And as the next wave of SoulTaker ships bears down, I grip the trident, steady my new limbs, and hurl myself back into the fight.
The sea churns black with SoulTaker ships, their decks crawling with twisted forms. For every one I crush, two more lunge forward. The trident blazes in my grip, but sweat and salt sting my eyes—I can’t do this alone.
Then the sky splits open.
Alaric streaks overhead, wings vast and storm-dark, his greatsword glowing with fire that should not burn in rain. He dives, carving through the mast of a SoulTaker vessel, cleaving it in half. The ship groans, snaps, and sinks into the frothing deep. His roar shakes the heavens, a rallying cry that stiffens my spine.
Above it all, I sense him.
Idris.
The air curdles with his presence. On the largest ship, cloaked in shadows thicker than smoke, he stands at the prow, arms raised. His staff crackles with sickly green light.
His magic lashes across the sea, enslaving, corrupting. Some of those who leap into the water do not fight—they scream for release, their bodies jerking like puppets bound to his will.
My stomach knots. Those are not all true SoulTakers. Some are captives, bespelled. Innocents twisted into weapons.
The water beneath me shifts suddenly, deep and resonant. Dagan.
His magic rumbles through the bones of the world itself, tectonic plates grinding as he bends them like clay.
A roar of pressure builds, the ocean trembling under my tentacles.
“Together!” Dagan’s voice thunders through the deep, half command, half plea.
I drive my trident down.
Power explodes outward as the sea rises at our call, massive walls of water swelling into tsunamis.
They crash across the fleet, splintering ships, sweeping SoulTakers screaming into the tide.
Alaric swoops low, slicing through the survivors, his blade glowing bright as vengeance.
But we do not kill them all.
Where I sense Idris’s hold still clinging—that Dark Sage from the Broken Plains who believes himself some Messiah of Myth destined to take control of Nightfall—I lash out with coils of current, binding the corrupted and flinging them into shimmering nets of water magic.
Dagan seals the cages with slabs of stone raised from the seabed, locking the captives away until they can be freed and disenchanted later.
The waves settle for a heartbeat.
The battlefield is chaos—wreckage, fire, bodies thrashing in the surf.
Yet Idris’s ilk still stands, untouched, and I can feel his presence aboard his ship shielded by a dome of writhing shadow.
He keeps hidden, but his laughter carries across the storm. Cold. Certain.
“You are strong,son of tides,” his voice slithers into my mind, oily and invasive. “But strength will not save your mate. When next we meet, she will drown, and you will know despair.”
Fury ignites in my chest, hotter than lightning, colder than the abyss.
My tentacles thrash, my trident burns, and every drop of seawater answers me with rage.
“You will never touch her,” I snarl, my voice carrying over the surf, over the wreckage, into the heart of the storm.
For Phoebe. For Castletide. For Nightfall itself.
The war with Idris has only just begun.
