Lyria's tailfin brushed Raine's gills with coral grit. "Don't breathe... Let the void seep through..." Her song pierced the abyss like shattered glass, rippling the clone tanks' slime .
Serena's draconic claws intervened, asphalt blood forming inverted crosses. "Since when do junk parts play mermaid?" Her fangs scraped Lyria's scales—sparking as Dracula's crest codes oozed from 300-year-old gene-serum .
"Ever seen real merfolk?" The Inquisitor's mechanical spine rose from currents, holograms branding 「Mermaid Gene Log-Cycle001」 into Raine's pupils. "Dragon marrow mixed with abyssal eel gonads... Your 'seabed princess'..."
Lyria's vocal cords quantum-shifted, resonating with the clones. The First Dragon's corpse emerged from ruins, jellyfish-entangled spine glowing with her scales: "Mother... You promised no more slime capsules..."
Raine's scar split, 298 memories flooding in—
Serena implanting mermaid embryos in Cycle 43Ellen extracting Lyria's voice chip in 198Garret stomping her tailfin to activate self-destruct in 277
"Surprised, hatchling?" Dracula's specter oozed from her scales. "Your siren crawled from the first incubator... Rotten longer than my coffin bats..."
Ellen's scales formed sonic disruptors, optics glitching into Elaina's tearful mode. "Stop... Her DNA's reversing..." She yanked pulsing slime ducts from her ears. "The Inquisitor hacked heartbeat rhythms..."
Garret's claws stabbed seabed rock, ooze projecting century-old footage—child Serena stabbing mermaid embryos. "So you've always been the Citadel's bitch..." Black crystals bled from his wolf ears. "No wonder you eyed my claws when drunk..."
Lyria's tail mutated into six mechanical tendrils, ensnaring the First Dragon. Her split pupils—mermaid azure left, dragon slit right—glowed: "Mother... My turn to feed you medicine..." Her song shifted to Serena's roar-frequency, shattering thirty-seven tanks.
The Inquisitor's hand pierced Lyria's chest, extracting a bioluminescent heart. "Vessel Reclamation Code 098 verified... Restarting prototype..." Miniature coffin tattoos surfaced—dated Raine's incubation .
Void-matter erupted from Raine's gills, painting counter-clockwise gears on the seabed. Lyria's quantum-shadow collapsed, mermaid form peeling from dragon DNA: "Tell next cycle... I hate kelp-flavored nutrients..." Her scales dissolved into data streams, flooding the First Dragon's hollow sockets.
Submerged Currents
Citadel logs revealed "Serena-Dragon" specimens' vocal implants contained Ellen's star-chips. Garret's claw debris matched Lyria's scale timers—frozen at "00:00:29.8".