After the bounding and the transportation arrays on the beach were complete, Renzoku stood up, wiping the dark sand from his palms. He gestured for the Orithys squad to follow him, leading them to a sheltered hollow in the nearby treeline, away from the faint, pulsing light of the shore sigils.
Sitting in the dim shelter, the cold sea wind rustling the leaves above, Renzoku laid out the general plan to draw the Abyssal Terror out of the water.
Eirene watched him, her amber eyes reflecting the shadows of the forest. "We understand that you want to use the golden acorn as bait," she said, her voice tight with suppressed scepticism. "But how can you be sure it will work? The sea is vast, and that thing is buried in a trench. How will it even know the fruit is there?"
Renzoku looked at her, his metallic, silver-gray eyes vacant yet steady. "Because its sights have been set on the Great Oak since the moment it nested on your shore," he explained. "Void creatures have highly refined spiritual senses. They do not just hunt flesh; they hunt essence. The golden acorn contains half the life force of the Great Oak, which is an Ascended-rank entity. For an Awakened Terror, that fruit is the ultimate prize. If the creature consumes it, its evolution to a Fallen-rank Titan will be effortless. It will not be able to resist."
He reached into his coat, withdrawing a fifth grey crystal. Unlike the others, this one did not hum with Silas's Ascended essence—it was empty, its runes dark and dormant.
"I have carved a control array on the deck of my ship," Renzoku said, indicating the crystal. "It is linked directly to the transportation formation on the shore. Once we are in position, I will lure the Terror. The moment it boards my ship to claim the fruit, I will activate the array. It will warp the creature, the ship, and all of us back to the beach, where Kaelen and Mira will be waiting to help us finish it."
They discussed the details of their coordination as the night grew colder. When midnight approached, the tension in the hollow was thick enough to choke.
The squad quietly moved to their positions. Mira and Kaelen disappeared into the dark treeline surrounding the shore array, Kaelen gripping his heavy shield and Mira keeping her bow strung, their eyes fixed on the empty sand.
Renzoku boarded his repaired ship, stepping onto the damp deck where the faint lines of his control array were carved into the wood. Meanwhile, Eirene, Theron, and Lyra boarded their three smaller boats. They pushed off into the black tide, their oars cutting through the water with hushed, rhythmic splashes.
The sea was dead silent, the water sluggish and thick like oil.
Beneath the glass-like surface, deep in the absolute darkness of the ocean trench, the Abyssal Terror was waiting. Its massive, amorphous mass shifted slowly, the faint veins of light along its limbs pulsing as it slowly digested the soul essence of the captured villagers trapped in its translucent chambers. It was a slow, parasitic feast, the lingering consciousness of its victims fuelling its impending ascension.
Once they reached their designated coordinates, Eirene, Theron, and Lyra positioned their boats in a wide triangle around Renzoku's ship. The darkness was absolute, the black mist clinging to the water's surface.
Renzoku stood in the centre of the control array on his deck. He raised his hand, signalling the three boats to be ready.
With his left hand, he held the empty energy-storing crystal. With his right, he pulled the golden acorn from his coat.
Taking a slow breath, Renzoku placed the glowing fruit between his palms and crushed it.
Crack.
The shell shattered. In an instant, the pure, concentrated life essence of the Great Oak was unleashed. A blinding, warm golden radiance erupted from Renzoku's hands, washing over the dark ship and flooding the bay. For a single, surreal second, it looked as if the sun itself had risen from the black sea, casting long, sharp shadows across the water.
Deep beneath the surface, the effect was instantaneous.
In the frozen dark of the trench, hundreds of scattered, milky eyes snapped open in unison. The creature's emerging intelligence registered the burst of pure Ascended essence—the key to its evolution. With a shrill, metallic screech that vibrated through the hulls of the ships, the Abyssal Terror lunged upward.
The surface of the bay bulged. The next instant, the water exploded.
Colossal, bone-textured tentacles burst through the surface, spraying black, foul-smelling brine into the air. The mass of the Terror rose, a shifting mountain of eyes and obsidian flesh, its gaze locking instantly onto the golden light radiating from Renzoku's hands.
Renzoku didn't hesitate. As the golden light began to dissipate, he raised the empty crystal, channelling his shadow essence to draw the escaping vitality of the crushed fruit into the stone. The dark runes on the crystal flared, greedily drinking in the raw Ascended life essence before it could scatter into the atmosphere.
The Terror screeched again, enraged by the theft of its prize. Its massive limbs slammed down from all directions, bombarding the ship. The deck splintered under the impact.
Renzoku moved like a phantom. Drawing on a century of combat experience, he dodged the thrashing, slimy tentacles. He leapt over sweeping limbs, his boots barely touching the deck, slicing forward with his blade when a tentacle came too close. He was a blur of black cloth and silver eyes, keeping the leviathan occupied in a desperate dance of evasion.
The creature's colossal mass pressed forward, its obsidian body spilling over the bow, boarding the ship to crush the boy who held the fruit's essence.
"Now!" Renzoku roared.
He slammed his foot onto the centre of the control array and crushed the fifth crystal—the one containing Silas's Ascended essence—beneath his heel.
At the same time, Eirene, Theron, and Lyra crushed their own crystals on their boats. The stones crumbled, releasing the stored Ascended essence in a violent, golden flash.
The runic arrays on the boats and the ship flared to life in unison.
The entire bay fell into a deep, unnatural darkness as a colossal shadow swept over the water. From the arrays carved on the three surrounding boats, hundreds of thick, writhing tentacles made of solid shadow erupted. They shot upward like black spears, wrapping around the Abyssal Terror's massive body and binding its limbs, locking it to the ship.
In the next fraction of a second, the space around the vessels fractured.
Eirene, Theron, and Lyra felt the cold, heavy shadow wrap around their bodies, the freezing void of the transport array pulling them down. Before they could even gasp, the shadows swallowed them whole, dragging the creature, the ship, and the three boats into the dark, silent abyss.