signal of the Saint to his left. When the man nodded, they both jumped, and water rushed over their heads.
A grin found Kallen as water rushed across his dry skin, fueling him, weaving through the gaps in his armor. He dismissed the weapon in his hand and descended into the depths.
He dove through water like a blade through silk. His aspect allowed him to carve a path in the ocean. Currents bent to form a spiraling vortex that aided his downward descent, far faster than any man could sink.
Schools of fish scattered, their silver scales flashing in the gloom. Deep, dark shapes loomed, but Bloodwave's predatory presence kept them at bay.
Strangely, Kallen had expected the charm to have less of an effect than it did, but he had to admit, the cold was nothing more than a minor inconvenience. At 500 yards down, the weight of the ocean above should have been too much for his lungs to handle, but he was fine. More than fine, even.
And his head. His head was quiet, no aching pressure, no torturous visions, nothing to distract him from the calm of the sea's embrace.
But something was wrong. The ocean floor was empty.
Kallen landed softly on the silt-covered floor, he left the armored boots of Hadronite Carapace on instead of dismissing them—for fear of stepping on something poisonous or sharp.
"It knows we're here, yet it still hides," Bloodwave said, his voice distorted by the water. "I can feel it's eyes watching… that's a good thing. It means I'm stronger.
The Saint touched down just a few paces away. Kallen didn't answer. He could feel something inherently wrong about the world. As if what he was seeing wasn't quite real.
"Though I did not plan on assisting you past this point—" the Saint stopped talking abruptly, head snapping to the left.
He paused, humming to himself for only a moment. "Something is coming. "
The man disappeared into the distance, moving with astonishing speed that Kallen couldn't have hoped to compete with.
Kallen sighed, wishing that he hadn't been left alone. Yeah, sure thing mighty Saint.
Bloodwave was lying. Obviously. He wanted Kallen to defeat the creature on his own, and of his own merit. That was fine and all with him.
"But where are you? And where is that damned temple I kept seeing?"
Since this was the first of the seven Leviathans he had to face—probably one for each rank—he wasn't all that worried about going into battle with the thing. It was likely why Bloodwave felt so confident in him.
While it pained Kallen to reveal the secret behind his Aspect Legacy, he felt that his survival was far more important than keeping something like that secret, especially from so close an ally. He would owe the man for as long as he lived for escorting him across the Southern Ocean.
Kallen exhaled slowly, letting the water ripple around him as he focused. The ocean was supposed to be his home. If something was wrong, he merely had to listen, wasn't that what the Saint had said?
He reached out with his dormant ability, not to attack, but to feel. The water should have been alive with movement, with subtle shifts of unseen creatures, the distant pulse of movement was present… but something was off with the patterns of a group of creatures several dozen feet behind him.
He felt a school of fish-like creatures turn unnaturally to avoid something… something that wasn't actually there. Or rather, something he couldn't see.
"Clever little bastard."
The temple wasn't gone, and the Leviathan wasn't just hiding—it had wrapped the entire area in some sort of mirage, making it seem as if nothing was really there.
Kallen knew just the right attribute to help.
"Show me."
[Voice of the Sea] spread outward, rippling through the water and unveiling a crumbling temple, coral growing along its outer edges, seaweed like a miniature jungle in its small open chamber. And right there, floating above the raised stairs like a mocking sentinel, floated the Leviathan.
Then, movement.
The thing darted between the pillars—small, sleek, almost playful. It was no towering beast, no serpent of legend. Instead, it was the size of a small hound, its body an almost cute fusion of a four legged dragon, a dog, and a manta ray, winged fins rippling in the water, almost invisible with how well it blended in.
Those eyes though—those were wrong. Two beads, colors unexplainable swirling in their depths.
Kallen smiled. "You're not what I expected."
The Leviathan, if it could even be called that, chirped in response, a sound like glass breaking underwater. Then reality shattered.
The ruins twisted, water thickened into blood. Suddenly, Kallen was back there, running away from the demented king, fear pounding in his head, pressure expanding in his mind.
His vision lurched and all that existed were the frightening eyes of the Elder Gargoyle, ruby red and gleaming with ferocious intensity.
Kallen shouted, functionality leaving his legs.
The creature was weak. That was the truth of it. It had no fangs of note. No claws, no crushing might, no towering stature. Just this. Just lies and Kallen's past doing the work for it.
What he was seeing… what he felt wasn't a mirage at all. The temple had been hidden by a mirage, but this ability was something different, the damn thing was attacking his mind.
He screamed again, fighting against the intensity of the mind hex. He saw his sister breaking her arm when she was only five years old. He saw the Nightmare Gate again… his older brother in front of him being torn limb from limb. Awakened rushing. His mom covering his eyes as he begged to her to let him help.
Kallen Surged, Ocean's Wrath generating a torrent of pressure that smashed against him, shredding the false visions. The blood dissolved, the screams silenced, and the ruins snapped back into focus. The creature shrieked, darting behind a pillar—but Kallen was faster.
He lunged, water parting before him. His fist clenched, and he grasped hold of the water around its tail and yanked.
"Got you!"
In a swirl of white sparks, Kallen summoned Hydra in his right hand. The Nightmare Creature rocketed toward him and he swiped down, coercing the the water to accelerate the motion. He sliced the damn thing in two. At the same time, his weapon's ability [Threefold] activated, cutting the Leviathan into fifths.
Blood exploded from the little thing, inking the water around him in a black cloud.
He could have sworn he saw a flicker of those incomprehensible eyes fill his vision…
Then suddenly, Kallen was standing on the silted seafloor again. He blinked for a moment before Bloodwave touched down beside him.
What?
"It knows we're here, yet it still hides," Bloodwave said, his voice distorted by the water. "I can feel it's eyes watching… that's a good thing. It means I'm stronger.
Kallen sent the Saint a bewildered look.
No. No, no, no…
"Though I did not plan on assisting you past this point—" the Saint stopped talking abruptly, head snapping to the left.
He paused, humming to himself for only a moment. "Something is coming. "
The man disappeared into the distance, moving with astonishing speed that Kallen couldn't have hoped to compete with.
Kallen whirled, searching for the temple, the corpse, the proof he's just killed the Nightmare Creature, but there was nothing. Just the abyss stretching endlessly.
Panic rose into his throat. What was happening? Had the Leviathan rewound time? No, that was stupid… most likely, it was just messing with his head. It would have killed him by now if it were able to…
Kallen's fists clenched. He hadn't won at all. The thing had never let him leave the illusion in the first place…
Moments passed where nothing happened. Then the true fight began.
The first thing the Leviathan went after was his senses. Water turned to blood in his mouth. Distant screams assaulted his ears, his sister's… his brother's echoed from nowhere at all. The cold wasn't the ocean anymore. It was the iron that had bound him during his first Nightmare.
He was chained now, as he had been before.
Then the creature attacked his body. His armor groaned under repeated attacks he could neither stop, nor see coming. Hydra fell from his grip. A phantom blade pierced his gut. He gasped, but no wound appeared.
"Pathetic," a voice whispered. His own. "Auran isn't here to save you this time? What makes you think you'll make it out alive."
Kallen bit down on his own hand, clinging to the hope that the pain might shatter the illusion. But nothing changed. The sensation was muted and distant, like trying to scream underwater, or punch in a dream.
He couldn't trust his eyes. He couldn't trust his ears.
But the water around him…
He forced his mind still, reaching for [Voice of the Sea]. The ability unfurled from his mouth, not as a weapon, but as a pulse, a sonar stripped bare of hallucination.
And there—a distortion. Behind him, where the water bent unnaturally around nothing, the Nightmare Creature hovered, its wings rippling.
Kallen snarled and reached out a hand, clenching his fist.
No weapon was summoned. No blade would strike, instead, he let the ocean do the work.
With just a thought and a mere gesture, the currents contorted, a crushing vortex trapping the little beast. It shrieked, thrashing against its new binds as the pressure mounted.
Then, when its body couldn't take anymore, the Leviathan exploded, fetid blood rushing out to blend into the ocean around them.
Then a chirp, a sound like glass shattering in reverse.
~~~
Kallen was back on the silt. Bloodwave stood beside him, scanning the empty ocean floor.
"It knows we're here, yet it still hides," the Saint said, voice distorted by the water. "I can feel its eyes watching… that's a good thing. It means I'm stronger."
Kallen's breath caught.
Again.
The same words. The same pause. The same vanishing act.
His hands trembled. Not from fear, but from something far worse: certainty. He was still trapped. The hex was buried too deep into him, stitching his own memories into the loop.
The ocean floor blurred, the ground beneath his armored feet melting into the damp stone of his childhood home. The walls wept rust. Shadows slithered.
His mother's voice whispered from the dark: "You should have died instead of him."
Kallen grit his teeth. "Lies! All of it!"
His muscles screamed against a new wave of exhaustion.
"It's not real," he muttered through a clenched jaw. Even though his lungs burned. Even though his muscles shouted in torment. The Hadronite Carapace felt heavier than the weight of the world on his back.
His heart hammered in his chest. He could feel it pounding and pounding and pounding. It was deafening. Was he going insane? Who could tell?
Was Bloodwave trapped in the illusion as well?
Probably not, he thought, grimacing against the pain.
The initial mirage hiding the temple might have fooled him if wasn't paying attention, but there's no way he would be under the same mind hex that Kallen was trapped in.
The Saint was probably just watching him stumble around blindly.
And the fact that Kallen was still alive right now, meant that mind hexes and illusions were all the Leviathan he was fighting could produce. It probably couldn't hurt him using conventional means. Was he meant to starve here, unable to escape the maze of his own mind? Would he go mad? Would his heart give out from fear?
It's impossible to tell how many layers of illusion I'm trapped under, Kallen realized, struggling to stay upright. But I think physical pain can knock me out of the hex.
After a moment of agonizing thought, he laughed. A raw, broken sound. There was only one move left in his bag of tricks. One thing with the potential to work.
He reached deep. Past the creeping doubt. Past the illusions. Past the memory of his brother's corpse, staring at him with those same swirling, impossible eyes.
Past the horror.
There, in the blackest part of his soul, something answered.
Knight Form.
A dreadful pain detonated inside Kallen, as though the weight of the ocean had slammed down on his soul. His bones groaned, his muscles lit aflame. Saltwater surged through him and he coughed violently, a spray of crimson dispersing as his body rebelled against the overwhelming power.
The pain was unbearable.
Perfect.
The illusions wound around his mind shattered. The pain was too real, too visceral, it burned through the creature's lies. And in that clarity, he saw it.
The temple. The Leviathan, its mesmerizing eyes reacting too slowly.
It hadn't expected this.
Its eyes flared, colors bleeding into the water—one last hex.
Too late.
Kallen shot like a harpoon loosed from hell. The Leviathan shrieked, its raylike fins flared as it sprung into movement, but it wasn't fast enough. He cleared the distance nigh instantly, spearing through its body with a lance of pressurized water.
The creatures body exploded, taking its soul cores with it.
A tremble ran through the water around. The ruins groaned, centuries old coral cracking and shimmering as reality became whole.
And the temple… it was no longer hidden. It stood before him, real and unchanging, its pillars worn smooth by time. There was an absolute silence for a fraction of a second. No whispers or phantom eyes.
Then the backlash hit.
Knight Form unraveled, the borrowed power tearing from him like a retreating tide. Kallen gasped, knees buckling. He just barely managed to stay upright, one hand braced against the temple floor as his body shuddered.
But he was alive.
And that thing was dead.
He won.
And then the spell whispered sweet honey into his mind.
[You have slain a Dormant Titan, Veilray.]
[A Legendary Leviathan has been slain!]
[Your Aspect Legacy mastery level has increased.]
[You have received the right to claim a Legacy Relic.]
[A Defiled Leviathan has been subjugated.]
[A Leviathan has pledged allegiance to your crown.]
Kallen staggered forward into the remains of the temple, closing his eyes to ignore the runes on the wall. He walked with a limp, feeling as though he may pass out at any moment.
But he didn't care, the sweet release of rest could wait its turn. He felt something pulling him toward that temple. The Leviathan had been guarding it, hadn't it? And something within him, somewhere buried deep called him there.
Could it have been his attribute, [Mark of Divinity]? Somehow, he thought so.
Kallen paced up the steps, eyes still closed. He approached the alter, feeling fate beckoning him toward something on the ground.
There was a single drop of golden blood stained against the broken stone of the altar. That was it. Without thinking, Kallen grasped the liquid with Ocean's Wrath, and pulled it toward him, reaching out to hold the drop of blood between his thumb and index finger.
[You have received a Memory: Drop of ichor.]
Huh?
The ichor dissolved into the water.
What… exactly was happening?
Without thinking, he summoned his runes, looking for the Memory, but something caught his eyes. It was his scale count… it had increased beyond reason.
Scales: [67/1000.]
He had killed a few underwater nightmare creatures as per his training with Naeve. And he had occasionally hunted with Bloodwave during their journey whenever he deemed it safe.
Before his fight with the Veilray, he'd had 27 Scales. The Titan had given him 40… when it was only supposed to give him 7.
Strange.
His eyes continued their search, and he saw a new attribute. It wasn't next to [Inheritance,] but within it. Almost as if [Inheritance] were a folder, and within it, was the attribute: [Illusionist].
Kallen had expected as much. It seemed that with every Leviathan he killed, he would 'inherit' one of their abilities.
Any great leader from history learned from their enemies. I suppose.
He dove past the runes telling him to claim his Legacy Relic and saw a new memory in his arsenal.
Memory: [Drop of Ichor].
Memory Rank: unknown.
Memory Type: unknown.
Memory Description: [It is thought that weaver was the only daemon to leave behind a forbidden lineage. Thought is not fact. When Ariel saw what lay beyond time, when he glimpsed the forbidden truth, he cut himself to ensure he still existed. This drop, this lingering wound is all that remains of his certainty.
The gods feared him for what he knew, and so he was silenced—but not erased. Only time will come to know whether Ariel is truly dead… or merely waiting to be heard again.]
What the hell?
Kallen hadn't ever heard of a Memory with an unknown rank and type. Could it be that the Spell really didn't know? Was it hiding something from him?
[You have acquired a drop of ichor. Do you wish to consume it?]
Kallen screwed his face in thought. What is even…
Could he even consume a Memory? At least, the spell was telling him he could.
He hesitated. Perhaps if he was of more sound mind, or if he were more cautious, or if he knew why Bloodwave was taking so long to get down here and bring him back to the surface, he would have hesitated longer.
But Kallen said, "Yes. I do."
Golden liquid appeared before him, parting into several streams. He took a weary step back, and then he was assaulted by the streams of liquid.
It dispersed through him, entering his very soul somehow. And then without another word it was gone.
Kallen's knees gave out. Exhaustion was just on the cusp of claiming him when pain got there first. A wretched scream crested his lips, and everything went black.